Suggest me a Song

What this tool does

You want something new on, but you have played your usual playlist into the ground and your mind goes blank the moment you try to think of something fresh. This tool breaks the blank. It hands you a song at random from a long list, so you have a track to put on instead of scrolling your library for the hundredth time.

Press the button for a song. Press it again for another. Ask for a few at once if you would rather build a quick shortlist. One thing to know: it gives you a song title to look up and play, rather than a built-in player, so you take the name to whatever music app you use.

How to use it

1. Number / Quantity. How many songs to pull at once, from 1 to 100.
2. Generate. Pulls a fresh song, or a fresh set if you asked for several.
3. Starts with, Contains, Ends with. Optional filters that pare the list down before it picks. Leave them blank to draw from everything.
4. Copy. Drops the song, or your shortlist, onto the clipboard as plain text.

A song is on screen the moment the page loads, so there is always something to react to.

How it works

The list is fixed and each press pulls a song from it at random, with no repeats inside a single set when you ask for several.

The filters let you aim. Contains keeps any title with your text in it, so typing love brings up Love Song, My Love, Your Love, and more, which is also a useful reminder that plenty of songs share a title. Starts with keys off the first letter and ends with off the last.

What is on the list

It is a list of around five hundred song titles, leaning toward modern pop and hip-hop, with a good number of familiar hits you will recognise on sight, things like Uptown Funk, Get the Party Started, and Panda.

Two honest notes on it. And the lean is recent and chart-leaning rather than a spread across every era and genre. Take it as a way to jog loose a track to try, and use the Contains box if a particular word or vibe is in your head.

Why your playlist feels stale

The strange thing about streaming is that near-infinite choice often makes us listen to less, not more. With tens of millions of songs a tap away, picking one becomes harder, not easier, so we fall back on the same few playlists out of sheer ease. It is the pattern Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper found in a 2000 study where shoppers offered two dozen jams bought far fewer than those offered six. Too many options and we freeze on the familiar.

Barry Schwartz called the wider effect the paradox of choice, that more options tend to leave us less satisfied, partly because we keep wondering what else was out there. A random title cuts through it. It hands you one song to try with no deliberation, and the worst case is you skip it after ten seconds, which costs nothing and still beats staring at your library.

Finding the song to actually play it

Because the tool gives you a title rather than a player, the last step is yours. Copy or type the song name into whatever app you use, Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music, or any of them, and hit play. If more than one song comes up under that title, the most-played result is usually the one most people mean, or pick by the artist you recognise. When something lands, a quick way to keep the run going is to play that artist's other tracks or let the app build a station from it. The tool's job is to get you unstuck, and from there the music carries on by itself.

Questions people ask

Is it free, and does it save anything?

Free, no sign-up, and nothing you do here is saved. It all runs in your browser, so copy a song if you want to remember it.

Can I get a few songs at once?

Yes. Set the quantity to the number you want, up to 100, and press Generate for that many different titles in one pull.

Can I match a mood or a word?

Type a word into the Contains box and the list trims to titles that include it, which is a rough but quick way to lean toward a vibe.

References

1. Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper, "When Choice Is Demotivating: Can One Desire Too Much of a Good Thing?", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2000, the study behind choice overload. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11138768/
2. Barry Schwartz, "The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less", his talk on how more options can lower satisfaction. https://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_the_paradox_of_choice