How to make a playlist for someone online

Sharing music with friends is a time-honored way to discover new bands, talk over your music tastes with friends, and learn a bit more about the bands that you love. This week were looking at five different ways to send and share playlists around at a party, or just among friends, based on your nominations.

There are plenty of services designed just to make it easy to share playlists with friends at a party, so everyone gets a chance to be the DJ, or maybe just to help you share your favorite mixes and songs with a friend who could use a little something new to listen to. Earlier in the week we asked you which services you preferred. Now were back to highlight the top five from that thread, in no particular order:

Spotify is already one of the most popular music services in the world, and one of your favorites. It also has useful playlist sharing features. You or a friend can build a playlist packed with your own music or music youve discovered through Spotifys massive music library, and you have the option of sharing that playlist directly with others by passing around the playlist URL or Spotify link, or you can throw the gates open and make the playlist public so anyone and everyone can follow it, subscribe to changes to it, or even add or remove their own songs to and from the playlist. If youre throwing a party or hosting a get together, that open, shared playlist feature can be super useful, since anyone using Spotify whos also following that playlist can add their own songs to the mix, contribute to the overall atmosphere, and get their turn playing DJ for a little while. If you just want to share music with a friend, or you build mixes for other people to regularly enjoy, youre free to build playlists that are locked down but still sharable, so people can listen, add the songs to their own Spotify accounts, and pass it around without changing anything.

Those of you who supported the Spotify nomination pointed to the fact that while its not absolutely perfect, its pretty seamless and easy to use, especially considering the sheer number of people with Spotify accounts. Everyone can use it too, including free and premium Spotify users [although free users dont get the mobile aspect], so you dont have to be part of the paying club to build playlists and share music with friends. You can read more in its nomination thread here.

8Tracks has been around for a long time, but it remains a great way to share playlists and discover new ones based on artists, moods, genres, themes, or anything else you could possibly put a tag or keyword search to. The service recently got a massive overhaul with a new focus on suggesting playlists based on what youve already been listening to, and on making search easier and more transparent. Best of all 8tracks is completely free, both on the web and on mobile devices, so you can take your music with you anywhere you want to go. It doesnt really make it easy to edit other peoples playlists for a party or anything like that, but it definitely makes building playlists simple, finding music to add to your playlist easy, and then publishing that playlist to come back and listen to at any timeor sharing that playlist with anyone who wants to listen on any device super simple.

8Tracks strength is that it doesnt just support music from one service that it uses as a back-end. You can upload music from your own computer, use Soundcloud, or use 8Tracks own massive library of music as an engine for your playlists. Once youve build them, theyre playable and portable on any device with an internet connection. If people really want to edit them, they can snag them, build their own playlist based on yours, and add their own tracks. Then they can share it back with you, or make it the master party playlist they keep building on over time. Its easy, free, and theres a wealth of music there to explore.

Even though YouTube Music Key is a thing, many people dont immediately associate YouTube with music. Thats a shame, because you can search just about any song you might want to hearwhether its old and rare or some new hit tune everyones talking aboutand find it on YouTube. It might be an official video, or maybe its just an upload of the audio track with a static image while the music plays. Either way though, YouTube makes it easy to build playlists around any type of video you find there, and while Music Key will help you discover music and related artists, you can build playlists of your favorite songs, make them public or private, and even share them with the world, either thorough the playlist URL directly, posting it on your favorite social network, or even embedding the playlist on a web site. It works remarkably well, and once your playlist is shared and someone else has it, they can edit their own version, share it back with you, or play it on any device where YouTube is presentand thats a lot of devices.

Those of you who nominated and supported the YouTube playlist nomination pointed out that YouTube is just about everywhere, from smart TVs to set-top boxes and mobile phones and tablets, so if you use YouTube for music playlists, you can definitely take your tunes anywhere you want to go. That means theyre perfect for a partyyou can pull out your phone and stream to a nearby Bluetooth speaker or Wi-Fi receiver using Android cast, or you can pass playlists around to friends just by posting its link or embedding it on your personal site or blog. You can read more in the nomination thread here.

Last.fm is still around, and while we havent heard much from the service, its still a great place to scrobble songs from other music services you use every day, and to build playlists of the favorite tracks you hear on those other services. Plus, Last.fm lets you build playlists from music found on any and all of the other services that it supports, which means you can use one site to make dozens of playlists that you can then make public or private and share with your friends to play at their leisure, or to fire up at a get together or social event. Best of all, shared playlists come with the option to buy the tracks on them as well as stream them directly, so if youd like to own the music you hear on someone elses playlist, you can easily purchase it.

The nomination thread for Last.fm isnt the longest [seriously, its just an image of last.fm] so there isnt much in the way of justification for it. That said though, people have been using last.fm for just this purpose for years. While it seems fewer and fewer services are proudly advertising the fact that they can scrobble to last.fm, it still has tons of fans and active users, and sharable, easily built playlists are likely one of the reasons. You can check out its nomination thread here.

Playlist.net is a service thats entirely designed to give people a place to build and share their playlists with other music fans, then pull them into Spotify. The service works somewhat on Spotifys back, since you have to build your playlist in Spotify before you can add it to the service and share it, but it definitely makes it easier to discover new playlists and new music if you dont have a group of friends who actively share playlists with one another. Either way, Playlist.net makes it easy to post your playlists for others to hear and follow, and for you to find new and interesting playlists by genre, mood, or just by keyword search for an included artist or song. The site even features music reviews and charts so you can see whats popular or trending in different genres and categories, get popular playlists for different moods and activities [like running and exercise or just relaxation], and even a playlist generator that will spice things up for you with some automatic selections.

Those of you who nominated it praised it for making Spotify playlists super easy to explore and add to your own account, and for using Spotify as a back end source considering so many people already use Spotify. Spotify definitely makes it easy to build and share playlists with friends, but discovering new ones from other people can be a little trickier, and this service takes the hassle out of that. You can read more in its nomination thread here.

Now that youve seen the top five, its time to vote for the Lifehacker community favorite:

This weeks honorable mention goes out to DJ51, an app thats specifically designed for building group playlists and giving everyone a turn at being a DJ as a social event or gathering. Everyone uses the app to populate songs into a communal playlist based on their Spotify accounts. Then, the app builds a playlist full of music for everyone based on shared tastes and popular musicians. If any individual leaves, their part of the equation leaves with them, and the balance is shifted in favor of the people remaining. Then, when everyones gone, the room of music disappears, ready for the next social event. Check out its nomination thread here.

We should also give the nod to old school mix tapes and CDs, which earned a good bit of support in the nominations thread. After all, as you mentioned, giving music to your friends in the form of actual mixes on media that they now own means that you dont have to worry about your playlists vanishing when a service goes belly up, or when someones music gets removed because of copyright issues, or anything like that. Sometimes the best ways to share music are the old school ones. We couldnt agree more.

Have something to say about one of the contenders? Want to make the case for your personal favorite, even if it wasnt included in the list? Remember, the top five are based on your most popular nominations from the call for contenders thread from earlier in the week. Dont just complain about the top five, let us know what your preferred alternative isand make your case for itin the discussions below.

The Hive Five is based on reader nominations. As with most Hive Five posts, if your favorite was left out, it didnt get the nominations required in the call for contenders post to make the top five. We understand its a bit of a popularity contest. Have a suggestion for the Hive Five? Send us an email at tips+!

Title photo by Bloomua [Shutterstock].