Best Acoustic Guitar Songs: the History
BAGS’ birth dates back to 2021 when I was preparing for an important university exam (Italian criminal procedural law, to be more precise). Like many other students, I was used to listening to music while studying, and by that time, after more than 13 years playing the classical guitar, I was dreaming about finally buying an acoustic guitar. And what do I do when I need musical inspiration? Obviously, I look for some Spotify playlists.
Well, the result was quite disappointing. After searching ‘acoustic guitar’ on the app I found three main editorial playlists:
Peaceful Guitar, but it’s based on instrumental songs
Acoustic Covers, which, as the name suggests, not only entails just covers, but there’s also too much piano involved (other editorial acoustic playlists such as Acoustic Love, Feel Good Acoustic, Acoustic Chill, etc. have the same’ issue’)
Acoustic Rock: great list, but too many electric guitars and pianos involved
So I thought: ‘well, if Spotify didn’t think about creating its own acoustic guitar list that is not focused on only one genre, then I’ll do it!’. I started by adding what according to my taste are the 30 best acoustic guitar songs ever written. The title of the list therefore came up naturally: Best Acoustic Guitar Songs.
My starting point was Jack Johnson’s album ‘In Between Dreams’; songs like ‘Better Together’, ‘Banana Pancakes’, ‘Sitting, Waiting, Wishing’ are part and parcel of my life’s soundtrack. My idea was to combine these songs with other songs by other folk artists such as Ed Sheeran and Passenger, but especially with acoustic songs from my favourite rock bands such as Red Hot Chili Peppers, Green Day, Foo Fighters, etc. (you’ll read more about this in the blogpost about BAGS’ content).
You also have to know that I’ve always been making public Spotify playlists because my friends have always appreciated them. This is why I was so surprised when one day I noticed that my list got 50 likes, despite the fact that I didn't have 50 friends with such a good taste for music (sorry, guys!).
Apparently, both the title and my idea worked out, so I decided to make these strangers happier by adding more songs. Followers kept coming in parallel with the addition of songs, until the list was about to reach 1.000 followers, without even a cover nor a proper description. At that point I shared this simple thought with my friends: ‘we’re in the year 2022 and people make money out of literally everything, so there’s for sure a way to bring my creation to a more professional level’.
Everybody agreed so I started my research and found out that there are some online platforms which allow you to monetize your playlists by reviewing songs, whether you add them or not. I sent two ‘applications’: one to Submithub, who answered after two weeks and rejected me, and the other to Playlistpush, who accepted me on the 15th of February 2022. On the same day, I received my first song and the rest is history.
Today, BAGS contains 200 songs, has more than 50.000 followers, supports 800 artists and brings more than 1 million listeners per year. Insane.
Simply put, BAGS is born just to fill what in my opinion was an unjustifiable gap on Spotify.
P.S. I got my first acoustic guitar, a Taylor 214-ce, as a graduation present from my grandma in April 2022 and I love it!