2,500: A Playlist For the Great Unknowns
About a decade ago, in the very early days of REO, we published an article called “The Best Music You’ve Never Heard.” It really wasn’t much of an article; it was more of an excuse to share a playlist. The idea was to feature lesser-known artists who were currently making music that we felt deserved to have a wider audience.
We used Spotify as our source and only included artists who had fewer than 1 million monthly listeners on Spotify. Since the publishing of that article and playlist in 2016, Spotify has increased in popularity and many of the artists we featured now have well over a million monthly listeners. We aren’t saying we were responsible for certain artists exploding in popularity, but we aren’t saying we weren’t responsible either!
This article (and playlist) is a sequel of sorts to the one we did in 2016. We decided to raise the degree of difficulty this time around. Instead of a threshold of 1 million monthly listeners, we are lowering it to 2,500 as the maximum number of listeners. This eliminates many artists that would otherwise have been included. We also are exclusively featuring artists that were connected in some way to the CCM world, and finally we aren’t focused solely on current artists for this playlist. Many of the bands featured broke up years and even decades ago, but we still felt their music deserved a spotlight, so we are giving it to them here.
Our Playlist Philosophy
In order to pique your interest a bit, here are a few things you can expect with this playlist. Some of these things are specific to this playlist, while others are general directives we follow when curating our playlists. First, you are going to get an eclectic blend of old and new. There are songs that reach back over 30 years, and others that released a few weeks ago. Second, to maintain as cohesive of a vibe as possible, we focused our sights on rock and rock-adjacent artists. If rock and roll is not your cup of tea, you should consider switching to a better brand of tea.
Third, our playlists aren’t slapped together with no rhyme or reason. We spend a lot of time getting the flow of the playlist as good as possible. We want these songs to work together, forming a unified sound and spirit. So, at times, the particular song we chose is not necessarily our favorite by that artist. But the song we choose works best for the specific mood we are trying to create.
Maybe that’s more info than you wanted about a random playlist. We’re going to have to live with that possibility. But it’s not just useless information. We are telling you to explain how seriously we take this process. Music is magic and we want everyone to love it as much as we do. And in this particular case, we believe these artists and these songs have been “lost” in many ways, and we want to do our part in getting them into as many consciousness’s as possible.
So, without any more preamble, enjoy these songs from artists that absolutely deserve so much more attention. Hopefully you will discover a new favorite in this list – an artist that reshapes the way you think about music. That’s the dream. Enjoy the playlist and let us know what you think or if there are other artists we should include. Use the comment section or any of our social media platforms to list some of your favorite underappreciated artists. We are always on the lookout for new (to us) music.
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