I’ve been running this little blog for quite some time now. I always loved this little corner of mine where I could simply dump my thoughts on music every now and then. Lately it became quiet though.

I can’t really explain why. I guess I just felt like my posts became a bit blah. I would have loved to have some bigger project on the blog, kind of like a common thread, but I couldn’t come up with one that I was excited about. Instead, a hung out on RateYourMusic A LOT. I became obsessed with discovering new music via the charts per year, lists by other users and especially by browsing through the sheer endless list of genres, absorbing the description and correspondent genre charts.

It helped me broadening my music taste although I would have already considered myself to be pretty diverse when it comes to music before I even discovered the depths of RYM. My favourite genres – in short – are Hip Hop, Indie and Punk Rock + all their sub-genres, but then I suddenly found myself listening to introduction playlists of obscure House sub-sub-genres. And boy, did I love it.

I personally love huge playlists with thousands of songs of one genre where I can simply hit shuffle and will effortlessly discover new songs (and bands even) within a short amount of time. Plus I get to outsmart the Spotify algorithm as it has a tendency to always play the same 20 songs over and over again. Unfortunately, it is somewhat difficult to find these extralarge playlists. Most of the time they are not properly curated. And curated playlists tend to be short. So I started creating playlists like these myself, starting with Hardcore Punk. And then Metalcore. And then Screamo.

There is a project called RYM Box Set which avid RYM-users will most likely know. They are curating tons and tons of playlists which serve as gateways to numerous genres. I admire this project a lot. But again, the playlists tend to be short and I don’t just want to dip my toes into the waters of new genres, I want to delve into them.

So long story short: I’m on a mission to create huge, curated playlists for all official genres on RateYourMusic and I will use this blog to keep track of it. I don’t want this to project to compete against the RYM Box Set. It’s basically just taking a different approach to the discovery of genres.

As you might know there are literally thousands of genres on RYM, so please make yourself at home because this will sure take some time. You can find a list of all genres here. If a Spotify playlist is already available for a genre, there will be a hyperlink.

And this is what the playlists will include:

• top 100 albums per genre, as per RYM
• top 100 EPs per genre, as per RYM
• all releases of the genre that I rated with 2.5 or higher – since I don’t want an objective song encyclopaedia of genres but a collection with a personal twist
• live songs are deleted before playlist release

I rely on the main genres of a release and I won’t question the „official“ genres of a release on RYM, even if I might disagree with the categorization at times. It would just makes thing way too complicated if I had to decide for each release if another genre might be more fitting for it. Sub-genres and influences are excluded in the charts.

Once a playlist is finished I will keep curating it, adding releases that I newly discovered or thought were missing before.

For the time being, I will randomly decide which genre is going to be added next. At some point I might include a feature where you can vote for genres to be included next.

Also, I would like to intensively listen to a genre playlist while working on it. I might publish some posts on that as well.

I love, love, love setting up taking, writing and reading about music and I hope some people out there will enjoy this little journey as much as I. Feel free to reach out in the shoutbox or via mail if you want to discuss further. Also, I’m open for submissions, so if you feel like an essential album or song is missing from any of my playlists make sure to let me know! There is the option to buy me a coffee if you like this project – but please do not feel obligated to do so.

Let’s kick this off with the genre that started it all for me: Hardcore Punk.