A playlist is a list of
video
Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving visual media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, which were quickly replaced by cathode-ray tube (CRT) sy ...
or
audio files that can be played back on a
media player either sequentially or in a
shuffled order. In its most general form, an audio playlist is simply a list of songs, but sometimes a
loop
Loop or LOOP may refer to:
Brands and enterprises
* Loop (mobile), a Bulgarian virtual network operator and co-founder of Loop Live
* Loop, clothing, a company founded by Carlos Vasquez in the 1990s and worn by Digable Planets
* Loop Mobile, an ...
. The term has several specialized meanings in the realms of
television broadcasting
A television network or television broadcaster is a telecommunications network for distribution of television program content, where a central operation provides programming to many television stations or pay television providers. Until the mid- ...
,
radio broadcasting
Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radio ...
and personal computers.
A playlist can also be a list of recorded titles on a digital video disk. On the Internet, a playlist can be a list of chapters in a movie serial; for example, Flash Gordon in the Planet Mongo is available on YouTube as a playlist of thirteen consecutive video chapters.
Radio
The term originally came about in the early days of
top 40 radio format
A radio format or programming format (not to be confused with broadcast programming) describes the overall content broadcast on a radio station. The radio format emerged mainly in the United States in the 1950s, at a time when radio was compelle ...
s when stations would devise (and, eventually, publish) a limited list of songs to be played. The term would go on to refer to the entire catalog of songs that a given radio station (of any format) would draw from. Additionally, the term was used to refer to an ordered list of songs played during a given time period. Playlists are often adjusted based on time of day, known as
dayparting
In broadcast programming, dayparting is the practice of dividing the broadcast day into several parts, in which a different type of radio programming or television show appropriate for that time period is aired. Television programs are most oft ...
.
Television
Cable TV and broadcast TV news channels often use video playlists to rerun prerecorded news stories. A given news story might initially be shown live and then placed into a playlist to be shown over and over again at a later time. News channel broadcasting is a combination of live and pre-recorded programming. The prerecorded clips are usually run from a playlist.
Computers and the Internet
As music storage and playback using personal computers became common, the term "playlist" was adopted by various
media player software programs intended to organize and control music on a PC. Such playlists may be defined, stored, and selected to run either in sequence or if a random playlist function is selected, in a random order. Playlists' uses include allowing a particular desired musical atmosphere to be created and maintained without constant user interaction or allowing a variety of different styles of music to be played, again without maintenance.
Several computer playlist formats for multimedia players, such as
PLS, can pass a playlist or
URL to the player. In the case of radio stations it can also link many audio players directly to the station's live streaming audio, bypassing any need for a web browser. (In that case, the playlist file is typically downloaded from the station's live streaming web page, if offered. The files are similar to
Internet shortcut files in appearance and internal structure, except used by media players rather than web browsers.)
Some
Internet streaming services, such as
Spotify
Spotify (; ) is a proprietary Swedish audio streaming and media services provider founded on 23 April 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. It is one of the largest music streaming service providers, with over 456 million monthly active use ...
,
Amazon Music,
8tracks, and the defunct
Playlist.com
Playlist.com is a domain name that formerly hosted a commercial-free Internet radio service called Playlist, which had approximately 60 million users. The domain is owned by Playlist Media, which operates under the brand Playlist. As of mid-2017 ...
and
Webjay, allow users to categorize, edit, and listen to playlists online. Other sites focus on playlist creation aided by personalized song recommendations, ratings, and reviews. On certain sites, users create and share annotated playlists, giving visitors the option to read contextual information or reviewer comments about each song while listening. Some sites only allow the sharing of the playlist data with the actual music being delivered by other channels (e.g., Plurn), others provide a closed catalog of content from which the playlists can be generated, and sites like
imeem
The online service imeem was a social media website where users interacted with each other by streaming, uploading and sharing music and music videos. It operated from 2003 until 2009 when it was shut down after being acquired by MySpace.
The ...
allow users to upload the music to central servers to be shared and accessed by any user of the site.
iPod
The iPod is a discontinued series of portable media players and multi-purpose mobile devices designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The first version was released on October 23, 2001, about months after the Macintosh version of iTunes wa ...
s can also be used to build playlists.
Pandora
In Greek mythology, Pandora (Greek language, Greek: , derived from , ''pān'', i.e. "all" and , ''dōron'', i.e. "gift", thus "the all-endowed", "all-gifted" or "all-giving") was the first human woman created by Hephaestus on the instructions ...
is another music streaming service that is available on the Internet. Pandora is one of the few music services that is free (no subscription required) to users. The user can select genres that are played back at random on Pandora's playlists.
Celebrity playlists
A celebrity playlist is a list of songs prepared by a celebrity and represented in popular publications and on the radio as such.
Web video
On
video hosting service websites such as YouTube and
Vimeo
Vimeo, Inc. () is an American video hosting, sharing, and services platform provider headquartered in New York City. Vimeo focuses on the delivery of high-definition video across a range of devices. Vimeo's business model is through software as ...
, users can make playlists of select videos from themselves or other users for topical purposes; paid accounts can upgrade playlists of their own videos to "shows".
Playlist generation
Most
media players, such as
Winamp
Winamp is a media player for Microsoft Windows originally developed by Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev by their company Nullsoft, which they later sold to AOL in 1999 for $80 million. It was then acquired by Radionomy in 2014. Since ve ...
, can easily create custom playlists from one's media library. For example, in a
software MP3 player for
Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for se ...
,
Android, or
macOS
macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...
, the desired tunes are typically dragged and dropped from the user's music library into the player's "edit or create playlist" window and saved.
The idea of automatically generating music playlists from annotated databases was pioneered by
François Pachet and Pierre Roy.
Constraint satisfaction techniques were developed to create playlists that satisfy arbitrary "sequence constraints", such as continuity, diversity, similarity, etc. Since, many other techniques were proposed, such as
case-based reasoning.
Other playlist methods
* A CD player that holds multiple CDs with a programmable grid mapper.
*
MP3 CD
A compressed audio optical disc, MP3 CD, or MP3 CD-ROM or MP3 DVD is an optical disc (usually a CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R or DVD-RW) that contains digital audio in the MP3 file format. Discs are written in the "Yellow Book" standard data format (used f ...
s
* Prerecording a
mixtape; which is purely sequential.
* Active disc-jockeying where the user manually selects the next song one after another as opposed to a preprogrammed playlist (shuffled or not)
* Stacking records in a sequence on a
vinyl record
A phonograph record (also known as a gramophone record, especially in British English), or simply a record, is an analog sound storage medium in the form of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove. The groove usually starts ne ...
changer
* A jukebox with a programmable record changer
Types of playlist files
Notable file formats used for playlists include:
*
.asx, an
XML
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...
style playlist containing more information about the items on the playlist
* .fpl, is a format used by
foobar2000
foobar2000 (often abbreviated as fb2k or f2k) is a freeware audio player for Microsoft Windows, iOS and Android developed by Peter Pawłowski. It has a modular design, which provides user flexibility in configuration and customization. Stan ...
.
* .kpl, Kalliope PlayList, is a kind of XML playlist storing developed to speed up loading and managing playlists.
*
.m3u/.m3u8, a simple text-based list of the locations of the items, with each item on a new line. This is one of the most popular playlist types.
* .pla, Samsung format(?), binary,
Winamp
Winamp is a media player for Microsoft Windows originally developed by Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev by their company Nullsoft, which they later sold to AOL in 1999 for $80 million. It was then acquired by Radionomy in 2014. Since ve ...
handles these
* .aimppl, .plc, file extensions for
AIMP.
* .mpcpl file extension for
Media Player Classic playlist format and its derivatives (MPC-HC, MPC-BE etc)
*
.pls, a text playlist similar to
.ini (program settings) files. It provides the same functionality as extended
M3U playlists by default (title and length).
*
.smil is an XML recommendation of the
World Wide Web Consortium
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 and led by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working ...
that includes playlist features. In addition to audio, it supports video and screen layout and is heavily used in
Digital Signage.
* .vlc is a format used by
VLC Media Player and is defined as a renamed
M3U or
PLS playlist.
*
.wpl, is an XML format used in
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washi ...
Windows Media Player
Windows Media Player (WMP) is the first media player and media library application that was developed by Microsoft for playing audio, video and viewing images on personal computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system, as well as ...
versions 9–12.
*
.xspf, an XML format designed to enable playlist sharing
* .zpl is a format used by Zune Media Player, Zoom Player and Creative Zen Media Players.
See also
*
Music scheduling system
*
Shuffle play
Shuffle play is a mode of music playback in which songs are played in a randomized order that is decided upon for all tracks at once. It is commonly found on CD players, digital audio players and media player software. Shuffle playback prevents r ...
*
Playlist markup language
*
Edit decision list
References
External links
Lizzy, an open source Java library to process multimedia playlistsby Christophe Delory
{{Media player (application software)
Broadcasting
Musical terminology