In its most general form, a
playlist is simply a list of
songs. The term has several specialized meanings in the realms of
radio broadcasting and
personal computers.
The term originally came about in the early days of
top 40 radio formats 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.
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 to allow a variety of different styles of music be played, again without maintenance.
Some websites allow categorization, editing, and listening of playlists online, such as
Project Playlist,
Plurn,
imeem and
Webjay. Other sites such as
Musicmobs 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 while sites like
imeem allow users to upload the music to central servers to be shared and accessed by any user of the site.
Celebrity playlist
A list of songs prepared by a
celebrity and represented on the
Apple iTunes Store as such, is referred to as a "celebrity playlist". This has become popular because a
fan of a particular celebrity may have an affinity towards the celebrity's choice of music. This arms-length connection between the fan and the favored celebrity has become so popular (2004-2005) that "celebrity playlist" has become a part of recent vocabulary.
Shuffle mode playlists
Sometimes playlists are devised for the sake of curbing
shuffle play to music that fits in better with the setting (e.g. party, dance, etc.).
Other playlist methods
- A CD player that holds multiple CDs with a programmable grid mapper.
- 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).
Types of playlist files
There are several types of playlists. Some of the most common are:
- .asx, an XML style playlist containing more information about the items on the playlist.
- .bio, a text-based list of items, with each item on a new line. Each item represents the full path to the file.
- .m3u, a simple text-based list of the locations of the items, with each item on a new line.
- PLC, file extension for AIMP2 media player
- .pls, a text playlist similar to .ini (program settings) files. It normally contains only the location of the items in the playlist.
- Kalliope PlayList (.kpl) is a kind of XML playlist storing developed to speed up loading and managing playlists.
- .pla, Samsung format(?), binary, Winamp handles these
- XSPF, an XML format designed to enable playlist sharing.
See also
Web sites
Category:Broadcasting de:Wiedergabelistees:Lista de reproducciónfr:Liste de lectureit:Playlistnl:Playlistja:プレイリストru:Плейлистfi:Soittolistauk:Плейлист 
