My favorite music
People always ask “what’s your favorite music”—a harder question to answer than it might seem. Rather than try to stab in the dark, I resort to data analytics. Obviously.
I recently found this wonderful website called Skiley that you connect to your Spotify account and it spits out all sorts of wonderful data.
In a previous post, I listed my favorite artists by play count. Skiley assigns a weighting based on recently played as well. This helps distinguish between all-time favorite into what I’m playing more at the moment.
| June 2019 (most plays) | February 2020 (Skiley) |
|---|---|
| VAST | Ludovico Einaudi |
| Ludovico Einaudi | David Byrne |
| Enya | Brett Dennen |
| David Byrne | Sia |
| Brett Dennen | Iron & Wine |
| REM | REM |
| Sia | Imogen Heap |
| Iron & Wine | Beatles |
| Beatles | Passenger |
| Two Lone Swordsmen | Of Monsters and Men |
So, what did I learn:
- Ludovico Einaudi, Passenger, Of Monsters and Men, David Byrne, Iron & Wine have moved up, probably due to recent concerts and/or albums
- Sia has moved up because I recently dug into her back catalog
- Imogen Heap is a new discovery
- VAST, Two Lone Swordsmen, and Enya have historically been favorite artists but I don’t listen much anymore
There is a lot of fascinating data on Skiley, but my favorite is where it breaks down the genres of music it thinks I like, some of which I’ve never heard of.
| Genre | Percentage |
|---|---|
| Permanent Wave | 16% |
| Neo Mellow | 16% |
| Indie Folk | 15% |
| Stomp and Holler | 15% |
| Art Punk | 14% |
| Art Rock | 14% |
| Dance Rock | 14% |
| Pop Rock | 12% |
| Acoustic Pop | 11% |
| Art Pop | 8% |
Also above 5% are: Rock, Pop, Funk Rock, New Wave, Post-Punk, Zolo, Bow Pop, Compositional Ambient, Neo-Classical, Indie Pop
This makes me seem incredibly cool. Maybe it will do the same for you.