I just released Playback, an app for iOS and macOS that helps you rediscover your Apple Music library.

I have hundreds of playlists in Apple Music, many of them painstakingly curated. It’s easy to forget old favourites. Playback started as a project to solve a simple problem for me: help me play a random playlist from my library.

The Playlists tab does this, and you can also ask Siri: “Play a random playlist with Playback.” There’s also much more.￼

Beyond the hundreds of playlists, there are \*thousands\* of songs in my music library, many of which I once played endlessly, but over time, got lost in the crowd.

Playback’s Songs tab shows songs from your library based on their play count, their “nostalgia” (e.g. songs you haven’t played in a long time), or their freshness (e.g. added to your library but not played much).￼

Playback arranges those songs into a queue based on sonic similarity: tempo, genre lineage, and the audio “fingerprint” derived from the 30s iTunes preview for that song. This helps create a queue that \*feels\* curated.￼

This data can finally be put to full use in the Design tab. Based on the “energy” derived from the songs in your library—ranging from glacial to intense—you can design a playlist from 10–50 songs long, following a path of your choosing.￼

I’ve been using Playback for a few weeks now and it has become my default way of listening to music. I have rediscovered \*so many\* songs I love, and the more I use the app, the better it gets, as its knowledge about my library continues to grow.￼

There’s no accounts (besides your Apple Music account), all data is processed on-device, no analytics, and no subscription: just a one-time £5.99 app purchase.￼

There’s much to explore in the app, including detailed explanations about how the songs are picked and ordered, and insights into your music library through the lens of the bespoke energy classifier.￼

One fun feature that snuck in to the initial release is holiday filtering. Christmas albums are often heavily-but-infrequently played, which through the scoring algorithm can result in inflated scores. The app filters holiday playlists and albums out-of-season so that you’re not listening to Mariah Carey in June.￼

If this sounds like it’s for you, please consider buying in the App Store, and let me know what you think!

Playback: an app to help you rediscover your music