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Filters

Positiveness

Needs the Plus or Pro plan. The Positiveness filter keeps the tracks whose positiveness score sits inside a range you set.

What it matches

Positiveness is Spotify's valence: a score from 0% to 100% that estimates the musical positiveness a track conveys. High scores sound happy, cheerful, euphoric. Low scores sound sad, depressed, angry.

The filter compares each track's score with your range and keeps the track when the score is inside it, both ends included.

It is about the sound, not the words. A cheerful melody with bleak lyrics scores high; a slow, minor-key song with hopeful lyrics scores low. It is also a different axis from energy: a track can be sad and loud, or happy and quiet.

Where the data comes from

The score is part of Spotify's audio analysis of the recording. Playlistation reads it from Spotify the first time a track is checked and stores it for later updates.

Spotify has no analysis for every track. When it has none, the track has no positiveness score and the filter treats it as not matching: the track stays out of the playlist whatever range you set.

Operators and values

The filter has one operator, Between, so the dialog shows no operator card. You set a minimum and a maximum on a slider with two handles, from 0% to 100%, in steps of 5. A new Positiveness filter starts at 25% to 75%.

The Positiveness filter dialog with its two-handle slider
Low is sad, high is cheerful.

The sentence collapses at the ends of the scale:

  • Minimum at 0: "The track positiveness is at most 30%".
  • Maximum at 100: "The track positiveness is at least 65%".
  • Anything else: "The track positiveness is between 25% and 75%".

A slider left at 0% to 100% shows the warning "With the current settings, all of the tracks will match this filter".

Examples

  • The track positiveness is at least 65%. The feel-good playlist.
  • The track positiveness is at most 30% and The track energy is at most 40%. Sad and quiet, rainy-Sunday music.
  • The track positiveness is at most 30% and The track energy is at least 70%. Sad and loud, which is a different playlist entirely.
  • The track positiveness is at least 60% and The track danceability is at least 60%. Cheerful and danceable, for the start of a party.
  • The track positiveness is between 35% and 65% and Liked date: In the last 30 days. The recent likes that are neither anthems nor tearjerkers.

Things to know

  • Positiveness and Energy form a grid: happy and loud, happy and quiet, sad and loud, sad and quiet. Four playlists, two filters each.
  • Minor keys pull the score down, so a lot of electronic music and hip hop sits in the middle of the scale. Widen the range for those genres.
  • The score is an estimate of mood from the audio. It misses irony, lyrics and context. Expect the occasional surprising placement, and check it in the track list: expanding a track shows "The Positiveness score is 22%".
  • On the Free plan the filter is locked in the filter picker. See Plans and billing.
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