Interactive Record / Apple Music Export
alta record of return
A playlist can become a record of what the mind returns to when no one asks it to explain.
alt is a collection of songs I chose to keep. Its order is not a composition. With one or two re-entry exceptions, it approximates the sequence in which the songs became worth keeping.
That makes it a rough chronology of recognition.
01 / The Field
Return leaves a shape.
Move across the field—or tap a mark—to read an individual song.
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How to read the field
Two kinds of duration.
Each song occupies one position along the exported favorite sequence. The mark above the center line shows recurrence: the play count Apple Music reported at export. The mark below shows time carried: the years between entry into the music library and export.
Library age and favorite order are separate. A song can have been carried for years and favorited much later. A recent song can recur with extraordinary force.
- Above
- Recorded plays, shown on a logarithmic scale
- Below
- Years carried in the music library
- Across
- Approximate sequence of recognition
03 / Recurrence
Attention is concentrated. It is not narrow.
The most-played songs are visible, but they do not consume the field. Recurrence is distributed across more than half the collection. The shape is not a handful of obsessions with filler beneath them. It is a wide system of return.
04 / Provenance and Limits
Measured honestly. Interpreted by its owner.
The exported order is not a deliberately arranged listening order. It approximates favorite order because the playlist was built through favoriting. One or two songs disappeared and were later restored, making their current positions chronology exceptions.
Apple Music’s Date Added records entry into the music library—not the date a song was favorited. Play counts are preserved as Apple Music reported them at export. The source cannot establish every context, exact favorite date, or reason for return.
The original XML remains private because it contains local file paths and machine-specific identifiers. The public record contains only the fields used to construct this surface.