The Joy of Album Whale

I recently stumbled upon Album Whale, a cool site that embodies the spirit of the indieweb (in my opinion). This site allows anyone to sign up for free and create lists of albums the love (or hate or want to draw attention to for one reason or another), in a super easy way.

How it Works

The beauty of Album Whale lies in its ease of use, flexibility and simplicity. You can create lists around any theme - be it a genre, time frame, type of album cover or whatever comes to mind, and then add albums that link to Apple, Spotify, Bandcamp or anything else really. Each list allows you to add a brief note describing the list and then each album allows you to add a brief note explaining why you've included it. And one of the best parts? Each playlist has an RSS feed, making it easy for others to follow and stay updated on your additions (if you choose to make the list public).

I’ve made the most of this last part and set up Echofeed to auto-share new additions to my playlists on my Mastodon account. This means that whenever I add a new album to one of my lists, it gets automatically shared with my followers on Mastodon. All in all - it's a neat way to keep my online presence updated and share my musical tastes with others.

My Current Playlists

I've created a few playlists that showcase my musical tastes and I thought I'd list and link them here. I don't expect anyone to like every playlist by any means but you might find something fun and quirky...who knows?

• All Time Favs: Pretty self explanatory - these are albums I'd classify as "all time favs". This list gets posted to Mastodon currently.
• Pop-ish?: When I'm feeling like some pop. Some expected, some unexpected...some might not even be pop. This list gets posted to Mastodon too.
• Home Sweet Emo: A playlist dedicated to Emo-esque music that I grew up with. As I describe on the site, "emo. screamo. post-rock. basically the music that defined high school and college for me." This will get posted to Mastodon once I fill it a bit more.
• Worship That doesn't Suck: I don't like most modern worship style music. sometimes something surprises me though. It gets added to this list. Not sure I'll post this one on Mastodon as I'm not sure it would be as interesting.
• Old School Christian Rock: I describe this list on album whale as: "This stuff has to be documented somewhere right? music from growing up that I'll put on either cuz it's still awesome or because it's hilarious (or both). you be the judge." As with the prior, I'm not sure I'll post this one on Mastodon as I'm not sure it would be as interesting.

I'll probably add more lists as time goes on. I love music and always have.

Edited: 5/7/24 to update links