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 and will 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 was the Wait List, a smaller, separate playlist (with a cap of three songs) where I 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.

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

＞SEASON 3 ー SCORE TO BEAT : 101
・Week 1 (January 11, 2025)
・Week 2 (January 25, 2025)
・Week 3 (February 8, 2025)
・Week 4 (February 22, 2025)
・Week 5 (March 8, 2025)
・Week 6 (March 22, 2025)
・Week 7 (April 5, 2025)
・Week 8 (April 19, 2025)
・Week 9 (May 3, 2025)
・Week 10 (May 17, 2025)
・Week 11 (May 31, 2025)
・Week 12 (June 14, 2025)
・Week 13 (June 28, 2025)
・Week 14 (July 12, 2025)
・Week 15 (July 26, 2025)
・Week 16 (August 9, 2025)
・Week 17 (August 23, 2025)
・Week 18 (September 13, 2025)
・Week 19 (September 27, 2025)
・Week 20 (October 11, 2025)
・Week 21 (October 25, 2025)
・Week 22 (November 8, 2025)
・Week 23 (November 22, 2025)
・Week 24 (December 6, 2025)
・Week 25 (December 20, 2025)

＞SEASON 2 ー SCORE TO BEAT : 100
・Week 1 (January 13, 2024)
・Week 2 (January 27, 2024)
・Week 3 (February 10, 2024)
・Week 4 (February 24, 2024)
・Week 5 (March 9, 2024)
・Week 6 (March 24, 2024)
・Week 7 (April 6, 2024)
・Week 8 (April 20, 2024)
・Week 9 (May 4, 2024)
・Week 10 (May 18, 2024)
・Week 11 (June 1, 2024)
・Week 12 (June 15, 2024)
・Week 13 (June 29, 2024)
・Week 14 (July 13, 2024)
・Week 15 (July 27, 2024)
・Week 16 (August 10, 2024)
・Week 17 (August 24, 2024)
・Week 18 (September 7, 2024)
・Week 19 (September 21, 2024)
・Week 20 (October 5, 2024)
・Week 21 (October 19, 2024)
・Week 22 (November 2, 2024)
・Week 23 (November 16, 2024)
・Week 24 (November 30, 2024)
・Week 25 (December 14, 2024)
・Week 26 (December 28, 2024)

＞SEASON 1 ー SCORE TO BEAT : N/A
・Week 1 (January 7, 2023)
・Week 2 (January 21, 2023)
・Week 3 (February 4, 2023)
・Week 4 (February 18, 2023)
・Week 5 (March 4, 2023)
・Week 6 (March 18, 2023)
・Week 7 (April 1, 2023)
・Week 8 (April 15, 2023)
・Week 9 (April 29, 2023)
・Week 10 (May 13, 2023)
・Week 11 (May 27, 2023)
・Week 12 (June 10, 2023)
・Week 13 (June 24, 2023)
・Week 14 (July 8, 2023)
・Week 15 (July 22, 2023)
・Week 16 (August 5, 2023)
・Week 17 (August 19, 2023)
・Week 18 (September 2, 2023)
・Week 19 (September 16, 2023)
・Week 20 (September 30, 2023)
・Week 21 (October 14, 2023)
・Week 22 (October 28, 2023)
・Week 23 (November 11, 2023)
・Week 24 (November 25, 2023)
・Week 25 (December 9, 2023)
・Week 26 (December 23, 2023)