How I archived 10 years of memories using Spotify

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Music and smells are two of the most effective ways to re-experience the emotions of a specific time in the past. Listening to a song from a particular time of my life brings me back to how I felt at that point in ways photos can’t. Sometimes I can even recall exact visuals of what I was doing or where I was walking when listening.

Over the last 10 years, I followed a system that allows me to re-experience any specific time of any year.

Every January 1st, from desktop/web, I:

  1. Create a new playlist. Title it the past year.
  2. Copy all of my liked songs and paste them into the new playlist. This will maintain the order.
  3. Empty my liked songs.
  4. Save an out-of-bounds backup of the new playlist, in case my Spotify account messes up in the future. I select all & paste it into a sheet in Google Drive.
  5. Start listening to new music, like them over the year.

Since the archive saves the order of likes, it grants more granular access than just years. For example, if I want to re-experience how the fall of 2016 felt, I open the corresponding year’s list, scroll 1/4 down from the top, and start listening.

During the year, when I listen to my liked songs, I usually start from the top of the stack, without shuffle. This is natural for me, since the newly saved songs are the ones I like the most at a given time. This causes me to listen to a “rolling window” of my liked songs as time passes, linking specific music to specific dates.

In addition to saving songs that I find myself and particularly like, I like to save songs that are playing around me, on the radio, or at places I visit, and somehow stand out. Even if I might not fully like them at first, I find that they serve as great anchor points, and they usually grow on me after a few listens.

To maintain the integrity & not override the memories associated with specific songs, I rarely listen to or re-save songs from the past years. Sometimes I give myself exceptions, though, especially with remixes. 😉

See my last 10 years: https://open.spotify.com/user/xdavidhu



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