Since I was a teenager I have always loved music and at the same time have also had an affinity for numbers. Put the two together and what more could a young boy want? I’m talking about charts. I was addicted to them. Still am. I fervently refresh my last.fm profile page on Sunday nights and Monday mornings to see my personal weekly charts. In the past I used to listen to the South African charts live on the radio to see how my predictions for the movements of certain tracks had panned out. I used to buy British pop magazines to read the UK charts. I would stay up late on the weekends to watch US video charts. I got pen pals in Morocco to put the North African charts on postcards and send them to me. You get the picture.
Now most of these charts have something in common – they generally feature new music and there is a lot of change from week to week. A hot new tune could shake things up in the space of a few days. This is where the last.fm top tracks chart differs. Top tracks summarises what our users have listened to in the past week and while this often does include new music, if a whole bunch of people decided to go retro and relive the 80s by playing Public Enemy constantly, then Public Enemy would show up, even though they haven’t released anything (good) in years. Now, this has a certain charm to it and it can be interesting to see when an artist generates a lot of publicity (by dying for example) that they leap up the charts without there being any new music from them during that period. However it can also be really boring when the charts just stay the same for months on end.
Case in point. If you go back to Top Tracks for the week ending Sunday 14 October 2007 you will see the 10 songs on Radiohead’s “Rainbows” album (which was released that week) come out of nowhere, blasting Kanye West from number 1 and taking over the entire top 10. At the time I thought, wow, cool, this really is proof of the power of a new model of releasing music over the internet directly to your fans. It also shows that the whole album is popular, not just a few “singles” which would be released with a bunch of wack filler tracks around them. So far so good. Christmas came and went without anybody managing to get a word in on the top 10. After 18 or so weeks, the top 10 tracks were still all Rainbows. Yawn. I’m not a big Radiohead fan at the best of times, so this was really starting to get to me. Please, somebody, anybody, release something awesome and save the charts from Radiohead!
And then two weeks ago it happened, someone else managed to nudge their way not only into the top 10, but into the number one spot no less. It wasn’t a new song though, it was Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab” which saw a resurgence of popularity in the wake of her Grammy winnings. “Back to black” also made it in at number 9. Now, I’m not a big Amy fan either, but hey, at least here was something shaking things up a bit. Was this beginnng of the end for Rainbows in the Top 10? As much as a I would like to think so, last week saw them snatch number 1 back and drop Amy down to number 5. Ho hum.
Am I the only person who finds the Top Tracks chart boring? Surely not? Being a chart addict a few possible solutions come to mind – for example, adding more charts. Charts by tag could be nice, especially if more people were as anal as me when it comes to tagging music by genre. More detailed hype charts which would focus on new music? Charts which only cover music that was recently released? A worldwide Radiohead boycott? We are actually working on some of these at the moment (not the boycott!) and they will hopefully see the light of day in the coming months. If you’ve got ideas, we’d love to hear ‘em.
Comments
Jelle
26 February, 16:48
I can only say I look forward to any new statistical features, since for me too, that is one of the main hit aspects of last.fm for me.
About the supposed boringness of the charts, … Charts are charts! They are The Truth. :) To me, there is no boring or unboring about them! But indeed, creating new interesting charts would be extra cool.
One other stats-related thing I would like to point the attention to (I have tried to do so in the forums several times, but without response from any admin): group charts only go back to October 2006! That is one major ‘bug’ that I would like to see solved. Where is all the older data?
Cheers
stephen
26 February, 16:49
How about this: a chart that counts only “first plays” — so it lists the songs that, last week, reached the most new people? Radiohead would have killed — for one week. But unless all those people got their friends introduced the next week, they’d have slipped down the charts a lot.
Perhaps the converse is also interesting, though a bit harder to figure. Which artists were played most often per listener? I’m curious whether this would end up benefiting artists with staying power, or just artists whose songs were so insanely catchy that you need to listen to them constantly for a week just so they don’t get stuck, advertising-jingle-like, in the back of your head.
Julius de Hond
26 February, 16:54
I really agree with you on this point, it’s rather boring that Radiohead have conquered the charts for the past weeks. I ain’t such a big Radiohead lover either but I don’t think a boycott would be such a good idea. The thing they have done is very revolutional and shook up the music bizz.
I love the idea of more detailed music charts. With such an enormous user number those charts reflect what’s popular in the world and can potentially get rid of the ‘official’ music charts.
Thomas
26 February, 16:55
I can’t help you an solving this but I want you to know that you took the words right out of my mouth :) Here is an interesting approach in “normalizing” the last.fm charts (for a specific user at least): http://tinyurl.com/2haerx
Apollo Lemmon
26 February, 17:09
What about tracking new releases only? I imagine this would be complicated to implement, but only including albums recently commercially released could alleviate perennial internet darling syndrome for one chart.
heavyraptor
26 February, 17:56
I’m looking forward too to new statistic features … but anyway, I don’t think that it makes any big sense, because the actual statistics simply show the reality. The mainstream is on the top and it wouldn’t make any sense to change that … as suggested before, last.fm should maybe include the length of the scrobbled tracks, not only the number of tracks scrobbled … maybe this would change the charts too – and the charts would turn into “more logical” charts.
Nectar_Card
26 February, 18:41
yeah charts by tag would be good. That way each of the music sub-cultures would get their charts. At the moment only the mainstreamers get any sort of chart.
midwinter-az
26 February, 19:09
I’m curious, in the general top artists/tracks lists, how last.fm radio plays stack up vs. user plays. ie: someone streaming a pre-programmed last.fm station vs. playing tracks from their own, personal collection. I’ve noticed that, when I listen to artist radio stations, the tracks lean heavily towards radio hits rather than back catalogue. Great for hooking a new listener or a casual fan, but a more involved fan might want more. So, do the top tracks really show the most popular songs per artist (ie: what the fans are playing), or is it just that people are only playing the songs they’ve heard on terrestrial radio.
I’d love to see extra radio stations built around what the top fans are listening to, rather than what’s generally accepted as popular by an artist. Neighborhood radio and “Songs like …” are good, but what do the true fans prefer? That’s the kind of music that fascinates me.
Using the Radiohead example, I want a station that shows what people with the most Radiohead tracks scrobbled are listening to rather than what’s hot at the moment. I’d guess that the fans have a much broader scope of tracks and/or related artists than someone just checking in on the hype/hot tracks.
If that makes sense…
tiago
26 February, 19:23
forget about top charts :) the charts that matters are ours, and our friends’. what everybody is listening? who cares? :D
Guillermo79
26 February, 19:24
I’d love to see an interface where I can create my charts (e.g. Top 10 Irish musics this week), however I’m not sure if this feature wouldn’t over stress your databases trying to handle thousands of unique personal queries from the users around the world.
Rhythm and Soul
26 February, 20:07
Just picking a bone: It’s “In Rainbows” not just “Rainbows”. Makes all the difference.
Roman
26 February, 20:07
I love Radiohead, and I’m fine with their being at the top. Also, the album is named “In Rainbows”, not just “Rainbows”
Justin
26 February, 20:27
I’m amazed every week at the popularity of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
A.J.
26 February, 20:39
I love numbers and music as well.
Here’s an idea: How about allowing users to churn their charts anyway possible like a Last.FM excel spreadsheet?
In my case, I would like to have automated charts by tag/month or week. I would especially like to be able to make graphs to see how different tags rise and drop over time. Summertime will have more summer music, etc. (I must say that the statistics group has truly made incredibly useful programs for everyone)
Tracking artist growth within a tag or watching them change over time would also be great as well. Visuals are a plus too!
Giving control of the parameters to the user will probably be the best bet so that we can obsess over numbers to infinity :D
And then, please do the neighbors calculations by the last 3 month rollover instead of overall listens (or let us choose our settings…even better!). Although I love my neighbors’ taste (Hi Wendy!), everybody’s taste evolves and fresh neighbors would make the experience much broader and enriching.
KoRn-fAn
26 February, 20:40
I can say that I’m not an huge fan of these top charts because most of it is mainstream. And I recognize many of these songs back to MTV and commercials on TV. Not all of this music is mainstream, but pretty much.
I just care about my own charts and my neighbors’ so i agree Tiago :D
A.J.
26 February, 20:44
I just wish Last.Fm had statistics options like Google Analytics. But then again, I do like sunshine.
ironialljam
26 February, 20:55
I don’t think the top tracks charts were ever interesting to be honest. Even before Radiohead it always seemed to be something which had been out for ages, by one of those artists who lots of people seem to like but no one seems to really like, like the foo fighters – ‘The Pretender’ is still up there. And how long had ‘Stronger’ been out when it was still top. Its more interesting to look at whats happening further down the charts, but I think the Radiohead domination has actually added a bit of interest to the charts.
moleris
26 February, 21:32
@stephen – if you look at the charts they are ranked by number of unique listners (so repeated plays are discounted). Rehab had far more plays this week than the top Radiohead track, but less individuals listened to it, so she only makes 5th.
My opinion is that the charts don’t lie, and the fact that Radiohead have been top for this long is in it’s self very interesting (OK I may be biased because they are my top artist – but not by much :)
I’d love to see more ways to mash up the charts and find interesting patterns. Greatest number of plays per unique listener shouldn’t be too difficult and might throw up some suprises…
moleris
26 February, 21:35
Dang, just realised that wasn’t what he was suggesting… Oh well, must learn to sit in a darkened room for 5 minutes before ever pressing ‘submit’.
SEoD
26 February, 22:38
A chart of the top 10 new entries into (say) the top 1000 would be interesting, although the nature of a weekly chart is that it will be biased against acts whose popularity starts to rise part-way through a week – they would be a low new entry in week 1 and disqualified in week 2!
Alexandre
26 February, 23:04
Just add a Filter!!!
So that you can see the charts without this or that artist. I.E: The charts show the 200 most listened songs from last week. Then I go there and Filter: “-artist:Radiohead”. It reloads the chart and shows the 200 first tracks but without anything from Radiohead.
I also would REALLY want this feature for my own charts.
Jesse
27 February, 00:05
Stephen’s idea of only counting the “first plays” of each user was the one that immediately occurred to me as well. The first play seems to be a good proxy for sales figures.
Providing something like Google Trends for songs would be amazing. You could make graphs of the popularity of songs or artists over time, and graph them against each other.
Being able to generate charts based on tags, as suggested above, and by country would also be interesting. Then you could have your Moroccan charts again.
mattgcn
27 February, 00:36
I’m all for new charts (more personal charts would be fun too, not to mention a more often-updated rolling chart) buttt
PLEASE get iPod scrobbling working well first. Getting the data in first, then prettying it up, you know?
<3
dissi
27 February, 00:45
skip the top 10 and be happy with the rest.
it could be worse.
the bands’ top 10 does not change that much neither: you’ll always have the beatles, radiohead, red hot chilli peppers, metallica, nirvana, coldplay …
Campbell
27 February, 09:44
I think that a user’s top 50 arists / songs should be highlighted in the charts, and be a different colour if they have moved up or down (like the typical yellow for stay, red for decrese, red for increase). It would be an interesting way to measure out how your favourites are fairing in the general world-wide audience.
Nectar_Card
27 February, 10:35
Haha Alexandre, yes! a Radiohead filter be awesome! Totally filter them out of last.fm , never have your group charts or the top artists/tracks chart polluted again!
non-top chart oriented
27 February, 10:43
There’s a top tracks chart? I never really noticed.
heavyraptor
27 February, 11:41
Btw I think last.fm should first clean the charts … like count “Song” and “01 – Song” etc. as the same tracks … when will this be done?
devolute
27 February, 13:26
Maybe if Radiohead could stop releasing music of good quality for minimal cost, the charts would be different. Those selfish bastards!
Michael
27 February, 14:23
How about this – a chart that will count one play per song per user. But then this chart will grow as last.fm grows with its user base. The chart doesn’t reset and each user can only ever add to the playcount once ever. This way we can see for instance how many unique listeners there are to Mr Brightside by The Killers for example. I realise each song page has a playcount, but I’m not sure if that is unique users or what. Anyway it would be able to compare the number of unique listeners to each song, and would steadily build as last.fm continues.
Wouldn’t it be cool to see what song is the most popular ever on last.fm, and not just in the past week?
Sorry if I over-worded that a bit heh…
A.J.
27 February, 15:04
+1 to filters idea
+1 to indicating if you are a top listener of a certain artist on your chart :P
+1 to showing the movement within your charts, not only the artists of the week…
I can’t get mad at Radiohead for taking over like this. This (relatively new and definitely new on such a grand scale) business plan will turn the music industry on its head. The less middlemen the better.
seriously though…google analytics + last.fm = brain orgy <3
Thom Yorke
27 February, 16:41
Once again, Radiohead uber fans ruin it for everyone.
Lars
27 February, 17:30
How about more group charts?
Like overall charts, monthly, yearly, graphs, up/down etc.
This way the “I hate Radiohead”
group could get their own charts ;)wobuzhedao
28 February, 03:37
How about stopping ghost accounts?
Like this, for instance… I find it extremely suspicious: http://www.last.fm/user/AleXX%5Bjournals.ru%5D/
How can anyone listen so much Radiohead? Or any other band?
timmyalIen
28 February, 04:34
what about we choose an artist and blast there whole album to the top of the charts in a few weeks time, that will pretty much completely knock Radiohead off it.
just a thought, but i do like the sound of charts by tags.
Mike
28 February, 10:54
Contrary to Public Enemy’s advice, maybe we should believe the hype- hype/ zeitgeist charts would be an great way of discovering the cool new stuff people are getting into.
Also, please reconsider your position on implementing a Worldwide Radiohead Boycott. I for one would be more than happy to partake.
shov1
28 February, 12:12
I’d like to see the total number of weekly listens and listeners displayed at the top of the charts so we can see the absolute popularity of a track/artist rather than just the relative popularity.
some visuals would be great as well, something like an all users lastgraph.
PWotton, who seems to like the slash symbol
28 February, 23:49
How about rolling 3, 6, 12 month Overall Top Tracks/Artists charts for the whole site?
Slightly off-topic but I’d prefer the user overall charts not to be rolling, I like them in synch with the weekly top tracks so I can see the movement in a given week.
Maybe we could have a choice, as an option?
And then update the 3/6/12-month charts the next day, and the neighbourhood stuff, etc.
For the site-wide stuff, yeah I agree the overall top charts are a bit boring. What interests me is what will happen if/when the fingerprinting results kick in. i.e. Arcade Fire / The Arcade Fire will almost certainly get a big jump. And also if this will be applied retrospectively.
BTW if there is a Worldwide Radiohead Boycott I’ll organise a Worldwide Radiohead Anti-Boycott / Love-in to cancel it out…
lytron
29 February, 07:44
Let’s start a Falco retro week. Guess this should be started from the Last.fm-Headquarter to get it through. Let’s push “Rock me Amadeus” far above the “Rainbows”. ;-)
HodgeStar
29 February, 11:49
One reason for this rainbow phenomenon could be that it was an internet release from a single source. Everyone who listen to it has exactly the same mp3 files. At the current Amy Winehouse top 100 charts we find:
One could call this the rainbow of last.fm caused by tag dispersion. It makes your overall track charts useless or at least hard to read. Furthermore, there surly is a correlation between the number of internet users who buy music online and the number of last.fm users.
You probably know all this. I only say that because your are the first voice from the last.hq who shows some interest in this.
ndv
29 February, 13:37
Personally, I’d like charts (and radio) based on my neighbours’ weekly listening. That would be a great way to find new music that’s likely to be of interest to me personally.
Also, these new chart ideas are great but please don’t take away the honesty of the current top tracks chart. Although it is boring, it shows how chronically manipulated other “charts” are.
gwalla
1 March, 00:18
I like that “top first plays” chart idea. It’s the best idea in this thread.
I’m also interested in a type of chart that would give less mainstream stuff a day in the sun, but the trick is to make it (1) not be based on arbitrary cutoffs, (2) not rely on hard-coded whitelists or blacklists, and (3) actually mean something! This is not a simple task.
tobyz1
1 March, 21:17
@wobuzhedao: You took the words out of my mouth. How can anyone play the same artist 1872 times a week? That’s 312 times a day for 6 days. At 3 minutes per play, that’s close to 16 hours a day — EVERY day for 6 days! Either he’s gone bonkers or his computer is on autoplay while he’s at his girlfriend’s or playing soccer all week.
Nor is Alexx the only or most extreme example of unrealistic overplay. Pimpsofgoree listened to the Beatles 2686 times this week.
That’s 373 times a day seven days a week, 18+ hours a day for a 3-minute play.
The top charts are built by people like these.
tobyz1
1 March, 21:27
To me, the ideal charts would be categorized by genus. Since last.fm doesn’t track genus, ‘tag’ charts could be a reasonable substitute. So here’s one more vote, added to comments above, for tag charts.
I’m of an age where ‘mainstream’ charts do don’t much for me. My preferences tend to run to ethnic music, soundtrack, and new age. I don’t expect any of my favorites to make the ‘top’ charts.
I notice, however, that much of what I like appears to have been scrobbled 100,000 – 200,000 times. That means they’ve been well-listened to, but certainly not by the mainstream audience.
I’d like to see a variation of chart based on a scrobble number filter. Input a number and see the top 100 tracks that don’t exceed that number of plays. Now that’s a great discovery tool!
Simon
3 March, 00:05
+ 1 for tag charts, as it was already done to Weekly Top Downloads: http://www.lastfm.ru/music/+free/ – 1 for Overall 12, 6 and even 3-month charts of the site.
What about charts calculated by annonymous IPs? That would be a kill for ‘ghost scrobblers’.
Picture yourself this tale. To make scrobbles possible, you and your grandmother use a single Internet Service Provider. She listens a lot to Paris Hilton, but she is also stuck on Headbanger genre and Hardstyle genre. You like Paris Hilton, too, but you prefer Eurotrance genre and other Pop shit. You have two ‘Island 2’ neighbours, both of them are plain fans of Eurotrance genre. The folks claim to live on your ‘Island 7’.
After a while, your grandmother complains that your Island’s charts are plain filled with eurotrance creations. You end up thinking that ‘Island 7’ Weekly Charts diversity is ruined by your neighbour users. The proof – you never saw their footprints in your territory.
In my opinion, one of the solutions for our chart package would be the charts by annonymous IPs. This solution is not perfect because it will merge same IP users into single chart units.
Eurotrance *1 scrobbler + Pop *1 scrobbler + Paris Hilton *2 scrobblers + Headbanger *1 scrobbler + Hardstyle *1 scrobbler = Paris Hilton *1 scrobble point + Eurotrance *1 scrobble point + Pop *1 scrobble point + Headbanger *1 scrobble point + Hardstyle *1 scrobble point.
(Artist’s scrobblers on the same IP are counted once)
However, this will help merge users who use multiple accounts to score scrobbles for the same artists. In addition, it will give new country charts without external scrobblers.
Eurotrance *2 scrobblers = Eurotrance *1 scrobble point => Island 2
(Artist’s ghost scrobblers on the same IP are counted once and in the country of IP)
Tom
4 March, 13:04
Looks like you all spoke too soon. NIN released a free online album, Ghosts, which has so far has 76,000+ listeners per track. In Rainbows currently has about 20,000 listeners per track. So, uh, looks like we’ll have a new no. 1 when the charts update…
Andrew Z Carpenter
4 March, 13:06
I’m going to bet that this week’s top 10 chart will be all songs from Nine Inch Nails’ new album Ghosts I-IV.
Andrew Z Carpenter
4 March, 13:07
Well that was spooky, Tom. You posted your message in the time I was writing mine.
Sam
4 March, 15:32
I’ve not read through the other comments so apologies if i repeat anything (i noticed someone touch on this briefly), but monthly or yearly charts for groups would be a much appreciated feature- especially for groups with relatively few members where the weekly charts often fluctuate quite violently.
I’d love to know what my friendship group’s most listened to tracks and artists or 2007 were!
Slober
5 March, 08:20
This isn’t for the general charts, but I thought I could suggest this here anyways:
- I would love to have a album chart at the profile page.
- A setting to decide wether you wan’t to show album pictures instead of the band pictures in weekly top/recently played/etc.
HodgeStar
5 March, 17:44
Is there any specific reason why the weekly top track charts on artist pages display different numbers than the global top track chart?
sheilaellen
10 March, 21:31
I would like to see stats on how often people listen to my radio stations/playlist – if ever ;) – and the trend over time. This would be especially interesting if I could see which tracks they were played (via the station/playlist) in chart form and the popularity of those tracks (were they loved/hated). Even better, if I could also do the same for other people’s radio stations/playlists.
Lord Summerisle
11 March, 04:17
You are a jerk.
Dirk
11 March, 15:01
Ghosts killed the Rainbow star* :)
*http://www.last.fm/music/
Egg21
13 March, 13:13
The Top track charts:
I suggest a normalised chart: The listener count is divided by the square root of number of total listen-ers of the track in the last six months. This automatically favours new tracks.
I am a chart fan too. I like to check the overall charts to see if I am missing something important, but they really are rather static these days. I like to check the top listeners of good tracks to see what their favourites are.
It would be nice to have charts with both weekly and 6 month top listeners of tracks and artists.
It could also be fun with a graph indicating the development in time of number of listeners and play count for each artist in the artist profile.
And +1 to indicating if you are a top listener of a certain artist on your chart
Greetings,
jullysartori
17 March, 23:25
It would like to clarify. I executed a radio similar Marisa Monte…Marisa Monte similar to João Gilberto is a nonsense
Alf
25 March, 10:36
I agree with you a 100%, the charts have definitely been boring after the release of Radioheads newest album.
I can only hope that people will either get tired of this album or last.fm does something to counter these kinds of chart dominators.
Tony
25 March, 18:37
I honestly don’t get the interest in charts. A lot of people eat at McDonald’s, too, but that doesn’t make me like it any more (‘cept for their stringy fries if I’m being truthful). You might argue that charts give you a snapshot of the zeitgeist (I feel like a poseur using that expression, but you know what I mean) but the other day I was looking at iTunes essentials from some year of my youth and was thinking, “What a load of crap! This isn’t what we were listening to then!” But then I realized that it was based on the charts of the day and my friends and I made a point of NOT listening to what was on all the mainstream radio stations (okay, turns out I AM a poseur). Consequently, this “essentials” mix based on charts meant absolutely nothing to me. Nothing! It wasn’t until I changed iTunes stores from Canada (my home) to the UK that the same Essentials mix for that year started to look familiar. Even then, though, it really didn’t mean that much more to me. So, in short, yeah we know Radiohead and Coldplay are very popular. I’m very pleased for them. No, really, I am; but beyond that I couldn’t give a rat’s…
End of rant
aditya agrawal
26 March, 21:57
u r so correct…. even i got pissed off with the top 10 charts by seeing in rainbows all the time…. so much so that i left seeing those charts at all
Bloopy
26 March, 23:31
I can’t stand Radiohead and yet I find the Last.fm charts fascinating. I wish Last.fm still had global overall charts, and not just the past week, because they were fascinating too.
It will be interesting to see what happens when Metallica finally releases their next album. Perhaps Radiohead will get some competition?
Rob Szarka
29 March, 17:11
I’d like to see charts that rank artist/tracks/albums by the number of users for whom a scrobble appears on last.fm for the first time over the past week. This might be a great way to see the effect of “buzz”, especially for indie artists who are just becoming better-known.
For example, I expect that there will be many folks scrobbling “Spottiswoode & His Enemies” for the first time this week in response to the profile on NPR’s Weekend Edition. This artist isn’t going to crack any of the existing top charts, but might show up on a chart like the one I’m suggesting.
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