Uplister was a playlist focused music startup with several hundred thousand users that operated from 2000-2002. Similar to the mix tapes that music fans made in the 70s and 80s, Uplister let music lovers make playlists of their favorite songs, annotate them with stories about why they loved them, and then share the lists with other fans from all over the world.
Uplister became not just a place to discover great music for a workout or a road trip, but increasingly acted like an early blogging platform with people using playlists to talk about ways to get over a romantic breakup, meet like minded fans, or share whatever was happening in their lives. Uplister’s library grew to many thousands of great playlists, some from famous people:
and many from regular music fans:
Uplister integration in Winamp was popular:
Uplister 2.0 was going to include a music subscription service:
In 2003, Jennifer Waits presented a great paper about playlists that includes additional background on Uplister. Finally, here is an early Uplister investor presentation.