mrbillywhite

Introducing Billy White, a true SMP legend. As one of the finest playlist purveyors our fine website has to offer, we have given mrbillywhite the opportunity to write his very own blog post, for your reading pleasure. If you haven't already, why not give his 'lists a listen and if you like what you hear, add him as a friend by clicking here. Enjoy!

When it comes to finding a radio station with as widespread taste and appreciation of proper music, you'll be hard pressed to find a better place than BBC 6 Music. Playing a range of smashing tunes from years gone by alongside a selection of brand new content by indie bands you may have otherwise never heard of, some may argue that 6 Music is the ultimate, nay, perfect station. In addition to this, there's also the talented and entertaining selection of presenters on air throughout the week. Jarvis Cocker, Steve Lamacq, Lauren Laverne and duo Adam & Joe are just some of the joys that compliment the music on offer.

Nowadays though, radio often loses out to more modern technologies which can offer the listener what they want, when they want it. iPods, YouTube, and of course, Spotify, offer the opportunity to skip the adverts, news bulletins and chit chat of radio and music television, in order to provide the listener with what they are, essentially, looking for: music.

With this in mind, one Spring evening I found myself trying to decide whether to listen to the more diverse 6 Music, or my own personal selection of music via Spotify, I found myself thinking. What if I were to create a playlist featuring a selection of tracks that you'd currently find on 6 Music? Combining the idea of radio and Spotify playlists wasn't the most exceptional or original idea, but I was nevertheless pleased that I'd thought up a compromise for my dilemma.

A few weeks passed, and whilst browsing ShareMyPlaylists.com, I noticed somebody had already had a similar idea of their own, albeit with Radio 1 (a great radio station in its own right, but not for my tastes). Seeing this, I soon uploaded my own, freshly updated 6 Music compilation to see what kind of a response it might receive from users.

Not only was the playlist featured on the homepage of ShareMyPlaylists (and can still be found lingering around at the back end of the featured playlists bar to this day), but it's play count and subscriber total continued to rise over the forthcoming days and weeks at a consistently steady rate. Despite a good handful of tracks facing omission from the list due to their lack of Spotify availability, I continued to update the playlist every week, soon after the update to the official 6 Music playlist on the BBC website.

Fuelled by the success of my first playlist on the 'site, I soon uploaded more themed lists to the site that also became small successes of their own, such as my compilation of Disney / Pixar favourites. I didn't stop with the 6 Music one on it's own though, and I also created a highlights playlist of the May/June months, as well as the ex-playlist which contains all the tracks that were at some point removed from the standard, weekly playlist.

The interest for the original playlist still didn't, and hasn't, slowed, and the subscriber count continues to rise in it's dozens. And today, my 6 Music playlist reached a total of 1000 subscribers.

I'm aware that there are plenty of other playlists that have well over a thousand subscribers - the Radio 1 playlist is currently on over 2600, growing by over 1500 in the past three months alone - but without the help, or even the existence of ShareMyPlaylists.com, I'm doubtful that my playlist would even have a handful of subscribers, if any. For this, I offer my thanks to Kieron and the rest of the admin team, none of which I know personally, for allowing this platform of creativity outside of the standard Spotify interface. I'd also like to say thanks to Spotify for even existing, because without Spotify, neither myself or SMP would be here.

In order to further celebrate the success of the 6 Music playlist reaching 1000 subscribers today, I'd like to present a new compilation of mine, showcasing 37 of the best tunes from the station over the last two months. Featuring a broad selection of the latest tunes from Klaxons, Laura Marling, MIA and many others, the playlist has been ordered specifically with the variation of songs in mind, and I hope you'll appreciate it and, if you wish, subscribe to it and share.

Don't forget to check out the weekly 6 Music playlist here:

http://sharemyplaylists.com/bbc-6-music-playlist-updated-weekly/