Your Three Listening Modes
Derived from play counts, loved tracks, and genre clustering. These aren't categories you picked — they're patterns the data revealed.
Cluster 1 · Deep Listening
Ambient & Game
Still your most-played cluster by a wide margin — C418, Jesper Kyd, Lorne Balfe, Darren Korb dominate the top 25. Tycho now at 133 plays and 6 loved — fully graduated. Jon Hopkins at 110 plays. GameChops collab artists (Curly, Super Piano 64, Sixth Station Trio, Rozen) are the active Inbox batch right now, expanding the game music wing significantly.
C418 · Jesper Kyd · Kodomo · Jon Hopkins · Darren Korb · Lorne Balfe · TPR · GENTLE LOVE · Tycho · Danger · BT
Flow / Focus Mode
Cluster 2 · Comfort Zone
90s/00s Alt-Rock
Inbox graduates confirmed: Foster the People (9 loved, 101 plays), Our Lady Peace (8 loved), Dave Matthews Band (8 loved), Toad the Wet Sprocket (6 loved) all promoted. Dislike data also sharpened the borders here — Rush, The Doors, Avenged Sevenfold, classic hard rock flagged out.
Matchbox Twenty · Goo Goo Dolls · Counting Crows · Tonic · Sister Hazel · Lifehouse · Collective Soul · Fuel · Foster the People · Our Lady Peace · Dave Matthews Band · Toad the Wet Sprocket
Comfort / Nostalgia Mode
Cluster 3 · New Discovery
Acoustic / Folk / Coffeehouse
Brand new cluster this pass — Morning Coffeehouse Serenity (Apple-curated, 25 tracks) signals a taste expansion into Iron & Wine, Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver, Tracy Chapman, Ray LaMontagne, George Ezra. This didn't exist as a distinct category in the library before the trip. Nascent but real.
Iron & Wine · Fleet Foxes · Bon Iver · Tracy Chapman · Ray LaMontagne · George Ezra · Vance Joy · Ben Howard · Angus & Julia Stone · The Paper Kites
New / Expanding Mode
Top 25 Most Played
Pure play count — no weighting. This is what you actually listen to most.
Genre Breakdown
All 5,715 tracks by genre tag (Apple's tagging, not ours).
Decade Distribution
Where your library actually lives chronologically.
Top Artists by Love + Plays
Combined score: (loved tracks × 3) + total play count. Your actual hierarchy of devotion.
105 real duplicate groups, 128 excess tracks. (239 additional ghost entries exist in Apple's database but are invisible in the UI and filtered out here.) Numbers are roughly stable from last pass — the ghost-entry issue from the previous export is largely resolved with the forced clean sync. Continue working through these at your own pace; the high-play/loved ones are the priority.
How to remove in Apple Music: Right-click a track → Remove from Library. For Apple Music streaming tracks, this removes them from your library but doesn't affect your account. Note: Apple Music doesn't let you delete from a playlist view directly to the library level — you'll need to find them in the main Music library view.
| Song · Artist | Action | Album | Details |
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† Scoring: +100 for loved, +2×plays, −20 for Greatest Hits/Best Of/Essential, −10 for Singles, +5 for Deluxe, +3 for Remaster. Ties broken by play count.
Good playlist hygiene this pass — the Lucas sub-mixes (12 playlists) are gone, Mega Mix converted to a lean 39-track manual playlist. That alone dropped total significant overlaps from 107 down to 39. Remaining actionable overlaps are mostly intentional (Eugene Car Tunes ↔ Vacation Mix) or structurally interesting (Perfect Focus ↔ Replay All Time). The Cities: Skylines (Favorites) deletion from an earlier pass also cleaned up the 100% overlap that was previously at the top of this list.
Significant Overlaps
Playlist pairs sharing ≥20% of their tracks. High overlap = possible consolidation candidate.
| Playlist A | Playlist B | Shared | Overlap % |
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Full Playlist Inventory
All 54 user playlists organized by folder.
Post-trip update: Inbox cleared. Foster the People, Our Lady Peace, Dave Matthews Band, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Howie Day, Vertical Horizon all graduated with meaningful loved/play counts. Danger (French synthwave) was a surprise hit at 102 plays. The coffeehouse/folk direction is new and worth developing.
Electronic / Ambient / Electronica — Round 2
Previous batch (Brian Eno, Aphex Twin, Austin Wintory) didn't fully click. This round leans into BT/Tycho as the anchor and pushes toward warmer, more driving electronica: Boards of Canada, Bonobo, Amon Tobin, and deeper Jon Hopkins catalog.
90s / 00s Alt-Rock Adjacent
Based on Matchbox Twenty, Goo Goo Dolls, Counting Crows, Tonic, Collective Soul being your most-loved artists.
Acoustic / Folk / Coffeehouse — New Direction
Morning Coffeehouse Serenity is a brand new playlist with no prior precedent in your library. These recommendations develop that direction further based on what's already in it.
Acoustic & Instrumental Covers
You have "Creative Covers" and "Pop Goes Classical" playlists — here's more to fill them.
Game Music & Lo-Fi Expansions
Based on your OCRemix collection, GENTLE LOVE, Mikel & GameChops, and nintendo lofi playlist.
Apple Music's recommendation engine is genuinely mediocre — you're not imagining it. But there are a few levers that actually matter, and some you're probably underusing.