Niche goes mainstream: Spotify
Screenshot of a Spotify playlist (The Puma Prensa / Rheya Bushan)
By Rheya Bushan, Features Editor
Some playlists sound like poetry. Others read like private jokes between strangers. On Spotify, titles like “i’m the mysterious girl in the corner of a 90s indie film, studying while the world quietly collapses”, or “main character energy: (ft. my trauma)” hint at a growing cultural shift, not just in how people listen to music, but in how they define themselves.
This is the world of hyper-niche and aesthetic playlists: deeply specific, emotionally charged soundtracks designed not around a genre or artist, but around mood, identity, and internet-born micro-aesthetics. These playlists aren’t about top 100 hits or musical cohesion—they’re about curating a feeling so precise, it borders on fictional. A soundtrack for a life that’s part reality, part roleplay, part digital daydream.
Rooted in the aesthetics of Tumblr, TikTok and moodboard culture, this form of playlisting has taken hold especially among younger listeners. It’s no longer enough to label a playlist as “sad songs.” Now it might be “melancholy in a liminal space between seasons,” or “crying but it’s vintage.”
As much as they serve as entertainment, these playlists are also functioning as emotional tools. They help users define feelings that don’t quite have names, process experiences that feel too abstract, and find solidarity in oddly comforting specificity. In a time when identity is fluid, mental health is a collective concern, and aesthetic is inseparable from self-expression, the hyper-niche playlist becomes something more than just a collection of songs; it becomes a curated version of the self.
Stefanie Torres, a sophomore at Maria Carrillo High School thinks that Spotify and its playlists help her “separate the songs” she wants to listen to “depending on [her] mood.”
As for how a playlist that she thinks defines her, she has one named “different people” which includes a multitude of songs, which features many different genres, artists, and cultures. It also reminds her that she can be so many different people at once.
For Desirae Munz, another sophomore, she names her playlists with a series of emojis. To her it “characterizes [her] emotions more than words.”
So, in some ways, it’s a digital evolution of the mixtape—a once analog practice of arranging songs for a crush, a friend, or a heartbreak. But where mixtapes were often outward-facing gifts, these playlists tend to be introspective, existing both as private rituals and public expressions.
The emotional intent remains but the delivery has shifted. What was once burned onto a CD or dubbed on cassette is now algorithmically archived, tagged with an oddly poetic title, and can be kept to the self or shared globally.