WSOE Executive and On-Air DJ on How to Build the Perfect Playlist

Andrea Peters headshot for WSOE Executive staff. Fall of 2019. (Photo given by Andrea Peters.)

But first, what is WSOE?

WSOE is Elon University’s student-run radio station. Within the organization specifically, there is an impressive staff of student DJs and executive staff that make WSOE into the thriving station it is today. In it too, there is a team that collaborates each week to make playlists. It may be a ‘study time’ playlist, a ‘feel good’ playlist, or a themed playlist like ‘women in music,’ a playlist recognizing Women’s Appreciation Month. 

Now, as we face coronavirus and quarantine, people are finding extra time on their hands. What better way to spend it than with music? We’re not saying to buy a guitar and subscribe to a new app that teaches how to play it, instead we are here to encourage you to start where you are: with your songs of choice and learn how to build the perfect playlist with them. And who more fit to guide us than Live-Air DJ, WSOE executive staff member Andrea Peters? 

Andrea Peters' experience with WSOE dates all the way back to 2017 (remember when?). At that time, she was writing for the station as a journalist, which included album reviews, concert reviews and artist interviews. Andrea also served two years as an on-air DJ with a one-hour show. But this year she was ready to take her role a step further and get involved in the decision-making of the radio station.

Today, Peters serves as the promotions director on the executive staff. She manages the station’s events and markets WSOE—at Elon and beyond. “It’s been absolutely fantastic,” she said. “The opportunities that I’ve had on exec staff I never really expected. And, honestly it’s changed my career outlook.” 

Though Peters claims she is not an expert of music, she admits to being a music enthusiast and having valuable experience with designing and organizing music to evoke distinct sensations from her time as a DJ. 

People may not even be conscious of their emotional connection or even dependence to music, she said. It’s two-fold. “Music has the power to inflict emotional changes in you, and so it can make you feel a certain type of way; but also, feelings are tied to music in a way that is related to memory.”

It may be the music you choose to play to bring about that change inside of you. When Peters experiences ‘lows,’ music is her tool for comfort. “I can play something that changes my mood or turns it all the way around but doesn't include a memory of anything specific,” she said.

And then there is the music that surrounds you when you're going through something. “So maybe you’re starting a new relationship and you guys go to a concert together,” she explains. “That band, that sound that was there, the feelings you had while you were there, at least for me, are always going to connect to that time.’ 

Music won't always be something you learned or a reminder of a person—some music is, of course (don't worry Taylor Swift, we hear you). It’s also the essence of the experience, and it has the power to bring about a change inside of you. 

Now, for the fun part: How to build the best playlist. First, you’ll need some music. Here are a couple strategies Peters uses to find her music.

Peters recommends the music platform Spotify, because it is structured incredibly well and has unique features that make finding new music easier, like artist radio stations, Spotify’s ‘Discover,’ new releases and other features. Though Spotify is her preferred platform, she’ll also use Apple Music and SoundCloud. 

One strategy is using the radio to find songs. “I am radio oriented, it’s in my nature,” she says. “What attracted me to radio initially was just the lack of structure in general. There is organization that’s put into each show and each hour, but as a listener, you never know what's coming next.” So, when you listen to live radio, its spontaneity of song selection will benefit your playlist diversity and variation. 

She’ll also switch to that song or artist’s radio station after hearing the song she liked to hear the related music. Spotify has special algorithms that select music according to your listening. But if you don’t know where to even begin, “a good place to start is Spotify’s ‘New Music’ playlist.” There are a lot of general playlists to bounce off from.

Now that you’ve got your music, what’s next? A musical ‘dump.’ 

For Peters, that is Spotify's ‘Liked Songs’ folder, which she uses to dump all of the music she has listened to and enjoyed throughout time. “I'll just go through and like (a feature on Spotify Music) anything I am listening to that day that really catches my attention or makes me feel any particular way.” Everything gets thrown in one spot. 

Time to wait. 

Peters says her method is distinct because she will take up to one week of dumping songs into the ‘Liked’ folder before organizing them into clusters. Other people who work with intention may immediately put their songs into playlists. 

Andrea Peters studying abroad in Seville, Spain in the Fall of 2019. (Photo given by Andrea Peters.)

Cluster it. 

Peters categorizes her music dump into different moods or themes, but, regardless of the chosen theme, she stands a firm believer that there needs to be a lot of variation within a playlist, or else you’ll get bored hearing the same type of music. 

“You don’t want to be listening to one sound throughout [the playlist]. It’s not going to be something that keeps your interest, you’re going to get bored and switch playlists.”

She says you can go as far as to lose the feeling you’re having with a couple of the songs because “if you're feeling really good and want to get jazzed up and you just pick the same song over and over, eventually that feeling of excitement is replaced with boredom. So you want to make sure that you have a degree of diversity.”

Name it something niche. 

 “I usually name the playlist something that I am feeling.”

Some are, “Sitting outside on a warm summer day,” or “Drinking coffee in the morning” to encompass that relaxed, content feeling you have when sitting outside on a warm summer day. Her long titles aren’t an attempt to be creative; she just tries to name them what they mean to her. Some of her playlists don’t even have names.

Final touches. 

Her clusters are about 5-10 songs from the music dump that start or add to a playlist, but 20 songs are what Peters recommends for the full length of a playlist (about an hour to an hour and a half of music). Some people like to build five-hour-long playlists, she said, “but I have too many thoughts and feelings in one day to listen to one playlist.” Her emotions and moods are supported by her music choice, not suppressed. Plus, it’s that radio mentality that makes her think of listening for an hour-slot. 

As diverse of a music selection Peters’ playlists and radio-show are, there is usually one underlying current that is thematic enough to make it flow. BPM is one way to find that current of energy that Peters organizes like a storyline. Starting it slow and setting the pace before gradually increasing speed to the climax and coming back down. And, at the end of the playlist, you should feel a sense of completion and think, “I would listen to that again,” or “I’m ready to move on with whatever I need to do.”

Edit it. 

After you’ve clustered and named your songs, Peters says you should still go back through it and organize the songs logically to really cement the current. Make it sound good and make sense. For transitions, she’ll take the last 5 seconds of the first song and the first 5 seconds of the following song, listen to those 10 seconds together and see how they connect. If it is smooth and sounds nice, she’ll leave it and move to the next transition. Working song by song rather than big picture helps to make the best playlist. 

Tailor it.

Think about who your audience is. Is it you? A family member? A friend? Consider the time of day or life experience to best suit yourself or your audience. 

All that being said, make sure the music is what you love. Peters advises against adding songs simply because they match the theme, and maybe it’s because she is so emotionally attached to music that she believes a playlist “formula” will set you up for failure. It’s something you can learn, and that a sense of organization can help with. “But there’s never going to be, like, a 100% formula perfect playlist because the ‘perfect playlist’ is going to be what is perfect for you. It’s entirely subjective, and it should be.”

If we ever come to a point of a standardized, “this is what a playlist should look like,” she said, then we've lost a really integral part of the importance of music. And as she said before, even if we don’t realize it, music is connected to us and we depend on it, so it’s best to keep music free and diversified.