MusicDrafts

I figured that I'd share something with this group that my friends and I started in late 2016...

We are all big sports fans, and naturally we like fantasy sports. Our group is also REALLY into music. Real junkies.

I, myself, always used to take my iTunes library and work to pare down "greatest hits" albums for each of my favorite artists. What would an album look like? Single/Double Album? How many songs should be included? What was the order? Catalog sequential or more topical?

One night, two of us were having a beer watching a game and we started arguing about Smashing Pumpkins songs and which ones were the best. And it got us thinking...

As everyone knows, the best part of the fantasy season is the draft. You get the chance to craft your team with the best players available. You feel like a real GM.

That's when I had the stupid idea to "draft" 10 songs each and see who's was better.

We shared the two lists and they voted on which was better, and slowly this morphed into us starting a FANTASY MUSIC DRAFT LEAGUE.

Yes, we are a bunch of junkies and losers.

But...

We also follow through with an idea.

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Here's the basic logistics of how this works...

We have 5 guys in the league, and we started a group chat on our iPhones.

For season 1, I created a group of 10 bands to draft (subsequent "seasons" we would have a "band" pre-draft...)

We create a random draft order using a fantasy draft randomizer online, then we have a 10-round snake draft picking songs along the way.

We then have a short drop/add time to round out our 10 songs, then work to reorder those songs to make the 10-song playlist.

We create the playlist on Spotify and then share with the rest of the group. All of the picks and playlists are saved on shared Google Docs file to keep us organized.

Then, we each score the playlists with two criteria: "Draft Performance & Song Quality" and "Playlist Construction & Theme Quality". (By the way, this is the inherent flaw in our league, as music is incredibly subjective. We've refined the scoring system several times, still not sold on our methodology...)

The scores from the individual weeks add up over the course of the season and we declare a winner.

We are now in the middle of season 8. To date, we've done 87 official drafts, and probably another 10 side drafts. As you could imagine, our wives think this is the dumbest thing ever, but we persist...

Here are the bands that we have done thus far...

SEASON 1
Week 1 - Radiohead
Week 2 - Incubus
Week 3 - Coldplay
Week 4 - Pearl Jam
Week 5 - Pink Floyd
Week 6 - Kings of Leon
Week 7 - Red Hot Chili Peppers
Week 8 - Led Zeppelin
Week 9 - Smashing Pumpkins
Week 10 - Beatles - Double Album

SEASON 2
Week 1 - Bob Marley
Week 2 - G-Funk Era
Week 3 - Dispatch
Week 4 - Billy Joel
Week 5 - Outkast
Week 6 - Michael Jackson
Week 7 - U2
Week 8 - Motown's Greatest
Week 9 - The Who
Week 10 - Dave Matthews Band - Double Album

SEASON 3
Week 1 - Eagles
Week 2 - Jack Johnson
Week 3 - Rush
Week 4 - 2004
Week 5 - Allman Brothers Band
Week 6 - Seattle Scene
Week 7 - Death Cab For Cutie
Week 8 - Eminem
Week 9 - Weezer
Week 10 - 1982
Week 11 - The Police
Week 12 - Hair Metal
Week 13 - 2017 Austin City Limits - Double Album

SEASON 4
Week 1 - War On Drugs/Kurt Vile
Week 2 - Rolling Stones
Week 3 - Black Crowes
Week 4 - 1986
Week 5 - Tribe/Q-Tip/Busta
Week 6 - Kanye West
Week 7 - Beck
Week 8 - Everything Jack White
Week 9 - Tom Petty
Week 10 - 1994
Week 11 - Elton John
Week 12 - Rage Medley
Week 13 - 2011 Mountain Jam Festival - Double Album

SEASON 5
Week 1 - Boy Bands
Week 2 - Ben Harper
Week 3 - Green Day
Week 4 - 1981
Week 5 - My Morning Jacket
Week 6 - Tame Impala/Mac Demarco/MGMT
Week 7 - The Roots
Week 8 - WuTang Clan
Week 9 - Blink-182
Week 10 - 1998
Week 11 - Stevie Wonder
Week 12 - Lil Wayne
Week 13 - Woodstock Festivals - Double Album

SEASON 6
Week 1 - Beach/Chill Summer Medley
Week 2 - John Mayer
Week 3 - 311
Week 4 - 1974
Week 5 - Bob Seger
Week 6 - Nas
Week 7 - Beach House
Week 8 - Chon/Ronald Jenkees/Tauk
Week 9 - Kendrick Lamar
Week 10 - 2005
Week 11 - Genesis Medley
Week 12 - Grateful Dead
Week 13 - 2004 NOLA Jazz Festival - Double Album

SEASON 7
Week 1 - Phish
Week 2 - Death Cab Re-Draft
Week 3 - Hieroglyphics/Bay Area
Week 4 - Jimmy Buffett
Week 5 - 1978
Week 6 - Black Star
Week 7 - Toro y Moi
Week 8 - Queen
Week 9 - Fiona Apple
Week 10 - 2000
Week 11 - Brooks and Dunn/Alan Jackson/Travis Tritt/George Strait
Week 12 - Steve Miller Band
Week 13 - Logic

SEASON 8 - Current Season
Week 1 - Chuck Berry/Little Richard
Week 2 - Frank Sinatra
Week 3 - 1971
Week 4 - Aerosmith
Week 5 - Prince
Week 6 - Foreigner
Week 7 - 1996
Week 8 - Credence Clearwater Revival
Week 9 - Miles Davis
Week 10 - Foo Fighters
Week 11 - 2003
Week 12 - Pavement
Week 13 - The Whigs
Week 14 - Unknown Mortal Orchestra
Week 15 - 1967
Week 16 - Anything Crosby, Stills, Nash, or Young
Week 17 - Chromeo
Week 18 - Bone Thugs N Harmony
Week 19 - 2007
Week 20 - Erykah Badu/Jill Scott
Week 21 - Undetermined Festival - Double Album

I'd like to start sharing the results of the already completed drafts somewhere here in the community. Maybe post them week by week, with links to the Spotify lists, and let the group at large vote on the playlists.

Wanted to get feedback from this group to see how to best make that happen.

Thought you'd appreciate the music nerd-dom...

ando here

Nice idea, but essentially the initial pool of bands are limited to your picks, yes? To me it would appear to be more fun to limit the league to a genre of music (R&B League, Hard Rock League, Classical Clowns League, etc.) and then pick among bands (ensembles) within it.

MusicDrafts

Yeah, we do this to a degree with certain weeks, specifically the ones that are a year. Basically, those weeks are limited to any song released in that year. And for the most part, it's "use any song that is the essence of that year".

ando here

I'm not sure I want to know what that means.

Good luck. If you decide to start one here I'm game for a season.

MusicDrafts

I'd love to eventually get one started here too. In the meantime, I'd like to figure out the logistics of showcasing the existing past drafts such that people can vote on them, and I can see how it all works on a discussion board.

If anyone has any feedback on how that could work, I'm all ears.

MusicDrafts

I would like to post the results from the first draft on here. It's Radiohead.

How can I do that? Looks like it won't let me attach links to the Spotify playlists...

Marie Monday

You aren't allowed to post links until you have reached a certain number of posts. You can embed YouTube videos

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MusicDrafts

Ah, I see. I didn't want to necessarily spam the discussion board, but if I need to have some minimum posts, I guess I'll have to do that.

Marie Monday

Please don't spam, it is frowned upon and will be deleted. It's a measure to avoid people only coming in to post a few links without becoming active members and part of the community

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MusicDrafts

I decided to just genuinely go through the discussion board and reply to topics. It's all good.