Why are Spotify Daylist Titles So Unhinged?

Words: Amelia Braddick

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As I’m writing this, I’m listening to my evening daylist on Spotify; it’s entitled “Feel good coastal grandmother Sunday late night”. Apparently, on previous Sunday evenings, I’ve listened to ‘retro’, ‘80s discos’ and ‘golden oldies’ and therefore the algorithm has determined that I must listen to Bill Withers, Elton John and Hot Chocolate. What this has to do with coasts and grandmothers, I don’t know, but I’m hooked.

In September last year, the daylist feature was launched for both free and premium Spotify users in the UK, Ireland, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. As of last week, 82 countries across six continents can access the function in English by searching “daylist” in the Spotify app or on their website. Based on your previous listening history, Spotify curates a playlist for you at various times throughout the day. 

In September last year, the daylist feature was launched for both free and premium Spotify users in the UK, Ireland, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. As of last week, 82 countries across six continents can access the function in English by searching “daylist” in the Spotify app or on their website. Based on your previous listening history, Spotify curates a playlist for you at various times throughout the day. 

Molly Holder, Senior Product Director at Spotify tells me the creators behind the daylist feature consists of data scientists, music experts and product teams who have identified descriptors based on genre, mood and themes. Subsequently, those descriptors are then associated with tracks through methods such as music expert annotation, sonic similarity, and trend analysis. Put simply, the idea behind the playlists is that throughout the day your mood changes and therefore, so does the type of music you listen to. Yet this doesn’t quite explain the unhinged names of the daylists. 
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At the time of interview, Holder revealed her current daylist is called ‘Art pop siren Friday afternoon.’ She explains the use of artificial intelligence behind it: “Spotify uses machine learning to pull together the thousands of descriptors that create the unique daylist playlist names.” Their database has identified “tens of thousands of musical descriptors that are based on genre, mood, themes and more to soundtrack any occasion.”

‘Desiderium soul crushing Wednesday afternoon’ once popped up on the music library of Chloe Gould, a 33-year-old who works in PR and partnerships. It contained Taylor Swift, Lana del Ray, Phoebe Bridgers, Bon Iver and Hozier. She tells me, “It was quite melancholic, the sort of music you’d gaze out of a window on a rainy day and cry to. It felt like Spotify thought I was going through a break-up (which I’m not).”

Aoife O’Reilly, a 24-year-old social media and marketing assistant, also had unsettling titles presented to her: ‘Fearful nervous Wednesday evening’ and ‘Alone breakdown Tuesday afternoon.’ She recognises that this could be potentially triggering for some; because music is so expressive, it might unexpectedly take people back to painful memories they do not wish to revisit. While she adds the experience isn’t overwhelming for her, her daylists do make her conscious of how she feels during weekday evenings. Aoife adds, “Sometimes I do look at it and go ‘oh god, do I always listen to sad songs on a Wednesday after work?’” But Aoife still finds them amusing, “I do find the ones with negative songs funny, as it’s normally moody indie songs.”

Her weirdest daylist has been ‘Cat trio Monday early morning’, which consisted of mostly pop songs she’d listen to on her way to the office. Pointedly, the more unhinged the daylist title is, the more shareable it is. You thought you had the rest of the year to recover from Spotify Wrapped, yet now you have no reprieve, as every day is a good day to share a funny daylist title. Gabriela Fowler, a 29-year-old copywriter, shares her daylists to social media “when they have a particularly jarring or accurate name”, and she’s one of many to do so. 

“The more unhinged the daylist title is, the more shareable it is. You thought you had the rest of the year to recover from Spotify Wrapped, yet now you have no reprieve, as every day is a good day to share a funny daylist title.”

Instagram’s “Add Yours” sticker for stories helped daylists gain traction globally with a viral template that reads "Don't tell me your astrology sign; I want you to go into Spotify, search for your daylist and post the title it gave you." Within three hours of the template being created by addyourstickers, 196,000 people had posted it to their stories. People have also used the quote on X, with one post gaining 1.5M impressions. Spotify told me that following these trends, they saw searches for “daylist” spike nearly 20,000%. 

If the title is funny, Julia Portelly, a 30-year-old PR consultant, sends her daylists to her friends, like ‘Desiderium alone Friday evening.’ She also shared with me some of the funniest ones she’s received, including ‘Purim Jewish acapella Thursday afternoon’, ‘Warrior battle Tuesday morning’ and ‘Hardwave witch house morning early morning.’ 

Most days, Julia and Gabriela check their daylists; Julia dips in and out whilst travelling or at work. She finds it broadens her music repertoire: “I'd say I'm a sucker for listening to the same tracks over and over until I get sick of them, so this actually really helps me branch out and find new music.” 

But for Gabriela, the same music appears: “Despite the playlist names, it’s often pretty similar music. But that probably means I listen to the same women singing the same sad songs every day!” Regardless of these limitations, Gabriela prefers that her daylists aren’t too personal: “I think current AI can’t really predict how much people’s musical moods, wants and needs shift every day. There’s still a big gap there, as there should be!” If daylists become too specific, is it possible they could begin to dictate our life structure?

Molly Holder tells me daylists are highly personalised - in her words, they are “made for every version of you.” With the internet’s obsession with categorising parts of our aesthetic and personality into boxes (coquette, mob wife, clean girl) and classifying what type of ‘era’ we’re in (mom era, flop era, healing era), no wonder we like these hyper-specific playlists. 

During lockdown, social media was one of the few ways we could socialise and communicate with others. It became a way to share our interests and personality online when we couldn’t face-to-face and the rise of short form media in that time paved the way for more and more convoluted titles to ascribe to ourselves. Daylists play on this desire to have curated snippets of ourselves ready to share instantly. Gabby tells me: “I think the music choices we make are shaped by our identity, but this Spotify feature really distils it into a little catchy phrase that makes it super clear.”