LUCAS GONZE, a music tech guy whose resume includes MOG, GRACENOTE and YAHOO! MUSIC, writes about the monetary and branding power of playlists—specifically official, professionally generated playlists, which are (you've heard this before) the new radio, and which companies like SPOTIFY can use as leverage in negotiations with labels, who very much want placement on them. He links to BAS GRASMAYER, a smart digital strategy guy whose pieces I feature with some frequency, who informs us (and this is the natural and obvious outcome of that which you've heard before) that playlist promo is the new radio promo, and that there are playlist and promo people who spend their time thinking about where exactly on a playlist a song should go based on how likely a user is to skip it, and they have concluded that it's sometimes helpful to be near the bottom of the playlist, where you will get fewer plays but also a lower skip percentage, which will make the professional playlist generators more likely to keep placing your song on subsequent playlists. This all makes an incredible amount of sense and sounds like super smart business and now I would like to crawl under a professionally generated digital rock. But I'm old and I was trained in true freeform radio (shoutout WMFO), where the only metric anyone ever talked about, thought about or even knew about was "does this song sound good after that song?" Shoutout segues. Shoutout music. Everything else makes me cry... On the plus side, there's no song worth hearing right now that doesn't segue nicely in or out of this... Someone please write the definitive story on the playlist promo business circa 2017 and send me a link when you're done (or send me a pitch right now)... THE CHAINSMOKERS embrace the NICKELBACK-of-EDM thing... And—speaking of segues—feel free to file that next to the CAR SEAT HEADREST/SMASH MOUTH thing... I got you babe, every day, always... RIP MAX WILCOX.