Playlist

A playlist is a list of video or audio files that can be played back on a media player, either sequentially or in a shuffled order.

The term originally came about in the early days of Top 40 radio formats in the 1950s when stations would devise (and, eventually, publish) a limited list of songs to be played.

[citation needed] The term would go on to refer to the entire catalog of songs that a given radio station (of any format) would draw from.

[citation needed] Additionally, the term was used to refer to an ordered list of songs played during a given time period.

Some Internet streaming services, such as Spotify,[4] Amazon Music, 8tracks, and the defunct Playlist.com and Webjay, allow users to categorize, edit, and listen to playlists online.

On certain sites, users create and share annotated playlists, giving visitors the option to read contextual information or reviewer comments about each song while listening.

The idea of automatically generating music playlists from annotated databases was pioneered by François Pachet and Pierre Roy.