Last.fm's 2011 statistics

M

man and machine

Wild Horses
Last.fm's just published their 2011 review along with a subset the data and it makes for an interesting view of what people (on last.fm at least) are actually listening too...

Just dumped the data into excel quick. They've published artist overall plays and artist reach, so simple division shows the average play per user, which makes for a very interesting alternate perspective on the chart. These in particular jumped out as I was scanning through:

Lady Gaga [2 overall] 56 plays/fan
Radiohead [9 overall] 87 plays/fan
Katy B [27 overall] 12 plays/fan
Florence + the Machine [37 overall] 51 plays/fan
Mogwai [56 overall] 45 plays/fan
The Weekend [70 overall] 40 plays/fan
Tyler, the creator [87 overall] 43 plays/fan

Skepta [218 overall] 8 plays/fan
Emalkay [355 overall] 8 plays/fan
Joker [369 overall] 8 plays/fan
Devin Townsend Project [379 overall] 76 plays/fan
Rustie [487 overall] 11 plays/fan
Sepalcure [573 overall] 11 plays/fan
Chipmunk [579 overall] 7 plays/fan
Pusha T [611 overall] 7 plays/fan
Egyptrixx [701 overall] 8 plays/fan
the GazettE [724 overall] 196 plays/fan
Belong [798 overall] 13 plays/fan
DELS [800 overall] 7 plays/fan
Seefeel [868 overall] 10 plays/fan
Kode9 & the Spaceape [956 overall] 11 plays/fan
FaltyDL [999 overall] 15 plays/fan

On the one hand you've got artists that have massive reach but on average people only listen to their album once or twice and others who people may not have and big a reach but make music people spend much more time with... [eg. the GazettE (some jpop band) who average close to 200 listens per fan.]

There's the long standing gripe that play count does not give a true indication of time spent listening, mogwai and belong would be good examples, but still makes for interesting statistics.
 
R

rrrivero

Well-known member
I think it says more about the users than it does about the music: the average people who listen to gaga, radiohead and that jpop band are probably the kind of people who can't really bother with expanding their horizons too much and re-listen to the same stuff, whereas people who can bother with finding artists like Kode9 will likely go out and find a dozen artists like him etc

edit: I don't completely follow the structure here, what does the number in square brackets indicate? Like Lady Gaga [2]
editedit: oh right, general rank
 
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bruno

bruno

est malade
what would be interesting to know is average track length, the eternal problem of last fm being that a twenty minute song and a one minute song each count as one listen. a quick look at the gazzette profile reveals 43, 44 second songs (i'm not sure how this is possible). so the rabid fanbase, adoption rates of last fm in jpop circles, etc. could explain the position of the band, while the elevated n plays per fan the fact that they are short songs.
 
M

man and machine

Wild Horses
rrrivero said:
I think it says more about the users than it does about the music: the average people who listen to gaga, radiohead and that jpop band are probably the kind of people who can't really bother with expanding their horizons too much and re-listen to the same stuff, whereas people who can bother with finding artists like Kode9 will likely go out and find a dozen artists like him etc
Click to expand...

thats a valid point. i'm that type of listener and it's something i grapple with all the time, finding new music versus spending time listening and getting familiar with it. those number seem to suggest that it's a more common phenomena than i thought it was.

but yeah they're more a curiosity than solid empirical evidence
 
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