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A playlist is a list of
video Video is an Electronics, electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving picture, moving image, visual Media (communication), media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, whi ...
or
audio Audio most commonly refers to sound, as it is transmitted in signal form. It may also refer to: Sound *Audio signal, an electrical representation of sound *Audio frequency, a frequency in the audio spectrum *Digital audio, representation of sound ...
files that can be played back on a
media player Media player may refer to: *Digital media player, home appliances that play digital media *Media player software, software that plays digital media *Portable media player, portable hardware that plays digital media *Windows Media Player Windo ...
, either sequentially or in a
shuffled Shuffling is a technique used to randomize a deck of playing cards, introducing an element of chance into card games. Various shuffling methods exist, each with its own characteristics and potential for manipulation. One of the simplest shuff ...
order. In its most general form, an audio playlist is simply a list of songs that can be played once or in a loop. The term has several specialized meanings in the realms of
television broadcasting A television broadcaster or television network is a telecommunications network for the distribution of television content, where a central operation provides programming to many television stations, pay television providers or, in the United ...
,
radio broadcasting Radio broadcasting is the broadcasting of audio signal, 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 lan ...
and
personal computers A personal computer, commonly referred to as PC or computer, is a computer designed for individual use. It is typically used for tasks such as Word processor, word processing, web browser, internet browsing, email, multimedia playback, and PC ...
. A video playlist can also be a list of recorded titles on a digital video disk (DVD). On the internet, a playlist can be a list of chapters in a movie serial; for example,
Flash Gordon Flash Gordon is the protagonist of a space adventure comic strip created and originally drawn by Alex Raymond. First published January 7, 1934, the strip was inspired by, and created to compete with, the already established ''Buck Rogers'' ...
in the Planet Mongo is available on
YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...
as a playlist of thirteen consecutive video chapters.


Radio

The term originally came about in the early days of
Top 40 In the music industry, the Top 40 is a list of the 40 currently most popular songs in a particular genre. It is the best-selling or most frequently broadcast popular music. Record charts have traditionally consisted of a total of 40 songs. "To ...
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 broadcasting, ...
s in the 1950s 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 Media player may refer to: *Digital media player, home appliances that play digital media *Media player software, software that plays digital media *Portable media player, portable hardware that plays digital media *Windows Media Player Windo ...
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 A uniform resource locator (URL), colloquially known as an address on the Web, is a reference to a resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. A URL is a specific type of Uniform Resource Identi ...
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 List of companies of Sweden, Swedish Music streaming service, audio streaming and media service provider founded on 23 April 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. , it is one of the largest providers of music streaming services ...
,
Amazon Music Amazon Music (previously Amazon MP3) is a music streaming platform and digital music store operated by Amazon. As of January 2020, the service had 55 million subscribers. It was the first music store to sell music without digital rights manag ...
, and the defunct
8tracks 8tracks.com was an internet radio and social networking website revolving around the concept of streaming user-curated playlists consisting of at least 8 tracks. Users created free accounts and could browse the site and listen to other user-create ...
, Playlist.com and
Webjay Webjay was a web-based playlist service launched in early 2004. Playlists consisted of links to Vorbis, MP3, WMA, RealAudio and/or other audio files on the web. Webjay users could create new playlists by copying from existing playlists, or by w ...
, 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 co ...
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 series of portable media players and multi-purpose mobile devices that were designed and marketed by Apple Inc. from 2001 to 2022. The iPod Classic#1st generation, first version was released on November 10, 2001, about mon ...
s can also be used to build playlists.
Pandora In Greek mythology, Pandora was the first human woman created by Hephaestus on the instructions of Zeus. As Hesiod related it, each god cooperated by giving her unique gifts. Her other name—inscribed against her figure on a white-ground '' ky ...
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 An online video platform (OVP) enables users to upload, convert, store, and play back video content on the Internet, often via a private server structured, large-scale system that may generate revenue. Users will generally upload video content vi ...
websites such as YouTube and
Vimeo Vimeo ( ) is an American Online video platform, video hosting, sharing, and services provider founded in 2004 and headquartered in New York City. Vimeo focuses on the delivery of high-definition video across a range of devices and operates on a ...
, 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 player Media player may refer to: *Digital media player, home appliances that play digital media *Media player software, software that plays digital media *Portable media player, portable hardware that plays digital media *Windows Media Player Windo ...
s, such as
Winamp Winamp is a media player (software), 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 Rad ...
, can easily create custom playlists from one's media library. For example, in a software MP3 player for
Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
, Android, or
macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...
, 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 In artificial intelligence and operations research, constraint satisfaction is the process of finding a solution through a set of constraints that impose conditions that the variables must satisfy. A solution is therefore an assignment of value ...
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 Case-based reasoning (CBR), broadly construed, is the process of solving new problems based on the solutions of similar past problems. In everyday life, an auto mechanic who fixes an engine by recalling another car that exhibited similar sympto ...
.


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 Optical disc authoring, written in the "Rainbow_Books#Yel ...
s * Prerecording a
mixtape In the modern music industry, a mixtape is a musical project, typically with looser constraints than that of an album or extended play. Unlike the traditional album or extended play, mixtapes are labeled as laid-back projects that allow artists mo ...
; 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 a vinyl record (for later varieties only) is an analog signal, analog sound Recording medium, storage medium in the form of a flat disc with an inscribed, ...
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 data. It defines a set of rules for encoding electronic document, documents in a format that is both human-readable and Machine-r ...
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, Android, macOS, and formerly Windows Phone, developed by Peter Pawłowski. It has a modular design, which provides user flexibility in c ...
. * .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 (software), 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 Rad ...
handles these * .aimppl, .plc, file extensions for
AIMP AIMP is a freeware audio player for Windows and Android, originally developed by Russian developer Artem Izmaylov (). It supports a variety of audio codecs, and includes tools to convert audio files and edit their metadata. It also has the c ...
. * .mpcpl file extension for
Media Player Classic Media Player Classic (MPC), Media Player Classic - Home Cinema (MPC-HC), and Media Player Classic - Black Edition (MPC-BE) are a family of free and open-source, compact, lightweight, and customizable media players for 32- and 64-bit Microsoft Wi ...
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 by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working together in ...
that includes playlist features. In addition to audio, it supports video and screen layout and is heavily used in
Digital Signage Digital signage is a segment of electronic signage that uses Electronic visual display, digital display technologies to present multimedia content in both public and private environments. Content may include video, images, text, or interactive me ...
. * .vlc is a format used by
VLC Media Player VLC media player (previously the VideoLAN Client) is a free and open-source software, free and open-source, software portability, portable, cross-platform media player software and streaming media Server (computing), server developed by the Vide ...
and is defined as a renamed M3U or PLS playlist. * .wpl, is an XML format used in
Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...
Windows Media Player Windows Media Player (WMP, officially referred to as Windows Media Player Legacy to retronym, distinguish it from Windows Media Player (2022), the new Windows Media Player introduced with Windows 11) is the first media player (application soft ...
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 ...
*
Playlist markup language A playlist markup language is a markup language that specifies the contents and playback of a digital multimedia playlist; this includes streams of music, slideshows or even animations. List of playlist markup languages * .asx, an XML style playli ...
*
Edit decision list An edit decision list or EDL is used in the post-production process of film editing and video editing. The list contains an ordered list of reel and timecode data representing where each video clip can be obtained in order to conform the final c ...


References


External links


Lizzy, an open source Java library to process multimedia playlists
by Christophe Delory {{Media player (application software) Broadcasting Musical terminology