Blog1 min read
On the playlist that grew too long
The focus playlist was nine hours. I cut it back over a weekend and total listening hours went up.
At one point the focus playlist was nine hours long. I'd been adding without removing for about six months, and the room had become a kind of warehouse. Most listeners never got past the first hour, so the back half was material I was telling myself was 'there if anyone wanted it,' which is a polite phrase for clutter.
I cut it back to about three hours over a weekend. The cuts were not difficult once I committed to a length. Anything I'd added in the last three months that wasn't yet a hundred-listen track got pulled. Anything that I noticed was reaching for the skip got pulled. The result wasn't smaller in a meaningful sense — the first three hours were already most of the room — but the warehouse was gone.
A playlist that's too long invites the listener to mistrust it. They suspect, correctly, that the back half is filler. They listen with one hand near the skip. A playlist that's tight commands more trust per track. The shorter version of the focus room got more total listening hours per listener than the longer version, by a wide margin.
The lesson I try to apply now: don't write a long playlist. Write a short one that lasts. A four-hour playlist that survives a year of listening is worth more than a twelve-hour one that gets skipped through after a week.