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The latest bad news to plague music lovers is the planned axing of BBC 6 Music in a budget cutting exercise, as apparently it doesn’t get enough ‘unique listeners’. The announcement has caused outrage with campaigns to save the station popping up online everywhere from Facebook to Twitter.

The numbers never reflect the whole story either, as most of the people I know do listen to 6 Music. This is because it serves a whole segment of music aficionados that cannot listen to what they want anywhere else on radio. There is a demand for music that isn’t sent on a major label sampler to the larger or more commercial radio stations.

The commercial stations, especially, always brag that they represent real music variety. But they don’t. They play a slim selection of songs deemed acceptable from the charts and a spattering of hits from the eighties so long as they are sufficiently well known.

BBC 6 Music offers listeners DJs who are passionate about playing the music they love, whatever genre it might be and irrelevant of whether it’s on an independent label or even unsigned. It offers both variety and ‘newness’.

Another detrimental effect of the closure of 6 Music would be to the music industry itself. It offers an opportunity for new and exciting young bands who would be heard by a handful of people at gigs to be heard by thousands of people who want to discover bands and artists who share their passion.

The demise of 6 Music would be a great loss to the music scene in this country. Lily Allen summed it up in an article in The Guardian: “If they close 6 Music, instead of acts like Seasick Steve and presenters like Lauren Laverne, it will be the Pussycat Dolls and Fearne Cotton on Radio 1.” Amen.

For fellow fans of 6 Music though, here is a playlist of their very best tracks from 2009. BBC 6 Music Top 100 from 2009

Benjamin O’ Connell

In the first of what will hopefully be a regular feature, we look back at some of the playlists that have caught our attention in the previous month. Here’s some of the highlights from February.

T in the Park 2010

The T in the Park line-up was announced this month and this playlist collects together some of the greatest hits and biggest singles from the superstars that will be in Scotland this summer. A perfect way to build the excitement if you have your tickets and if not, have a listen and then get them booked!

90s Indie and Britpop

I’m a sucker for the nineties and the indie and Britpop scenes that dominated music in the UK. This very comprehensive playlist gathers together nearly 300 tracks from 1989 to 2000. You will find tracks from all the big hitters such as Blur, Oasis, Stone Roses, Radiohead and Pulp as well as a treasure chest of forgotten gems, ‘I Would Fix You’ by Kenickie anyone?

Drum and Bass Part Six

If you want less guitars and more bass and beats, then this playlist is the one for you. The latest in a very good series does what it says on the tin and is strictly drum and bass. At nearly 100 tracks it features all styles whether you want to chill out or get the party started.

Rave Megamix

Another one to get the party started but for those of a more nostalgic disposition, specifically for the rave anthems of the early and mid nineties. If you were a fan, then indulge once more, if not then discover the club sound from back in the day. Get the whistles and glow sticks out!

The Soundtrack to January 2010

Here is a handy guide to what you should have been listening to in January from new singles and albums to new bands and award shows. My personal favourites are ‘We Want War’ from These New Puritan’s excellent new album ‘Hidden’ and ‘Bitch’, a strutting, chic track from French girl band the Plasticines.

Gorillaz Playlist

Gorillaz are back with a new album ‘Plastic Beach’ and to celebrate, here is a short playlist by Murdock from the band containing a couple of classic Gorillaz tracks and songs ranging from Nancy Sinatra to the Horrors via the Beach Boys and the Kinks.

What’s in a Name?

This is a really fun one, over 250 tracks from all genres that use people’s names for the titles. Discover tracks you may never have known existed named for you and your friends! They are even in alphabetical order so you can search easily.

Glee – Original Versions

This playlist collects together the original artist versions of songs from the hit television show about a high school glee club. If you watch the show, you will know this contains everything from the classics from musicals to old school hip hop.

Skins Season 3

This is another TV show playlist and it has most of the eclectic tracks heard on the current series of the teen drama. Sadly not all of the drum and bass, dubstep and other electronic tracks from the series are on Spotify but this still has a lot of variety.

Depeche Mode – Tour of the Universe Set List

Depeche Mode are a classic British group and their latest gig at Wembley Arena only happened after Dave Gahan had an operation on a tumour. This playlist is the set list from that gig and include the classics ‘Enjoy the Silence’ and ‘Personal Jesus’.

Written by Benjamin O’Connell

Public voting has now closed for our Top Tracks 2009 competition and we’re really pleased to announce that the winner is Failed Muso’s Sound of 2009 from Failed Muso who will receive Spotify Premium free for a year.

It was a closely ran race but in the end Failed Muso pipped the Sountrack to 2009 to the winning spot by a small margin.

Thanks to everybody who entered and who voted, watch our for more competitions coming soon!

Since we launched in March 2009 we’ve had over 12,000 Spotify playlists uploaded by our users. We thought we’d start 2010 with a look back at some of the best playlists from 2009.

UK Number Ones

Back in June 2009 user “sjhunt” submitted “UK Number Ones” which is an incredible playlist spanning 998 tracks (*at time of writing) consisting of every number 1 in the UK since the charts began in 1952 to the present day. Best of all this playlist is updated every week when the new number 1 is announced. Definitely one to bookmark.

Every Christmas Number One Ever!

In a similar vain to the previous playlist we also received this playlist of every Christmas Number 1 ever in December from user everythingability.

The Q&A Playlist

Back in April we launched a competition to win a Sony PS3 by submitting an original and creative playlists. The winner was the Q&A playlist by Alex Powell. The Q&A Playlist features 100 songs with questions for titles. So the first track is “Should I Stay Or Should I Go” by the Clash and is followed by “Go Or Go Ahead” by Rufus Wainwright. You get the picture.

The Saturdays

Back in May we asked our favourite girl band, The Saturdays to upload a playlist each of artists that inspired them. Listen to here from Frankie, Mollie, Una, Vanessa and Rochelle.

La Roux

In September we launched a competition to win some La Roux goodies by creating a La Roux inspired playlist. To help you along Ellie from the band created here own playlist along with some liner notes here explaining her choices.

Mr A to Z

This playlist starts with a track by Autograph and ends with ZZ Top. Get the idea?

Travelling Playlist: Australia

In July Lonely Planet used ShareMyPlaylists.com to publish playlists that had been submitted by their users. This Australian playlist was one of the first.

Modern Soul

Earlier in the year we saw user NetDJ.co.uk upload a total of 12 playlists made up of rare soul ranging from classic soul, to northern soul to Motown via some jazz juice. Will from NetDJ.co.uk clearly knows his soul music as each playlist is painstakingly and lovingly crafted with the best tracks from each genre.

The Soundtrack To 2009

The Soundtrack To 2009 is user iamnotthenemy’s contribution to our “Top Tracks of 2009″ competition and is a look back at the best of his monthly “Soundtrack To…” playlists that are always uploaded during the first week of each month. These monthly playlists have gained a cult following from our users as they pull together the best in new music from a whole range of genres. There is literally something for everyone in each playlist and they are a great way of discovering new music. In fac the playlists are so popular that back in September we asked iamnottheenemy to write a blog post for us to tell us a bit more about this series of modern day mixtapes, you can read it here. To view all of the monthly “Soundtrack To…” playlists to date click here.

Failed Muso’s Totally Trevor Horn

ShareMyPlaylists.com user FailedMuso is another prolific playlist creator. To date he has submitted 10 playlists, each and every one is very different and clearly demonstrates his encyclopedic knowledge of music. The Trevor Horn playlists is no exception and one of our favourites.

DJH Balearic Charts

This is one of the most comprehensive playlists we’ve come across for Balearic music. Over 200 tracks and some real hidden gems.

Quentin Tarantino….The Soundtrack

If you like Quentin’s movies then you will love this, a playlist of user pigsy72’s favourite tunes from all of the movies that Quentin Tarantino has been involved in.

Totally Sounds Like

Ever found yourself listening to a brand new song and racking your brain as it sounds so familiar? ShareMyPlaylists.com Esther did too and this brilliant playlist is the result. There is even a volume 2 available. Check out Even Better Than The Real Thing, also from Esther too.

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Songs Of All Time

The 500 greatest songs of all time according to Rolling Stone magazine. We’ve tried to include every song in the list but some artists (most notably the Beatles) aren’t available on Spotify yet.

Grooves To Get Down

As user chillstar says you could buy a very nice car for the money this lot would cost you on original vinyl! It’s a brilliant collection of Fat Funk, Rare Groove, Boogie Tunes, OG Breaks and various funky niceness from the 60s to today, but mainly from the late 60s to mid 70s.

Euphoric Electronica Volume 1

Feeling a bit blue? A bit listless and lacking in energy? Need to perk up? Well then, this playlist is 100% GUARANTEED to energise you and get you in a positive frame of mind. Look out for volume 2 here from steveconnor.

This Is Uncool: The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk And Disco

In what amounts to a history of the last twenty-five years of popular music, respected music journalist Garry Mulholland has compiled a list of the 500 greatest singles since The Sex Pistols’ seminal “Anarchy in the UK”. In incisive, outspoken and informative essays, Mulholland challenges the accepted standpoint of music journalism to produce an entertaining, nostalgic and provocative read.

The Best of Shine

The Shine series of complilation albums collected together most of the brit-pop/indie scene major tracks of the mid to late 90’s. This playlist draws together the best of the bunch. Well done to geordielee for putting together 250 tracks from the Shine series into 1 single playlist.

Glastonbury 2009 (Re)Mix(ed)

We received lots of playlists based around the bands that played the Glastonbury Festival in 2009 but this one from 65lions proved popular.

Exam Time!

EllisSpice provided some light relief for students in May with  a playlist to revise to.

Entourage Soundtrack - All Seasons

We’re big fans of TV Show Entourage so felt compelled to include this playlist of 297 songs from all the seasons so far. Great work Martin!

Smells Like The 80s

Seems we all love some nostalgia,well here’s 139 songs worth thanks to dyfam.

1980 UK top 40

Continuning the 80’s theme here is a playlist of EVERY UK Top 40 song in 1980, all 299 of them!

Guilty Pleasures

We know we shouldn’t admit to liking these songs but nonetheless a fun playlist from helenmarie.

Energy Flash

It’s a remix! Twenty years since acid house and Ecstasy revolutionized pop culture, here’s the expanded and updated version of Simon Reynolds’ landmark history of rave. Containing substantial new material covering dance-music developments in the ten years since its original publication, “Energy Flash” is now even more definitive.

John Peel’s Festive 50 - 1980

We’ve had lots of playlists dedicated to the late great John Peel, this is one of our favourites.

Our Wedding Music

Whilst a playlist comprising of 10 tracks played at somebody’s wedding this year may seek like an odd choice for this list we have seen more and more users upload their wedding playlists to the site this year so they can share them with other guests. A great idea and we’re happy to facilitate the sharing of any music! For more wedding playlist inspiration take a look here and here.

The Complete Christmas Playlist

One of our most popular Christmas playlists ever with over 4000 plays and 99 of the best ever Christmas songs!

365

At the beginning of 2009 perfectreject gave hersself a project, to make a playlist containing one track for every day of the year… and here it is. There’s a total of 215 different artists, with Frank Turner having the most tracks.

Top 100 Spotify Tracks of 2009

This is the official most played tracks on Spotify during 2009.

So there we have it, with 12,000 playlists submitted in 2009 it was a tall order to pick our favourites so we apologise in advance if we missed any out that deserve to be here. Please leave your comments below and let us know if we’ve missed anything obvious off.

Thanks to ShareMyPlaylists.com user @Renate for sending in this picture of her wearing one of our t-shirts. If anybody else wants to send in a picture of themselves wearing one of our tees then please get in touch and we’ll publish them here. Looking good Renate!

Watch this great video from Random Mel to see her sporting one of our funky t-shirts. Thanks Mel!

From today you can now see how many times a playlist has been played with our new Playlist Hit Counters. Each individual playlist has it’s own counter and it will record each time somebody presses “play”. Please note that all counters had to start at zero from today, so plays made before today will not be counted.

Thanks to everybody who entered our recent R.E.M. competition to win a piece of signed artwork by the band. Leading music journalist and self-confessed R.E.M. fanatic Eamonn Forde has been reading and listening to all the entries and this is what he had to say about the winner…

There were some really good playlists here. I was torn between three (Athens, Georgia; Perfect Circle; and REM - Some Of My Favourites).

But I decided to go with Athens, Georgia by Salad1ing.

‘Creating an inclusive REM playlist is difficult as there are lots of albums to plunder and there is a tricky balance to be struck between the hit singles and the pick of the album tracks. Going too far one way at the expense of the other is risky: loading it with hits is perhaps too obvious while leaning too heavily on lesser-known album tracks risks being obscure for obscure’s sake. The playlist by Salad1ing manages to strike a convincing balance between these two extremes. Having ‘Radio Free Europe’ as the opening track was a nice touch, a knowing nod to their first single on Hib-Tone. It covers their entire career deftly, peppering a select few big hits (’Losing My Religion’, ‘Leaving New York’) with undoubted career highs (’Fall On Me’, ‘Find The River’, ‘Country Feedback’) and managing to drop in some overlooked gems (’Wendell Gee’). An ideal mix.’ – Eamonn Forde

We’ve been working on this for some time now and we’re delighted to announce that our newest feature is now live. From today, when you upload a Spotify playlist to ShareMyPlaylists.com we will automatically add in the names of the artist(s) as well as the song titles. We hope this will make the site easier to use and easier to search when looking for playlists containing your favourite artists or songs. In addition there will now be a maximum of a 2 minute wait before your playlist is published live on the site.

Changes to Genre selection

Due to feedback from our users we have also now limited the number of genres that you can choose for your playlist to just 1. This is because some users were ticking all genres or multiple genres when submitting playlists which resulted in some playlist genres not reflecting accurately the music contained in them. We have also introduced a new genre called Compilations which you can use for playlists that contain songs from many different genres.

As always, please let us know what you think via our feedback group.

With the release of Leona’s second album, ‘Echo‘, round the corner on 17th November, Leona has put togther various playlists inspired by her collaborators.

First up is her Justin Timberlake playlist.

Leona says, “Justin is a really cool guy – very kind and gracious and has such a good ear for music. He worked with me on ‘Don’t Let Me Down’. I’ve been a fan of his for years; these are just a handful of my favourite Justin tracks“. Click here to listen to Leona’s Justin Timberlake playlist in full.

Leona’s next single, Happy will be released on Sunday 8th November, you can pre-order it from iTunes by clicking here.

Keep in touch with Leona -

http://sharemyplaylists.com/members/leonalewis/
http://www.leonalewismusic.co.uk/gb/
http://www.facebook.com/leonalewis?ref=ts
http://www.myspace.com/leonalewis

Watch out for more Leona Lewis playlists coming soon.

Just a quick reminder that you only have 6 days until our exclusive R.E.M. competition comes to a close on Monday 9th November 2009. All you have to do to be in with a chance of winning some exclusive signed R.E.M. artwork is to upload your dream R.E.M. setlist to our dedicated R.E.M. channel here. It couldn’ t be easier to enter, good luck!

Here at ShareMyPlaylists.com we’re big fans of 13 year old London born soul singer Dionne Bromfield. Her debut album, “Introducing Dionne Bromfield” (available on Spotify here) is the first album issued by Lioness, the new label created by Amy Winehouse. Amy is also godmother to 13 year-old Dionne and says of her protégée, “She’s so much better than I was at her age.”

Dionne’s album features covers of 12 classic songs that reflect her love of vintage soul music and ‘60s girl groups. Tracks include the Motown anthem Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, which Dionne has recorded as a duet with fellow Lioness artist Zalon, and Foolish Little Girl, originally a hit for The Shirelles in 1963, and now chosen as Dionne’s first single.

You can connect with Dionne via her ShareMyPlaylists.com profile here.

She has also uploaded 2 playlists to the site, introducing us to her biggest musical influences:

Dionne Bromfield’s Favourite Females
Dionne Bromfield’s Favourite Males

Doesn’t Hermione look good in our t-shirts?

It’s been just 2 short months since we launched version 2 of ShareMyPlaylists.com giving users the ability to register as a member and take control of their playlists. In that short time I’m delighted to announce that as of today we have 10,000 registered members!

If you haven’t registered yet then becoming a member of the site is quick and easy, you simply need to register here with a few details and in less than 30 seconds you will have your very own free account.

What are the benefits of having a free member account?

What’s the future for ShareMyPlaylists.com?

We’re currently working hard behind the scenes building a new design for the site, to make it slicker and easier to use. We’re also working on various improvements and new features, such as adding “play” counters to playlists so you can see how many times a user has played your playlist. Finally, we’re working on an iPhone app which we’re hoping to launch in the next few weeks.

Thankyou to everybody who has supported the site and made it the biggest Spotify community online, we couldn’t have done it without you!

We’re always curious as to where our favourite artists musical influences lie so we were delighted when we received this playlist complete with sleeve notes below from La Roux. As you can see their musical tastes are diverse and eclectic!

Rip it Up - Orange Juice
TUNE. I love the vocals on this, great bass line too
Broken - Tears for Fears
Epic guitar riff!
Young Girls - Sparks
The lyrics are a bit wrong. Can’t help but love it though!
Silent Morning - Noel
I like a bit of peace and quiet in the morning
Moonlight Serenade - Glenn Miller
Classic. Classy. Tune.
D’ya Think I’m Sexy - Rod Stewart
No. Great song though.
I Get Lifted - George McCrae
This is my second favourite George McCrae track after ‘Rock Your Baby’
Gerri and the Holograms - Gerri and the Holograms
This was a Santogold compilation. It’s kind of weird and annoying but I really like it
Smalltown Boy - Bronski Beat
Beautiful lyrics, beautiful story. Tragic and sublime
Sea of Sinewaves - Kelley Polar
I only just discovered Kelley Polar. I like the bass line drop after the intro
Get an Ugly Girl To Marry You - The Coasters
I think this was on the Mermaids film soundtrack or something, which I had on cassette when I was little. It reminds me of being a kid.
Dare (DFA Remix) - Gorrilaz
BANGER

Click here to play in Spotify (please note, not all tracks are available in Spotify currently). Click here to visit the dedicated La Roux page, this is where we will be highlighting some of the playlist entries for the competition too.

COMPETITION

La Roux have generously given us a limited numbered and signed 7” picture disc of ‘Bulletproof’ and a white label of the ‘In For The Kill (Skream Remix)’ to give away to one lucky user.

All you have to do to be in with a chance to win is to submit a “La Roux Inspired” Spotify playlist to our site. La Roux themselves will be judging the competition to see who has produced the most interesting and original playlist. If you can include some notes on why you have chosen the songs on the playlist that will give the band a better understanding of your thought process.

How to enter:

Please submit your playlist to the site in the normal way. You can give the playlist any title you want but you must email info@sharemyplaylists.com with the name of the playlist in order to be entered into the competition.

Closing date for all entries is Friday 16th October 2009, good luck!