Ranking M&M's Spotify Playlists

So hear me out here… have y’all ever heard or seen an ad that you couldn’t get out of your head? Maybe this happens to me too much because I’m an Advertising major but there are a lot of times that ads stick in my head. Usually I don’t act on them but this time was different. When I’m not listening to WIDR, I’m usually listening to Spotify whose ads are ridiculous. Ridiculously annoying and ridiculous in general. For months I have been hearing this Spotify ad for M&M's playlists. The ads tell you to buy a bag of M&M's, scan the Spotify code on the bag, and gain access to these themed playlists. Now I don’t like this idea. The entire concept annoys me. But in this case curiosity killed me and I had to buy some M&M’s to listen to these playlists. So I did. I bought four shareable bags of M&M’s for this and I don’t even like M&M’s that much. But that’s beside the point. I’m here today to tell you about and rank the M&Ms playlists I purchased and listened to which were “Party Bangers”, “I’m kinda into you”, “Like a Boss”, and “Friends4Ever”. I will be ranking and judging these playlists on 3 factors:

1. Does the music in the playlists align with the theme?

2. Does the music have a good variety? i.e. is it not basic?

3. Did I personally enjoy the music/would I listen again?

Obviously some of this will be subjective, but nonetheless keep reading to see my ranking of these M&M's playlists!

4. Friends4Ever

I’m gonna be honest here, this playlist was pretty atrocious mostly because it was so CHEESY! With songs like “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” (both in English AND Spanish I might add), “Count on Me”, and “Thank You For Being a Friend”, this playlist was a recipe for mac and cheese without the mac. Now don’t get me wrong, there were some great songs on here like “Jumpin’ Jumpin’”, “Why Can’t We Be Friends”, and “With A Little Help From My Friends”. This playlist did fit the theme really well, it’s definitely a friendship oriented playlist. There was also a pretty decent variety of music including a few songs in Spanish which was consistent among all of the playlists. However, this playlist comes in fourth place because it was so cheesy that I would never voluntarily listen to it again.

3. I’m kinda into you

So the best word I have to describe this playlist is confused. Many of the songs in this playlist were about love and many others were about sex which created a very strange vibe. It felt like this playlist didn’t know who it wanted to be so I don’t think the music aligned with the title of the playlist that well. There weren’t any songs in this playlist that I hated and there was a fair bit that I did like including “Vida de Rico”, “Sugar Sugar”, and “Crazy in Love” to name a few. I would say that there was a good variety in this playlist as well with some classics and some more recent hits. I probably won’t be listening to this playlist again not because I disliked the music, but because the vibe of love and sex songs together would throw me off.

2. Party Bangers

This was another playlist that I would call confused. If I’m honest, a lot of the music in this playlist did not feel to me like party music. For example, “Blinding Lights”, “We Can’t Stop”, and “Dance Monkey” are not songs that would get me in a party mood AT ALL. That being said, there were quite a few songs that really brought the party mood including “TiK ToK”, “Good Feeling”, “Can’t Hold Us”, “Don’t Stop The Music”, “Just Dance”, and the incredible “Latch” which will NEVER fail to get me in a party mood. The one song that this playlist was missing was “Party Rock Anthem” according to Aya who listened to Party Bangers with me. I have to agree with her, how can you have a party playlist without "Party Rock Anthem"?? This playlist definitely had the least variety of the four with nearly all of the songs having been released in the last ten years. Overall I enjoyed a lot of the songs in this playlist but the non-party songs really killed the vibe in this playlist.

1. Like a Boss

This was the only M&M's playlist out of the four that I genuinely enjoyed and would listen to again! This playlist had so many hits that felt like good songs to work to like “Working for the Weekend”, “Money, Money, Money”, “Manic Monday”, and “9 to 5”, the incredible anti-capitalist anthem by Dolly Parton herself. This playlist did a great job of keeping with the theme of work and had so many great tracks! I would say that there was a good amount of variety as well.

So I’ve got some concluding thoughts on this little experiment. I still don’t like the idea of purchasing playlists even after listening to them, I still think it was a bad idea overall. Honestly these playlists were about what I expected, pretty basic overall and not hugely aligned with what I or what I imagine the typical WIDR listener would enjoy. One last thing I need to point out is that I got so many ads for these playlists while listening to them! That was pretty annoying. Anyways, thanks for reading and indulging my little experiment!