contents
the ep
the lp
2. listening time by weeks
8. genre map 10. week vs week
3. total length total scrobbles
18. mood board i am so in love with you
top 10 artists 4. world map
lovers in bloom
6. demographics
loser 37. epilogue
last.fm
scrobble
[ lahst - ef - em ]
[ skroh - buh l ]
noun.
verb.
1. a free internet service that allows users to log their listening habits and visualises this data
1. a term coined by last.fm to describe the logging of an activity (such as each play of a song) to a database
I don’t think it’s a secret that I adore music. I’ll have headphones on 70% of the time you see me and you’ll always come home to hear my music playing throughout the house. I’ve tracked my listening habits from February to March using last.fm. It tracks plays across all my devices! Lets see what this data has to say about me.
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total length of music put in my ear holes
271
hours that’s
11.3
days!
I don’t think I’ve even studied that long in my whole life.
made up of a total
4021
scrobbles
top ten artists sorted by plays
two months of joy and introspection
Ball Park Music
St. Vincent
467 LCD Soundsystem
75
Harts
Beck
224 Michael Jackson
72
207 Feist
152 John Frusciante
61
Ninja Sex Party
58
93 SAFIA
53
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Demographics
Perth
0%
A.C.T
Gold Coast
Sydney
Melbourne
16%
28%
44%
3% 6%
Mixed: 24
Female: 21
6%
1
14%
Gender of Artists Total: 151
70% p.6
Male: 106
I believe that the heavy lean towards male artists in my library is due to me being able to relate to them more. Their voices, messages, issues, and sounds. In the upcoming genre map, you can see I listen to a lot of rock and a majority of popular rock artists are only male. Rock was the genre I started with back in 2012 when I started listening to music. From what little last.fm data I have at that time, 29 of the top 30 artists I listened to were male only. Another reason is due to the under representation of women in the Australian music scene. I’m aiming for an even 50/50 split by the end of the year.
male vs female voices? Studies show that female voices generally sound softer, more easygoing and less aggressive, making them more trustworthy than male voices. Despite the high amount of male artists, four of my top ten artists feature female voices. Beck, John Frusciante, and James Murphy are known to be mid range, but extensively use a high range of vocals too. It seems that I appreciate high voices. They can signal emotional vulnerability to which I can confide in. I may also appreciate them due to their apparent honesty.
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Genres by most to least frequent
Genres of the top 30 February
March Connections between genres were made by seeing what other genre tags were linked to an artist.
Ball Park Music • Harts • Beck • St. Vincent • Ninja Sex Party • LCD Soundsystem Michael Jackson • Feist • John Frusciante • Safia • Sleater-Kinney • Jack White • U.S Girls • RHCP Flight Facilities • Rush • Ali Barter • Foxygen • Franz Ferdinand • The Belligerents • Tom Petty The Darkness • Alex Cameron • Arcade Fire • Anna Burch • Tennis • Sarah Blasko • Wolf Alice Public Service Broadcasting • White Stripes • The Bee Gees
You can see that indie and rock links to nearly every genre on the map. These genres have a history and reputation for breaking from the mainstream and rebelling against that. I behave and think in the same way, with a concern for being different as a primary driver for my decision making. In the field of arts, this is an important trait to have and it seems to have extended itself into all facets of my life. I design my own shirts, listen to different music, and aim to even speak and use gestures in ways other people don’t. It’s a bit weird, but that’s just who I am. The data shows it! Extensions of this can be seen in the punk, riot grrl, noise, avant-garde, and experimental genres. These are genres based on working beyond the norms and defying convention.
pretty mainstream if you ask me
indie appeared
times!
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WEEK WEEK by
The official two-week autobiography by Kevin Diep.
The wonderful thing about last.fm is that not only does it record what I listened to, it also records when I listened to it! I’ve taken listening data from the last two weeks of March (31st-25th and 24th-18th) and compared the amount of scrobbles per hour for each day! For example, on the graph, ‘7am’ on the x-axis will count all scrobbles from 7-8am. Studying
I’ll also try to collate events and my calendar schedule to try map out why my statistics look the way they are. To highlight these events, I’ve marked them with small colour-coded circles. You can find a key to them below. There’s a certain margin of error that must be given to this data. Music may be playing on my Job Interview Prep
phone but my earphones may not be in my ears. Sometimes I will come into class and take off my earphones without stopping my music immediately. This may lead to irregular bumps in the graph. Overall, these charts will still help me achieve my goal of seeing where and why I listen to music at the times I do.
Point of Interest
“I’ve taken listening data from the last two weeks of March (31st-25th and 24th18th)”
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Saturday Schedule:
Nothing!
Highlight of the Play: Pre-Job Interview scrobbles BPM 92 64,125 148 52 102
Immediately we can see that Saturday has a few interesting peaks and periods. I know that before 11am on the 31st, I was trying to motivate myself for a job interview. It was an interview for what would be my first design related job so I gave this interview extra preparation. I had studied
design for just over two years and had poured probably twice the amount of years salary into my HECS debt, so I thought I should probably get make an effort something out of it. I picked some fun and energetic songs before hand to get me in an open minded and optimistic mood. Some of these songs
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can be seen above. Aside from ‘Massachussetts’, I picked some pretty high tempo songs which may have increased my heart rate and motivation. It must have worked because I got the job! There is also always a peak in Saturday nights as I stay up late studying, knowing that I have Sunday to rest and sleep it off.
31st March 24th March
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9
Scrobbles 6
3
0
6
7
8
9
10 11 12
1
2
3
AM
4
5
6
PM Time
7
8
9
10 11 12
AM
1
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Friday Schedule:
Nothing!
Highlight of the Play: 11pm study
BPM 76 96 108 123 154 102
This surprises me. The spikes in Friday are fairly consistent up until 3pm. I believe it’s as I try to study in the morning up until lunch at 1pm, I stop and resume at 2pm. The spike from 4-6pm on the 30th is due to me working on two assignments
hours before they were due. One assignment was due at 8:30 while another was due at 11pm. It seems like I love dinner more than my music or assignments though. My music almost consistently drops down below 2 on each day when it’s dinner time. Sometimes it can be as early as 6pm to as late as
8pm. The drops in music could also be caused by how many youtube videos I watch. I tend to watch a lot of videos on my phone, often starting my day with 20-30 minutes of videos and interspersing my day with them.
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30th March 23rd March
10 8
Scrobbles
6 4 2 0
6
7
8
9
10 11 12
1
2
3
AM p.12
4
5
6
PM Time
7
8
9
10 11 12
1
AM
Thursday Schedule:
Classes: 1:30-5pm
Highlight of the Play: Late night walk home
BPM 141 134 100 88
Thursday provides a nearly symmetrical image. The only scheduled item on this day are classes from 1:30-5pm. On most days like the 22nd, I would walk to school late, but on the 29th I tried to took advantage of the day and walked in, evident by a 9am rise. On the 29th I stayed
in the library after class to wait for a 7:30pm UCAMS meeting. It seems like I don’t study on Thursdays as I know I have three days of free time to do any remaining work I have. Lazy me. Studying in library
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12
29th March 22nd March
9 Went to the cinema
Scrobbles 6
Walking home after UCAMS
3
0
6
7
8
9
10 11 12
1
2
3
AM
4
5
6
PM Time
7
8
9
10 11 12
1
AM p.13
Wednesday Schedule:
Nothing!
Highlight of the Play: 1pm study
BPM 168 88 146 78 83 38 60 132 140 138 80
Wednesday is another day without commitments. Don’t have to drop or pick mum up from work so it’s just studying from morning until lunch. Most of the time I will listen to albums which was the case at 1pm on the 28th. I know that I went out for my parent’s anniversary dinner on the 21st, and it seems I must have just not listened to any music after dinner. Weird.
140 60, 120 86
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12
9
Scrobbles
28th March 21st March
6
3
0
6
7
8
9
10 11 12
1
2
3
AM p.14
4
5
6
PM Time
7
8
9
10 11 12
1
AM
h
h
Tuesday Schedule:
Classes: 9-10:30am, 1-2:30pm
Highlight of the Play: slacking off in class at 2pm
BPM 83 65, 130 61
Not usually like me, but apparently I was so bored of class on the 20th that I felt like it would be a better use of my time if I listened to music. Glad I got the better of myself and stopped though. Probably my least favourite class though.
27th March
20
20th March 15
Scrobbles 10
5
0
6
7
8
9
10 11 12
1
2
3
AM
4
5
6
PM
7
8
9
10 11 12
1
AM
Time p.15
Monday Schedule:
Classes: 10:30-2pm
Highlight of the Play: 12am study
BPM 144 73 59 79 35
Monday I have flexible classes from morning until late afternoon. On the 19th I had an in-class presentation session that took up most of the day. The week after I skipped that class and came to Information Design (woohoo!) I believe that explains the staggered times for when I walked home. I was too tired to listen to music
after class on the 26th and didn’t start again until after dinner.
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26th March 19th March
15
Scrobbles
10
5
0
6
7
8
9
10 11 12
1
2
3
AM p.16
4
5
6
PM Time
7
8
9
10 11 12
AM
1
Sunday Schedule:
Stressing for Monday
Highlight of the Play: morning walkies at 10am
BPM 173 173 173 173 173 173
The large spike in the 18th of March is probably due to me cramming in work after I volunteered my day out to ‘Art, Not Apart’ on the 17th. I probably shuffled, skipped, and frantically made my way through homework.
but on the 18th I had to get my presentation ready for the next day. Look at those plays on Sunday morning! I must have been in a good mood or something.
Usually I wouldn’t stay up late on Sundays as evident by the 25th,
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25th March 18th March
30 25
Scrobbles 20 15 10 5 0
6
7
8
9
10 11 12
1
2
3
AM
4
5
6
PM Time
7
8
9
10 11 12
1
AM p.17
not as complex as the hero image suggests
To further dive into how music may affect me, I’m analysing the most popular songs in periods that I have highlighted in the two-week comparison graphs. Each word of the lyrics will be assigned symbols based on grammar and colours
based on emotion. This will reveal trends and the mood that music may put me in at that time.
Friday 30th March study sessions I chose this time period to look at as the music I chose to listen to represents some of my favourites. I usually shuffle a playlist of favourite songs, but here I specifically chose artists and songs that I liked. It shows p.18
as five of the artists in this list also appear in the top 10 most listened to artists for February and March. Contained in this list are three songs that happened to appear in a list of my most played songs.
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These symbols were designed to be open and simple to allow interesting and dynamic composition when many are put together. The readers eye should zig and zag across the page. Solid shapes would make if very methodical. Most of the symbols don’t connect which allows them to work around each other.
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noun
verb
adjective
adverb
contraction
preposition
conjunction
determiner
pronoun
comma
exclamation
Ball Park Music
plays I Am So In Love With You
Harts
plays Lovers in Bloom
Beck
plays Loser
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The songs are classified using Parrot’s classification of emotions. These are love, joy, surprise, anger, fear, and sadness. Not every word has an emotional meaning so I’ve given sentences whole emotions in the absence of single words. The border colour around the song and artist title signify the overall
mood. From the three songs I can see that I like songs with a tinge of irony, sarcasm, hope, and love. You may be asking where the sarcasm and irony is in Ball Park Music as this song only has one tone. Most of their other songs are filled with spite, depression,
euphemism, and longing. It seems that I like songs that show a spectrum of sadness and happiness. They’re more relatable and ring more true compared to most pop. This makes sense with what I discovered earlier about preferring high voices for their emotional vulnerability.
Parrot’s Chart of Emotions Primary emotion Love
Joy
Surprise
Secondary emotion Affection
Lust
Longing
Cheerfulness, Zest, Contentment, Pride, Optimism, Enthralment, Relief
Amazement, Surprise, Astonishment
Anger
Irritation, Exasperation, Rage, Disgust, Envy, Torment
Sadness
Suffering, Sadness, Disappointment, Shame, Neglect
Fear
Horror, Nervousness
Handel, S. (2011). Classification of Emotions. [online] The Emotion Machine. Available at: http://www.theemotionmachine.com/ classification-of-emotions/ [Accessed 16 Apr. 2018].
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Ball Park Music I Am So In Love With You p.23
Verse 1 I am so in love with you You are all I have I close my eyes to the world at large And lie here on my back, thinking of you
Chorus
You see my better side You see my better side
Verse 2 I am so in love with you I have always been When I laid my eyes on you I fell into a dream
Chorus You see my better side You see my better side
Bridge All my life would be in vain If I didn't have you to show for it All my life would be in vain
Verse 3 And I am so in love with you Here I am on my knees The only thing I've ever believed in Was you and me
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189bpm I believe this song utilises it’s high beats per minute count very well. Intense overwhelming rushed feelings of being in love or being joyful can give you a high heart rate. It’s interesting to actually see a relationship going on with the music and lyrics. Not that no other songs have them, but this is new to me.
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Chorus You see my better side You see my better side You see my better side You see my better side You see my better side (You see my better side) You see my better side
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Harts Lovers in Bloom p.27
Verse 1 I wish I had the way to show you the pictures on my mind. Dreams of you, constant and true, show that we have another life. Would you believe if I should say, I’ve seen this world so identical. But where the love is laid and The winds have changed, And the two of us together as one.
Chorus I said, (Ooh, ha) I want you to know baby, (Ooh, ha) It's seven o'clock in the morning baby, (Ooh, ha) I cant get you off of my mind, (Ooh, ha) But I don’t know if should say. Is it naive that I’m trying to make you believe we’re Lovers In Bloom?
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105 bpm
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Chorus I said, (Ooh, ha) I want you to know baby, (Ooh, ha) It's seven o'clock in the morning baby, (Ooh, ha) I cant get you off of my mind, (Ooh, ha) But I don’t know if should say. Is it naive that I’m trying to make you believe we’re Lovers In Bloom? Is it naive that I’m trying to make you believe we’re Lovers In Bloom? Is it naive that I’m trying to make you believe we’re Lovers In Bloom?
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Beck Loser
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Verse 1 In the time of chimpanzees I was a monkey Butane in my veins and I’m out to cut the junkie With the plastic eyeballs, spray-paint the vegetables Dog food skulls with the beefcake pantyhose Kill the headlights and put it in neutral Stock car flaming with the loser in the cruise control Baby's in Reno with the vitamin D Got a couple of couches, sleep on the love-seat Someone came in saying I’m insane to complain About a shotgun wedding and a stain on my shirt Don’t believe everything that you breathe You get a parking violation and a maggot on your sleeve So shave your face with some mace in the dark Saving all your food stamps and burning down the trailer park Yo, cut it
Hook Soy un perdedor I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me? (Double barrel buckshot) Soy un perdedor I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?
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171 bpm
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Verse 2 The forces of evil in a bozo nightmare Ban all the music with the phony gas chamber Cause one’s got a weasel and the other’s got a flag One’s on the pole, shove the other in a bag With the rerun shows and the cocaine nose-job The daytime crap of the folksinger slob He hung himself with a guitar string A slab of turkey-neck and its hanging from a pigeon wing You can't get right if you can't relate Trade the cash for the beat for the body for the hate And my time is a piece of wax falling on a termite Who’s choking on the splinters
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Hook Soy un perdedor I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me? Soy un perdedor I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me? Soy un perdedor I’m a loser baby, so why don’t you kill me?
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we are here to make you think about death and get sad and stuff! - Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World It’s weird to think that a more hidden side of me can be found in my music. Insights into my personality can clearly be seen from the range of genres I listen to and the lyrical content of my favourite songs. I rebel against my nervously positive exterior by listening to music you wouldn’t otherwise associate with someone of my look. Punk, riot grrl, noise, and lofi are ways that I try to tune into how I really feel. I think these days I’m a bit more secure about how I look and feel in regards to my music and don’t need to act out in
a similar way you may see an emo 14 year old girl with too much eye shadow and lip piercings might. The need to express myself through music where I can’t externally is probably why I prefer high/ female voices. Seems like their emotional vulnerability is something I can pour myself into. I probably preferred a lot of songs with biting sarcasm or cynicism to defy my naturally positive attitude. Nothing to be ashamed about though! I’ve started listening to a lot more lighter stuff. A lot of
disco, some Donna Summer, some MIKA even. I had not listened to him since I bought his album as my first music purchase. I would love to revisit this data and compare it with future sets to see whether my top songs/artists/whatever are still love related. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t care about love or anything. Everyone does. I had no idea it would be so prominent in my music though.
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