Amusingly, I discovered I can easily export my iPod track data from iTunes. Not only does this include every song, but also how often I have played them. As a result, fascinating information can be processed and passed on to you, my dear readers! It must be said though that this data is only a few years old, since I obtained my current iPod only a couple of years ago. What I’d give for lifetime data like this!!
Before I start with the lists, my iPod has a grand total of 3318 songs on it at the moment, totalling 15149 minutes of music. That’s 10.5 days!
I have music by 167 bands in total, although only 49 of them have more than 10 songs on the machine.
Now here’s where it gets interesting…
Top 5 Bands (by total number of songs)
- Erasure (468 songs)
- Depeche Mode (437 songs)
- Alphaville (268 songs)
- Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds (258 songs)
- David Bowie (138 songs)
No surprises there, especially if you know my music tastes. Erasure’s position above Mode is solely by virtue of them releasing more material. In both cases the iPod would contain upwards of 99% of everything either band has released.
Now, what if I take the above list and see which of those five I actually listen to the most? One way to do this is divide the total number of listens for the band by the number of songs I have on the machine by that band:
The Same 5 Bands (by average listens per song)
- Alphaville (9.2)
- Erasure (4.1)
- Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds (1.6
- Depeche Mode (1.1)
- David Bowie (~0)
Intriguing wouldn’t you say? Especially the fact that I have quite a few of Bowies albums on the device and yet have barely ever listened to him (only 4 songs, each from the Labyrinth soundtrack, have received any play at all). The Alphaville numbers are particularly impressive because of how uniform they are. I don’t listen to just one or two albums a lot, I apparently listen to the bands entire output more or less uniformly.
But it gets even more interesting if I do a similar analysis, except opening it up to the entire iPod. In other words, which bands do I listen to, on average, the most?
Top 5 Average Listens (per song)
- Air Supply (99)
- Hunters And Collectors (38)
- REO Speedwagon (25.2)
- The Stranglers (19)
- Morrissey (17.2)
Five new names! Position 1, Air Supply, is the freakish outlier, obtained since I have only two of their songs on the machine. I have listened to Making Love Out Of Nothing At All well over 100 times (almost ten hours!) and All Out Of Love (which I like a lot less, but is in the same playlist) only a bit less. Hunters And Collectors making the list was frankly surprising to me, but apparently shouldn’t have been since I’d listened to Say Goodbye almost 70 times alone! Speedwagon’s presence is heavily bolstered by the ~50 listens of Don’t Let Him Go, Keep On Loving You and I Can’t Fight This Feeling. Ever since I got their best of CD a few weeks ago though other songs (Take It On The Run, Time For Me To Fly) have been rising quickly in playthroughs. One day, they may surpass Air Supply. Finding The Stranglers on this list was amusing, and helped by the fact I only have three of their songs and love them all! Morrissey wasn’t much of a surprise since I listen to his recent three albums all the time.
Looking at the device overall, I was surprised to note that a massive 52% of the songs on it have never been played! I have entire albums by some bands (The Police, Jesus and Mary Chain) that have never even had so much as one song listened to! Why are they on there!?!
However it must be said the software in the iPod only counts a listen if the song is completed, and I am a compulsive pusher of the ‘next’ button. This would obviously skew my results a little.
The last figure I shall share is the total amount of time I have actually spend listening to music since I obtained this iPod about 3.5 years ago: 42.7 days
Remember there is only 10.5 days worth of music on the device. If I had wanted to, I could easily have listened to it all by now 🙂