This week’s features include: Cidergirl, 和ぬか (wanuka), Cloque., SWALLOW,
and みきなつみ (miki natsumi)

Hey hey, Leap here again with your regularly scheduled Spotify J-Music Playlist Draft! The series where I let Spotify do its thing and hopefully not lead me astray. This season’s been a strong one so far, and while we’ve had a few bumps along the way, it’s been cool seeing the algorithm try to keep pace with the ever-expanding scope of what counts as a “pick”.

If you’re new to the series and you don’t have any idea what this is all about however, please give the following primer a quick read—

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.

That’s right, we’ve actually got a triple week month here in May, with Week 11 sliding in right at the tail end to close things out. Lucky us 😜

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Here’s what we pulled this week 👇

Trying to recommend me SWALLOW is actually so insulting ngl, JK

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♥ 成長痛/seichoutsuu by Cidergirl

Cidergirl’s Yurin (Vo.) is seriously not beating the Eve allegations (lol, like, c’mon, just listen to that voice), and Seichoutsuu isn’t exactly helping his case either. Sonically, this honestly sounds like something I could totally imagine Eve performing. Not that that’s a bad thing, of course, just a funny little comparison that’s always lived rent-free in my head. That aside, I did mention back in the last Draft week that Cidergirl is one of those bands whose music I kind of need to be in the right headspace for. As luck would have it, this week… I was actually feeling it. Seichoutsuu doesn’t hit quite as hard or fast as some of their other stuff, and that bit of restraint was really the only thing I needed to finally get into it.

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♥ 浪漫ショー/roman show by 和ぬか (wanuka)

If I had to say, I think wanuka might be the artist I’ve been the most critical of here on the blog, at least among the ones I’ve brought up in the past. But I promise it’s all coming from a place of love. It’d honestly be a shame if he ended up being remembered as a one-hit wonder off the back of Yoriyoi’s viral success (well, somewhat of a one-hit wonder, he does have other songs that caught on, just none that really hit the same way). A lot of my criticism stems from the fact that, outside of those highlights, some of his other releases have just felt a little underwhelming by comparison. That said, it’s tracks like Roman Show that keep me holding out hope. I’m not usually big on ska, but this one actually works for me.

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x スピカ/spica by Cloque.

Alright. I figured I was gonna have to draw the line somewhere eventually, and I think this might just be it. If you’ve been following along with this season of the Draft, you’ll know that I’ve slowly but surely been warming up to more male-fronted, high-energy Japanese rock bands. I’m not walking that back just yet, but I am gonna have to pass on Cloque.’s Spica here. The vocals just aren’t doing it for me, unfortunately. Maybe there’s a world where I eventually come around to them, but today’s not that day.

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♥ 青く短い春/aoku mijikai haru by SWALLOW

I mentioned this all the way back in Season 1 of the Draft, but yeah, serving me up a SWALLOW track is basically cheating at this point. I don’t think there’ll ever be a time where I don’t pick one of their songs. Keep ‘em coming and they’re bound to end up on the Exempt List sooner or later. I mean, how could they not, especially with something like Aoku Mijikai Haru? Sound-wise, it definitely falls in line with those “yakousei”-type acts, but with this added folk-inspired flair that I think gives it a touch more elegance in my opinion.

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♥ 君にだけバレて欲しいな/kimi ni dake barete hoshii na by みきなつみ (miki natsumi)

Speaking of the kind of music I tend to gravitate towards (lol), if you’ve been following the Roundup for a while, you’ve probably caught on that I have a pretty soft spot for acoustic guitar-wielding singer-songwriter types, and that just so happens to be exactly what Miki Natsumi is. Kimi ni dake barete hoshii na does lean a bit more into the pop-ier side of that spectrum compared to what I usually go for, but even then, I can’t help but adore her voice here. It’s got that sweet, earnest quality that pulls you right in.

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This Week’s Total Likes:

♥ ♥ 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.

Spotify’s quick to course correct here, bouncing right back up to a 4 ♥ week after that slight hiccup (if you could even call it that) from last time. Still very much shaping up to be a strong third season overall as we now approach the halfway mark. Of course, as I’ve said before, there’s still plenty of Draft left to play, and anything can happen. That said, if we keep getting weeks like this, the margin for error definitely gets tighter and tighter.

What’d you guys think of this week’s Draft? Lemme know your thoughts down in the comments! And as always, curious to hear what were your pickups from this week’s selection!

Happy Listening!