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LAST “SHUFFLE UP'd 8” UPDATE: 13OCT2023

Did you know that it takes 400 to 450 songs—heck, let's just call it an even 420—to make a playlist that will play for an entire day without repeating a song?

I know this because I used to run a 24/7 internet radio station and you end up making note of this sort of math when plotting how to make a non-repetitive rotation with a limited amount of uploaded songs allowed (#rip old dodgy internet radio stream).

Sure, the number "four twenty" also has some reefer connotations, but I promise that 90% of the reason I started this 420-track playlist was because I wanted something that people could play non-stop for *at least* 24 hours straight without repeating a track/artist (even if that person was just me, which is also kinda the underlying thinking for this entire website). Although, let’s not kid ourselves: listening to music is a way better experience when partaking in the now legal-in-Canada-and-should-be-legal-everywhere plant that is marijuana — so that FoUr-TweNtY works for this playlist too (if you don’t believe me, try it out for yourself and see if you don’t find yourself enjoying the ‘listening to music’ part a little bit more).

I also wanted to fill the playlist with the kind of music that I classify as "mostly safe for most work places, but not boring and lame or the same 50 songs/artists over and over again"—because I know what it's like having a job where you want music on in the background all day errday, but you also can't have headphones on because you have to interact with other people (aka customers), so it’s not ideal to have a song come up that will have you running for the volume button and/or ear muffs (although some naughty words do sneak thru… but we’re all matures who occasionally use naughty language in our own lives, so that’s ok, right?).

Because having a playlist where one can just push play once and not have to worry about finding any more music options for the rest of the day, that can be a very nice thing to have access to:

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It's probably most accurate to think of this 420≠ALLDAY playlist as the portable jukebox off personal hits & deep-cuts that sits in the corner of my made-up establishment: 'The HI54'.

But, "what kind of place is this 'The HI54’?" you ask. Well, as I've once described to a friend…

The HI54 is like this cool pub or cafe, except I don't have to prepare anybody's drinks or worry about ordering stock or anything like that. I just pick out the music. And it's also maybe a thrift store, but one of those cool ones where all the books & records & clothes & stuff is good, but the prices aren't marked up crazy. What would you call one of those? Not financially viable? Oh, ok.

And even though ‘The HIGH FIVE FOR’ is not a real establishment, about every ‘month & a half-ish’ I fire up my clunky desktop version of Spotify and sequence 54 new hand-picked tracks that are either mostly-new-to-me tunes my ears want to spend more time with or something I haven’t gave a good listen to in a long while, and then I put that new 54-track mix cd at the top of the playlist (and I remove 54 tracks from the bottom to keep everything at an even 420 tracks from 420 different artists… because that’s the gimmick here). And then I make all that available to whoever fancies listening (which is also a part of a ‘mountain town radio’ thing I mess about with called MOUN.TOWN/FM).

Soooo… if the idea of being able to throw 24hrs worth of music on shuffle whenever you're in need of some tasty background ear candy—for example, maybe you have your own pretend and/or real establishment—make sure you hit the 'Like/Follow' button on Spotify so you can get future updates auto-magically appearing on your listening device throughout the year. And, as always, when you hear something you like, do the universe some good and support/check those artists out further (every little bit helps).

Speaking of which, here’s a few ‘available-on-Bandcamp’ tracks that have been recently added to this playlist:

LATEST SHUFFLE UP’D 8

But they’re not the only tracks you could go from discovering on a streaming service that pays artists fractions of pennies to directly supporting more fairly on a site like Bandcamp, which is one of the many reasons why I keep a Buy Music Club list going for all the tracks that get added to my 420 ALL DAY playlist throughout the year that are also available on Bandcamp (at the time of me checking + I reset the list at the start of the year, here’s the 2021 archive + 2022 archive) — so go check that out whenever you find yourself wanting to reward your ears while also sending out support to those who help keep our lives nicely soundtracked (comes in handy on Bandcamp Fridays fyi):

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Because the Corporate Streamers® of the world (and the technology they are built-on) are great for discovering and keeping track of music + streaming tools allow us to easily choose better soundtracks throughout the day than what Corporate FM™ radio stations used to drill us into submission with before the internet arrived in everyone’s pocket (trust me, I was born the year before 1984), but the way creators are paid out with streaming is just not very good / very fair at all (and it doesn’t need to be that way) —ESPECIALLY in comparison to what some are making off of providing access to other people’s art (it’s kinda like how a lot of industries are unfairly structured to enrich & empower the few at the top in a ‘profits over everything, infinite growth’ society) .

Ideally, smart artist/human-minded people will start making some more momentum towards coming up with a better/fairer streaming model (here’s a September 2020 contribution to the dialogue from me, if interested), BUT, for now, us appreciators of creativity/good things need to start doing a better job of being more mindful of making sure we’re continuing to show direct support to the creation of good things. And Bandcamp is still one of the best online places going for intentionally & directly supporting the makers of the art you appreciate with something tangible like money to help cover the costs of doing work that often gets done without a paycheque (and then you get to carry around your music collection in your pocket).

But, also, money isn’t the only way to contribute support directly to the work that others do regardless (and anything beyond passive consumption is always a notch in the good column… and there are plenty of ways to support once you start clicking around to investigate the maker/s of the thing you found yourself connecting to).

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Anyways, I HOPE YOU HEAR/D A FEW THINGS YOU LIKE ENOUGH TO GO INVEST MORE TIME WITH BACK IN YOUR PERSONAL ORBIT, BUT IF YOU FIND YOU’RE ACTuALLY IN THE MOOD FOR A DIFFERENT MOUN.TOWN/FM SOUNDTRACK THAN THE ONE ABOVE, have a flick thru this carousel of HI54 MIX CD programming & give a listen to whatever catches your fancy:

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OR SEARCH “MOUN.TOWN/FM” ON SPOTIFY TO BROWSE THE FULL COLLECTION OF #MOUNTOWNFM PLAYLISTS (BECAUSE THERE’S MORE THAN WHAT THE ABOVE CAROUSEL CAN HANDLE — AND EVERY ACCOMPANYING BLOG POST COMES WITH AVAILABLE-ON-BANDCAMP EMBEDS/ARCHIVES)

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And if you’re looking for something related to all of the above, but also different:

[part of my "shuffle update" process for this monthly updated mix cd playlist is checking to see if any of the newly added tracks, like the one above, have an accompanying music video that I can add to HI54.BLOG's ongoing 'all day music videos' rotation on FM/TV]

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And here’s hoping this month we’ll be better than the last!

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JEREMY / @HI54LOFI

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