A cringy intro:
Hey y’all I’m back with some of my tips and tricks that I have learned in the past 15 years of my existence. Are you ever obsessed with an artist, but sick of their songs? Or have been resorting to your Ariana Grande-obsessed friend’s playlists? I gotchu, I have an AMAZING website to help you with this common-day dilemma. You’re welcome.
The actual thing this blog post is about:
Okay, so the bad boy is called Boil the Frog. This website allows you to create a playlist of songs that slowly connect you from one musical artist to another. Let’s say you input two completely different music genres and artists, take BTS and Luke Combs, and then click “boil the frog” below is a screenshot of what would happen when you “boil the frog” 🙂
So as you can see above the website has created a chainlink of songs that will take you from K-Pop to RnB to Pop to Country. Yes, I’m shook too. The name is based on the expression “Boiling a Frog” which means that if you get a frog, put it in a pot, and heat the water slowly, the frog won’t notice it is being cooked into a stew. The website does the exact same thing, so you won’t realize that the genres of music have been so discreetly changing. A perfect solution when you’re desperate for music. You can also put in let’s say, two rap artists, let’s say Lil Uzi Vert and Kendrick Lamar – BAM a (small), but good rap playlist. You just gotta make sure the spelling of the artist is good, otherwise, the algorithm will reject it and say an error. I suggest “copy-pasting” just to be safe.
Bonuses, just because:
- 1) The website is powered by Spotify, so you can click “save this playlist” and it will sync your Spotify account and create a playlist with the songs in one “chainlink” of songs. If you decide to “boil the frog” multiple times, it will create multiple playlists. Don’t worry! The website will ask for your permission before it does so. Who knew making a playlist was this easy!
- On every song, if you hover over the cover art, you have the option of “New Track” which can change that one track. It will leave the rest of the songs unaffected.
- On every song, if you hover over the cover art, you have the option of “Bypass” which will skip that artist, and affect the whole link of songs. Perfect for when you want to get even more songs out of it.
- You can click on the cover art of a song to hear a sample of the song (about 30 seconds). If you want to hear the whole playlist, click the very first track.
I’m a big brain and I wanna know how it works (not me LOL):
In simple terms, verified artists on Spotify are connected on a “similarity graph”, where each artist is connected to its most similar artists, powered by Spotify’s algorithm. When you “boil the frog” the website finds the smoothest pathway possible through these “favoured artists” to end up at the desired artist. The website’s algorithm also has the ability to “minimize the difference in energy” between the tracks. And voila! You end up with a banger playlist.
Me being a kind soul:
And before I sign off, I’d like to recognize the man behind it all, Paul Lamere, you are a godsend.
YOU’RE SO WELCOME
[1] [2] That’s all I got, good luck people <3
Ranya
