In January 2005, I installed the Last.fm plugin (formerly known as Audioscrobbler) on my computer to track my music listening habits. I already knew that I listened a wide variety of artists, but I wanted to know more about how I listen to music. According to Last.fm, I’ve since listened to over 30,000 songs on my computer. For reference, I have 4,333 songs on my primary computer.

A Brief Look at Radio

Although I rarely listen to radio, the consensus among my friends and family is that commercial radio stations generally play the same songs over and over again. It is likely that the music labels want to ingrain popular music in our brains so that we’ll remember to buy the artist’s CD when it is released. On the contrary, if radio stations always played new music, we would always be listening to something different. A River of Music, if you will. With the latter approach, it would be harder for terrestrial radio stations to accurately track what music was most popular, as the popularity of a song would significantly depend on the number of people listening to the station at the time the song was played. However, a river of music style of radio is seems more suitable for Internet-based radio stations (eg. Pandora) since a system could be built for listeners to flag/bookmark songs they liked.

The bottom line is that commercial radio in its current form is hit-driven. Most commercial radio stations simply play the “hits”, leaving little room for discovering new music. Before the advent of digital music, almost all the music sold to us was in the form of entire albums by a single artist/band. The idea of singles never really received significant attention from music labels.

A Long Tail For Our Music Listening Habits?

In the past, some of us may have recorded music from the radio onto a cassette. However, we were still dependant on the hit-driven nature of radio. With the advent of digital music, we’ve gained full control of the music we listen to. From burning a CD of our favourite songs to creating playlists for our mp3 players, we’ve redefined how we listen to music. The question is, are our music listening habits still hit-driven or do we listen to music in a more diverse manner? Is there a long tail for our music listening habits? If so, how much value is in the tail?

Being curious about my music listening habits, I wrote a small application to calculate some statistics about how I listen to music, based on the data I’ve submitted to Last.fm. It is important to note that since Last.fm tracks all audio played on my computer, error is introduced by non-music audio like podcasts and audio books.

Here are some of my findings:

Of the 30,000+ songs I’ve listened to, 20% came from my top 10 artists, 35% came from my top 25 artists, and 50% came from my top 50 artists. Half the music I listen to lies outside of my top 50 artists!

Other interesting stats include:

  • My top 50 songs make up 13% of all the music I’ve listened to
  • My top 16 artists make up 50% of the 15713 times I’ve listened to music by my top 50 artists
  • My top 21 songs make up 50% of the 4032 times I’ve listened to my top 50 songs
  • My top 50 albums make up 10% of all the music I’ve listened to

The tail of my music listening habits appears to be extremely valuable. I already knew listened to a variety of music but I had not anticipated that I listened to so much music outside of my top 50 artists.

As a contrast, consider the long tail of one of Britney Spears’ top fans on Last.fm, elguapo17.

His/her top 10 artists account for 74% of the 10000+ songs he/she has listened to (since December 2005). Interestingly, his/her top 50 artists make up a whopping 88% of the music he/she has listened to!

Other interesting stats include:

  • His/her top 50 songs make up 39% of all the music he/she has listened to
  • His/her top 2 artists make up 50% of the 8957 times he/she has listened to music by his/her top 50 artists
  • His/her top 19 songs make up 50% of the 3968 times he/she has listened to his/her top 50 songs
  • His/her top 50 albums make up 13% of all the music he/she has listened to

Comparatively, there is smaller value in this tail. The way elguapo17 listens to music is still largely hit-driven. I wonder, do all the top fans of an artist listen to music in a hit-driven manner? I’ve noticed that my Last.fm neighbours have similar music listening habits as me (as expected, I suppose).

It is interesting to note that for both elguapo17 and me, our top 50 albums comprise very little of the total number of songs we have listened to. Perhaps this is a testament to the possibility that we rarely listen to music by albums? Or maybe our music collections are vastly mistagged.

Are you a Last.fm user? If so, visit How Do You Listen To Music to find out how hit-driven your music listening habits are.

The Future Long Tail of Music

As more diverse music becomes easily available to us, I imagine the value in the tail will significantly increase. Perhaps this already happening – consider how successful independent bands like Wilco have become thanks to their Internet fans. But who knows, maybe our music listening habits are naturally hit-driven and I’m an outlier.

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