This week’s features include: キタニタツヤ (Tatsuya Kitani), 美的計画 (biteki keikaku),
Cidergirl, SAKANAMON, and hockrockb

Heyo! It’s your resident playlist scavenger Leap, and we’re back once again with another entry in the Spotify J-Music Playlist Draft, where every other week I dive into the recommendations the algorithm serves me and see if we can’t keep this hot streak going. If you’ve been following the season so far, you’ll know we’re deep in the rhythm now, and honestly, I’m kind of loving the twists Spotify’s been throwing at me lately.

New to the Draft? Here’s the gist:

The Draft, inspired by player drafts in traditional sports and the draft formats of popular trading card games like Magic: The Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh, is a bi-weekly series where I tackle a simple question—

How good is Spotify at recommending songs to me ?

In this series, I put Spotify to the test by seeing how well it can recommend songs I’d enjoy based on the ones I already do. I do this by leveraging Spotify’s built-in suggestion feature for user-created playlists, using my ongoing Recommendation Roundup Playlist as the starting point, coupled with the final Draft playlists from the previous seasons.

This curated pool of over 800+ songs will serve as the basis for Spotify’s recommendations, fine-tuning its algorithm to better predict the songs it thinks I’ll enjoy.

I’ll let Spotify generate 5 (five) recommendations for me to check out every two weeks. Songs that make it onto a Draft playlist count as successful picks. Tracks that didn’t make the cut last season get a second chance if Spotify suggests them again. The ultimate goal? To see just how big this playlist can grow by the end of the year.

In Season 2, I added two mechanics to spice things up. The first was the Score to Beat, which sets the season’s target. Last season’s score was 101, so this year, Spotify needs to hit at least 102 successful picks to “win”.

The second change we implemented was the Wait List, a smaller, separate playlist (with a cap of three songs) which allows me to save tracks for later reevaluation.

Now, for this season, I’m shaking things up again by introducing a new mechanic: the Exempt List.

Think of this as a “hall of fame” of sorts: any bands or artists placed on the Exempt List will have their songs automatically ruled out for drafting this season (and possibly in future seasons as well). The idea for this came up while prepping for this year’s Draft. I noticed a pattern—Spotify kept recommending a lot of songs from the same handful of artists. While they’re all great, I felt like the series might start to feel repetitive if the same five or six names kept popping up every other week. The Exempt List, then, is my way of (ideally) ensuring we keep Spotify’s recommendations fresh and different each week.

Check out the Week 1 post for Season 3 to know the rationale behind the following artists being exempted from the Draft: Yorushika, ZUTOMAYO, YOASOBI, みゆな (miyuna), Hakubi, POP ART TOWN, whaledontsleep

Bands and artists can be removed from the Exempt List over time, though naturally, more names can—and likely will—be added as the season progresses, depending on how things shape up. Something to keep in mind.

We’ve officially hit Week 10 of the Draft! Coming off what was arguably Spotify’s first real heat check of the season last week, it’ll be interesting to see if this week is a bounce-back or if we’re starting to see some cracks in the armor.

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Let’s see what we’re working with.

It’s always funny to me whenever Spotify tries to recommend to me a band that I’m openly a fan of. I’m like bro wdym you’re recommending them to me, lol

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♥ ハイドアンドシーク/hide and seek by キタニタツヤ (kitani tatsuya)

Kitani Tatsuya is one of those artists where, the moment you hear a song of his, you know it’s him. That is to say, there’s really no mistaking that distinct delivery of his or the way he approaches his vocals, it’s uniquely Kitani. Even as someone who wouldn’t necessarily call myself his biggest fan, I can still tell right away. Of course, being easily recognizable doesn’t automatically make someone a good artist, but when they are good on top of that? It just means every new track you stumble on is more than likely gonna hit. That was exactly the case for me with Hide and Seek. Just another rock-solid showing from Kitani. The smooth little switch-up around the 1:55 mark in particular was a nice touch.

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♥ 恋のこと/koi no koto by 美的計画 (biteki keikaku)

Kawatani Enon’s Biteki Keikaku strikes again, making its return to the Draft and officially completing its trifecta run across all three seasons of the series so far. At this point, it’s definitely edging closer to ban list territory just based on how many times we’ve pulled from this one album alone, but I digress. One thing I’ve always found curious about Koi no Koto is that にしな (nishina) isn’t actually credited as the singer, even though, like I just talked about with Kitani, it’s so clearly her on vocals that the lack of credit doesn’t really hide anything (lol). A bit of a shame too since this is hands down one of my favorite tracks off BITEKI. Naturally, that means I’m absolutely taking it here.

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x メランコリー/melancholy by Cidergirl

Cidergirl’s honestly been one of those bands that’s always just kind of lived on my mental backburner, like, I know I want to give their discography a proper revisit someday given how expansive it is, but for one reason or another, I just haven’t gotten around to doing that yet. That said, the fact that they’ve been going strong for nearly a decade now really does speak to the consistent quality of their output. Listening to Melancholy here, though, I’m also reminded of why I’ve never fully latched onto their music despite being aware of them for so long. It mainly comes down to their sound just being a bit too energetic for my taste. Like, it’s not bad by any means. I just feel like I need to be in a very specific mood to want to throw something like this on.

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x 幼気な少女/itaike na shoujo by SAKANAMON

I feel like I’m carrying over a similar sentiment from Cidergirl here with SAKANAMON’s Itaike na Shoujo. Much like Cidergirl, SAKANAMON is another band I’ve known about for a while (mostly through anime tie-ins) but haven’t really gone out of my way to dive deeper into. And again, it really just comes down to their particular style not being something I naturally gravitate towards. That said, as we’ve seen plenty of times here on the Draft, I’m nothing if not open to changing my mind (lol), so I’d like to think there’s a world where I do end up developing a stronger appreciation for what bands like SAKANAMON and Cidergirl bring to the table. But for now, this one’s gonna be a pass. Maybe next season!

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♥ 時間を溶かしてお願いダーリン/jikan wo tokashite onegai darling
by 黒子首 (”Hockrockb”)

This one holds a bit of a special place in my heart. When I first got into Hockrockb, they hadn’t even signed to a major label yet. No full-length album to speak of at the time either, just the two EPs. So when they premiered Jikan wo Tokashite Onegai Darling during a free live stream concert that I just so happened to catch, it really stood out to me as I remember thinking right then and there how lovely of a song it was. I got so excited at the thought of hearing what the studio version would sound like after that. It’s kind of wild to think that was already five years ago. And yet, listening to it again now, it still hits with the same warmth and charm that it did back then.

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This Week’s Total Likes:

♥ x x ♥ ♥

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The Draft playlist on Spotify has been updated with this week’s Playlist Draft picks 😊
No new changes or additions have been made to the Wait List.

I’m gonna call it. It looks like things are now finally starting to cool down with Spotify giving us a mild 3 ♥ week after what’s been the craziest hot streak of recommendations that the Draft has seen thus far. For what its worth, even if we don’t ever get a 5 ♥ week for the rest of the season, I think Spotify managed to play the role of a front runner well enough early at the start to really put it on a good track. Of course, things can still go catastrophically wrong for the remainder of the season so it shouldn’t rest on its laurels just yet.

What do you guys think? Let me know your guys’ thoughts on this season of Draft? Likewise, lemme know as well which one/s was/were your favorite from this week!

Happy Listening!