Windows Media Player is great for creating playlists based on year released, rating, composer or generic song 'genres', but they're pretty broad and therefore not of great use (The Beach Boys and Metallica are both returned in a search for 'rock'). This means you typically end up with predictable playlists based on dull, formulaic groupings. I thought it might be good to create some original playlists with more offbeat categories.

 

For example, how about a playlist of songs that were performed at the same music festival (e.g. every song from my library that was played at Oxegen 2006) or songs that reference "New York" in their lyrics, or songs that have featured in the same TV shows. As you can imagine, this would throw together some interesting song combinations. What would be even cooler would be an option for me to download new songs that would neatly fit inside my selected playlist - in the above example, it could be the new BellX1 single or an old The Who song that was played at the Oxegen festival.

 

It shouldn't be too difficult to start categorising music content in these new imaginative ways. The obvious solution is to tag everything in a big database - and let people tag songs themselves, increasing the pool of music tags. It would throw up some great combinations of songs and let you hear your music in more interesting contexts. That way I could download a new feed of tags for 'indie songs played on KCRW' - and start playing if they're in my library, or let me listen/download any that I'm missing.

 

How cool would it be to get such song tags as 'cover version of David Bowie song', 'produced by Rick Rubin', 'inspired by Led Zeppelin II', 'drum solo', 'late night driving music', 'heavy on the reverb' etc.? The possibilities for unique and interesting matching of songs are endless.

 

Here's my first list of songs that I would tag "cathartic tunes" (a.k.a. angry grunting songs). Songs in my library that are fueled by anger and the perfect antitode to a highly stressful day: