Retrojam

I got an email about this website earlier in the week that would come up with playlists for various pivotal years in my life, so I checked it out. Retrojam uses your birthday to compile playlists throughout your school years; your final years in elementary, middle and high school as well as college are used as the basis to form playlists from those years. It's pretty accurate too, if you didn't fail or skip a grade. I liked it, so I wanted to put it out here and encourage you to go try it for yourself. Here are the quick deets:

What's the purpose?

To provide playlists of songs from back in the day, the songs that usually prompt you to ask the company's tagline, "Remember that song?" when sharing with friends or family. You can save the playlists created, share them on your various social media platforms, or create custom lists.

How does it work?

Start there, by filling in your birthday, and you'll be taken to your timeline, where you'll first see a birthday playlist, followed by a playlist of songs from each year you were in school. You can play or share each track individually, add them to your playlists, or browse lists from other users and add tracks to one of your custom playlists. There's also a section to show what is trending on the site. The premise itself is interesting and I had fun looking at my own lists, but the flaws were exposed when I ran my uncle's birthday through the site to check those playlists. I'll get to that in a minute.


Pros:



--Even though the option to sign in with Facebook and the option to share to it as well as Twitter are there, the site is independent. I hate that most sites are somehow synced with FB in order for you to use them fully, but even though this is an option with Retrojam, it's not required.

--You don't need to create an account with the site in order to see or listen to playlists

--You can change the birthday or date for which you'd like the playlists to be created at any time without losing the playlists that you'd seen...and I'll get to that in the cons

--The opportunity to discover new music that you haven't heard before is definitely there on Retrojam when you search other playlists


Cons:



--The playlists are the same by year regardless of the birthday you search, so if you search the various years hoping to put together another random playlist of hits, you won't find it

--Some years of playlists only have a couple of songs and are far from being full lists

--Many of the songs for various years are inaccurate, unless the versions released for these playlists are remixes that were released during that year





My thoughts:

Like I said above, I liked the concept of the site and I think it has potential. I love the concept of going back through my senior years throughout school and going back through the songs that were hits back then, and I like having the option to share them if I like, but why would I share a playlist with only 2 songs on it? I'm not sure if its a permissions issue and many of the artists haven't given their consent for Retrojam to use their songs, but the library and the developed playlists have yet to live up to the hype. Custom playlists have more weight than the site-curated lists, although they provide a good foundation/time period to base future song additions on. It can get annoying for those of us who aren't regular FB users to sign up or access a site then find out it runs through FB, so I liked that this site was independent of FB. Even though the playlists are repetitive and that can be annoying when you want to get random music from a particular year, it's also good because that means you can look up another birthday and if there are any similar years, you'll be able to access the playlist again. But the inaccuracy of the songs on certain lists gets me as well because some of those songs weren't even released in the same decade, much less the same year of the playlist it ends up falling under. I like the basis on which Retrojam was founded and I think it can go far with some time and a bit more development/library expansion. As it stands now though, it falls a bit flat for me.


Do I recommend this site?

Yes, as long as the user understands that the library, as it is, is rather limited and playlists are repetitive so searching for various birthdays with overlapping school years are fruitless; the playlists will simply repeat. However, creating custom playlists off of these old-school goodies can result in some good, "back in the day..." stories and fun if doing this with others. There are many songs that I didn't even know about until I started looking for playlists on Retrojam, so it does live up to its motto, although it could stand to use a little work. If you're looking for something fully developed, with full playlists for each year, then this isn't the site. Despite those flaws though, I like the site and intend to explore it some more later.