I put music I like in playlists that I listen to in reverse order by date added. As a result, I form pretty strong associations between my playlist songs and times in my life, down to about the week.

It’s pretty cool being able to scroll through my playlists and essentially have a journal of memories.

I assume no one else does this, because relatively few services consistently enable that kind of sort, and none that I’m aware of allow you to edit the “date added” field in the playlist data.

(This is a disguised plea for help and/or for Apple Music engineers to enable editing of playlist data - I won’t switch services if it means losing my memory journal/playlist)

I believe memory formation is aided by multi-sensory perceptions. The experience of going somewhere to buy a CD, unwrapping it, opening it, putting it in a specific player at a certain time of the day, getting up to hit the next track button… this is a much richer set of experiences that form a much tighter web of recollection than just the audio alone. These experiences may all be totally mundane or even tiresome, but they help cement the memory of the music.

This is why you remember something more if you write it down - you get not just the memory of a fact but also the tactile experience of holding a pencil, feeling the paper, of an aching wrist…

Passively streaming someone else’s (or an algorithm’s) choice of music in the background is probably the worst possible way to build music memory because you don’t even have the association of choosing or even reading the track title.

Ritual serves a purpose.

If you consistently like/heart songs as you go along, put your Liked Songs list on shuffle sometime - you'll find great old gems!