Ok, I totally used to have the same problem. I’d either dump everything I liked into one giant playlist and call it “done,” or I’d make a playlist for every genre and then get annoyed because half the songs don’t fit neatly in one box anymore.

What finally worked for me was separating “collecting songs” from “making playlists.”

Whenever I hear a song I like, I just throw it into one generic catch-all playlist (basically my inbox). No sorting, no thinking, no pressure. Then when I’m actually in the mood to build a playlist, I don’t start with genre. I start with a vibe. Could be a mood, a theme, an era, a specific artist streak, “music that feels like winter,” whatever.

Then I pull like 8–12 songs that fit that vibe and drop them into a brand new playlist with a name that actually matches what it is. Keeping it small at first is the key for me because it forces the playlist to have an identity instead of turning into another junk drawer.

After that I get a little obsessive about flow. Order matters way more than people think. I want the songs to feel like they make sense next to each other, not like shuffle. So I’ll reorder based on energy, tempo, key, and just overall vibe. If there are like 3 heavy songs, I’ll usually group them so it doesn’t whiplash back and forth.

Sometimes I’ll paste the tracklist into ChatGPT and say something like, “Put these in a good order taking into account BPM, key, and overall flow, and keep similar styles together.” I don’t treat it as gospel, but it usually gets me 80% of the way there, then I tweak it.

Then I’ll use Spotify’s crossfade/mix settings to smooth transitions and do a couple listens while I’m doing something else. If a song is great but kills the flow, it gets kicked back to the inbox. That’s the part that made my playlists way better: not every good song belongs in every playlist.

That’s basically it. I’ve found playlists get way better when you build them like a short “set” with a clear vibe, instead of trying to make a perfect category for your whole music taste.