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.