Project Breakdown

This project hopes to answer various questions related to the platform Spotify, the reasoning behind the virality of certain artists, and how it stacks up against other music streaming platforms like Apple Music, Google, Amazon Prime, etc.

What Makes a Song Popular?

After analyzing some of the most popular songs on the platform from this dataset, I found that many of these songs had similarities in attributes such as Energy, Key, Popularity, Loudness and Tempo.

To use this chart, try brushing over a few of the axes to see what qualities each song has. Each line is a different song. Try starting by brushing over the popularity axis to see what qualities make a song popular or unpopular.

  • Popularity: The higher the value the more popular the song is.

  • Danceability: Describes how suitable a track is for dancing based on a combination of musical elements including tempo, rhythm stability, beat strength, and overall regularity. A value of 0.0 is least danceable and 1.0 is most danceable.

  • Energy: A measure from 0.0 to 1.0 and represents a perceptual measure of intensity and activity.

  • Loudness: The overall loudness of a track in decibels (dB). Loudness values are averaged across the entire track and are useful for comparing relative loudness of tracks. Loudness is the quality of a sound that is the primary psychological correlate of physical strength (amplitude). Values typically range between -60 and 0 db.

  • Tempo: The overall estimated tempo of a track in beats per minute (BPM). In musical terminology, tempo is the speed or pace of a given piece and derives directly from the average beat duration.

A Look into "Danceability"

Upon further looking at the data, I noticed a very interesting attribute: "Danceability." By viewing the scatterplot chart, if a song is popular, there's a good chance the danceability factor is high.

So what is "danceability?" The dictionary definition is "the quality or state of being able to move one's body rhythmically," but deep down it's more than that. We all have that one song that no matter when it comes on, we just have to get our grove on. "Danceability" is an uncontrollable feeling we get when we're moved by the sights and sounds within our environment. This is one of the reasons why music tells a lot about someone, since it can motivate such profound behavior.

Insights

After visualizing the data, I noticed that to a certain degree, most songs that are popular have a high degree of danceability. However, danceability alone does not indicate song popularity, as there are songs like "Bring me to Life" by Evanescence and "All the Small Things" by Blink-182 that were among the most popular in the dataset but with a danceability score below 0.5. In fact, songs with a high popularity tended to be higher in the "energy" category rather than "danceability."

Spotify vs. Apple Music

It's the question we all ask when we're talking about music. Although both are extremely popular, the tribalism that exists between Spotify and Apple Music is as intense as Xbox vs. Playstation or Pepsi vs. Coca-cola. This divide affects how friend groups share music, discover new artists, and connect with other people.

  • Spotify Meme 1
  • Spotify Meme 2
  • Spotify Meme 3
  • Spotify Meme 4

As you can see, Spotify and Apple Music take up much of the overall streaming share space.

Over the last few years, Spotify has made a tremendous leap from having about 30 million subscribers to almost 180 million, while Apple Music went from around 10 million in 2015 to about 80 in 2021.

How common is your music taste?

What's your favorite genre? If you listen to mostly Hip Hop, Pop, or Rock, you share a music taste with the majority of people. Although you may like a specific genre, the bigger fields tend to be really diverse in their own right. You may really like Hip Hop, but none of the mainstream artists interest you. In that case, let me know who your favorite artists are, since I'm always looking for new music.

Regardless however, whether you have a common taste or an incredibly unique one, it's still yours, and you should own it!