Last.fm 2013 Q4 Listening Trends

By EricMesa

January 2, 2014 - 5 minutes read - 1013 words

This quarter I mostly listened to my music on pure random with a few variations which’ll be accounted for below. This finally allowed The Beatles to place in 2013. In the last few weeks I just listened to music that I added in this quarter to make sure I had a chance to get to know some of the newer songs.

[caption id=“attachment_7569” align=“aligncenter” width=“500”] FIF Concert (Nov 2013)[/caption]

1. Five Iron Frenzy (198 listens) - I had a a FIF listening blitz leading up to their November Concert (which I still have to finish the blog post for). Lyrically, I think it’s the best album they’ve ever put out. Sonically, I think it’s in my top 3. 2. Celia Cruz (107 listens) - Almost all (if not certainly all) of these listens happened in the last month. Someone gave me Celia Cruz Absolute Collection for my birthday or Christmas (I’m so bad at remembering who gives me what - especially because I received all my gifts in quick succession over Thanksgiving) and I loved it. It has all of Celia’s top songs from her entire career . I think it’s a great survey of how she evolved as an artist. The collection contained tons of gems I’d never heard because they came out way before I was born and weren’t played on the radio when I was growing up. 3. MxPx (101 listens) - Digitizing the I Fight Dragons flexi-disc motivated me to once again try to digitize my live MxPx album. In addition to listening to my newly created files, I also went back and listened to some of the older stuff. 4. Alan Menken (80 listens) - Scarlett discovered the ability to request for us to play certain songs for her. I spent much of December playing The Little Mermaid sountrack for her. I also played the Aladdin soundtrack for her. So Alan Menken comes out of nowwhere to the #4 spot for this quarter. 5. Anamanaguchi (62 listens) - More love for Endless Fantasy. I really, really like that album. 6. ?? (HyunA) (53 listens) - I your really want to understand how obsessive toddlers can be over music, this is the perfect example. All but two of these listens were from Scarlett requesting to listen to HyunA. And a vast majority of these listens are for Bubble Pop. Thanks to Google Play caching the song on my phone, even Dina is now well-versed in HyunA’s single.

http://youtu.be/bw9CALKOvAI 7. Michael Giacchino (51 listens) - This came from listening to some Pixar Soundtracks. Can’t blame Scarlett for these. I just really like Giacchino’s work. 8. The Chipmunks (44 listens) - All these listens come from my gift of The Chipmunks Christmas Vol 2. I’m pretty sure this gift came from my mom because we used to listen to the record of Chipmunks Christmas music pretty obsessively as kids and I think she mentioned that’s why she gave it to me. I listened to it a couple times on my own and then it just came up a bunch while I had my Christmas music dynamic playlist active. 9. Anberlin (41 listens) - Still really love Vital. Check it out whether you are, were, or never were a fan of Anberlin. I think it’s a great album. 10. Ari Pulkkinen (40 listens) - I got Trine 2 and its soundtrack as part of some Humble Bundle that had other games I really wanted. It’s an average soundtrack. Doesn’t jump out at me, but doesn’t suck. 10. Vampire Weekend (40 listens) - Dan got me Modern Vampires of the City. I’ve not been a huge Vampire Weekend fan, but I have liked some of their songs here and there. Interestingly, while Danielle has been opposed to Vampire Weekend in the past, she actually likes this album. Well, she really likes “Diane Young”; I’m not sure how much more of the album she’s heard. 12. Jodi Benson (39 listens) - Again, this comes from The Little Mermaid soundtrack. Put this together with the Alan Menken songs and it would take second place. Yeah….I listened to THAT MUCH Little Mermaid in December. 12. Todd Glass (39 listens) - from his album Todd Glass Talks about Stuff which I got from a comedy Humble Bundle. All I really wanted was the Hannibal Buress CD, so it was a nice bonus that I really liked this comedy special. 14. The Beatles (37 listens) - The Beatles finally make it back to the quarterly list although they’re near the bottom. Thanks to the pure random playlist they came up a bunch of times. They may make a comeback in 2014 as it’s been long enough since I really listened to some of the better Beatles albums and may throw them on the playlist, especially Let It Be. 15. Samuel E. Wright (35 listens) - Sebastian from The Little Mermaid. That’s right, if you took all The Little Mermaid songs together it would ALMOST have toppled Five Iron Frenzy from the top of the list. Scary….

Stats

Total Songs: 13 417 (up from 12 927) - A less dramatic jump in the end of the year as I only gained 500 new songs.

Total Artists: 3996 (up from 3891) - Not only did I gain about half as many songs, but I also gained half as many new artists in this quarter. Makes sense that the two are so tightly coupled since most of my new songs tend to be singles by new artists highlighted in Rolling Stone.

Total Albums: 3052 (up from 2 955) - Unlike last quarter’s strange anomaly, there was an increase in the number of albums.

Average Songs Per Album: 4.39 ( a slight increase from 4.37)

Average Songs Per Artist: 3.36 (also a slight incrasea from 3.32)

Scrobbles at End of Quarter: 71,080

Total Scrobbles for this Quarter: 2 231. The top 15 accounted for 967 or 43% of the totals scrobbles this quarter. So a much higher concentration of listens within the top 15 than last quarter where it was just 32%.