A slight return to top fives after a frantic week of recording every piece of music I listened to for seven days as part of the Music Diary 2012 project. Whilst that was interesting as far as it went I felt I needed something a bit more from the process. A big list of songs is all well and good but I needed some sort of scientific analysis of what this all meant. What did this sample of my music taste suggest about me as a person? Where there any unexpected trends I wasn't consciously aware of? I needed some sort of conclusion. Something colourful. Something pretty. Something pie-chart shaped!
I love a good pie chart.
1. Top 5 Bands - The list of bands I listened to was dominated by the two artists I saw play live that week. A combination of both being hot listens for me right now and my ongoing obsession with listing everything I do. To be honest his proved to be the only obvious pattern in my listening habits, other than an excessive use of the iPod shuffle facility. Field Music claimed 3rd thanks to a new album that has 16 songs on it. Efrim of Godspeed got 4th because his album was so good I played it twice in a row. My Bloody Valentine and The Gun Club tied for 5th due to single plays of their albums.
Seeing as Google Docs cut off the rest of my legend here's the list of bands included on the graph. Much as I'm sure you're as keen about completeness as I am I figured I'd spare you the full list of artists by cutting it off at bands who featured less than four times.
Trembling Bells & Bonnie Prince Billy - 29
Laura J Martin - 27
Field Music - 16
Efrim Menuck - 15
My Bloody Valentine - 11
The Gun Club - 11
The Antlers - 10
Trembling Bells - 10
Pegasvs - 9
Pixies - 8
Napoleon IIIrd - 7
Beth Jeans Houghton - 5
Black Lips - 4
The Go! Team - 4
Trembling Bells & Muldoon's Picnic - 4
2. Top 5 Genres - I based this on a fairly broad consideration of the genre of band and tried not to think too hard about whether Trembling Bells are New-Folk or Folk-Rock or Alt-Folk-Rock. I expected Folk to form the largest chunk so was surprised to find how significantly Indie had whooped Folk's arse. I think this is partly due to the vagueness of Indie as a genre (it's a neat container for a lot of guitar led new music) but clearly I'm a bigger Indie-kid than perhaps I might normally admit.
3. Top 5 Locations - So, Work and Home proved to be where I do most of my music listening. This is perhaps a little surprising when you take into account I do most of my music listening on my own. At work I suppose I make the most of the times when I'm on my own, at home I take any chance I can get (and wear headphones a lot).
4. Top 5 Devices - No major surprises here as my iPods provide me with the choice of music I want pretty much wherever I am. I've not had a proper hi-fi set up for over 10 years but I'm no audiophile and the convenience of the Pod is a wondrous thing. In another week the BBC iPlayer may have featured more significantly. The one interesting point is how many different devices enable me to play music. We really are living in the future, jet packs and hoover cars can not be too far round the corner.
5. Top 5 other numbers - Er, I've run out of pretty graphs so here are a few extra numbers to tide you over.
Total songs played = 321
Average songs played per day = 45
Approx time spent listening to music per week* = 21 hours 24 minutes
Approx average time spent listening to music per day = 3 hours 3 minutes
Number of different artists = 138
* based on rough estimate of average 4 minute song length.
.
I love a good pie chart.
1. Top 5 Bands - The list of bands I listened to was dominated by the two artists I saw play live that week. A combination of both being hot listens for me right now and my ongoing obsession with listing everything I do. To be honest his proved to be the only obvious pattern in my listening habits, other than an excessive use of the iPod shuffle facility. Field Music claimed 3rd thanks to a new album that has 16 songs on it. Efrim of Godspeed got 4th because his album was so good I played it twice in a row. My Bloody Valentine and The Gun Club tied for 5th due to single plays of their albums.
Seeing as Google Docs cut off the rest of my legend here's the list of bands included on the graph. Much as I'm sure you're as keen about completeness as I am I figured I'd spare you the full list of artists by cutting it off at bands who featured less than four times.
Trembling Bells & Bonnie Prince Billy - 29
Laura J Martin - 27
Field Music - 16
Efrim Menuck - 15
My Bloody Valentine - 11
The Gun Club - 11
The Antlers - 10
Trembling Bells - 10
Pegasvs - 9
Pixies - 8
Napoleon IIIrd - 7
Beth Jeans Houghton - 5
Black Lips - 4
The Go! Team - 4
Trembling Bells & Muldoon's Picnic - 4
2. Top 5 Genres - I based this on a fairly broad consideration of the genre of band and tried not to think too hard about whether Trembling Bells are New-Folk or Folk-Rock or Alt-Folk-Rock. I expected Folk to form the largest chunk so was surprised to find how significantly Indie had whooped Folk's arse. I think this is partly due to the vagueness of Indie as a genre (it's a neat container for a lot of guitar led new music) but clearly I'm a bigger Indie-kid than perhaps I might normally admit.
3. Top 5 Locations - So, Work and Home proved to be where I do most of my music listening. This is perhaps a little surprising when you take into account I do most of my music listening on my own. At work I suppose I make the most of the times when I'm on my own, at home I take any chance I can get (and wear headphones a lot).
4. Top 5 Devices - No major surprises here as my iPods provide me with the choice of music I want pretty much wherever I am. I've not had a proper hi-fi set up for over 10 years but I'm no audiophile and the convenience of the Pod is a wondrous thing. In another week the BBC iPlayer may have featured more significantly. The one interesting point is how many different devices enable me to play music. We really are living in the future, jet packs and hoover cars can not be too far round the corner.
5. Top 5 other numbers - Er, I've run out of pretty graphs so here are a few extra numbers to tide you over.
Total songs played = 321
Average songs played per day = 45
Approx time spent listening to music per week* = 21 hours 24 minutes
Approx average time spent listening to music per day = 3 hours 3 minutes
Number of different artists = 138
* based on rough estimate of average 4 minute song length.
.
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