The Very Quick Play-Count Meme

The Very Quick Play-Count Meme

For this little three-question game you’ll need some sort of play-count record on your mp3 library. No guessing!

1) What’s the most-played track in your mp3 collection, and how many times has it been played?
“Promise” (radio edit) by Eve 6: 335

2) Divide that play count in half and round up. What’s the nearest song?
“Right Now” by SR-71: 172

3) Divide that play count in half, and round up again.
“Where’s the Walrus” by The Alan Parsons Project: 85

4) Care to explain yourself?
“Promise” was the very first track I bought from the iTunes store, and I listened to it a LOT. Lately it plays automatically in the morning as part of my “wake-up” playlist.

21 thoughts on “The Very Quick Play-Count Meme”

  1. Background information: My primary music player is DigitalDJ. The music catalog currently contains 4577 songs from 392 discs by 209 artists. However, I sometimes play music through other players (for instance, I have a command in my IRC client that will pause DigitalDJ, play one or several songs or entire CDs directly, and then resume the DigitalDJ playlist; I also occasionally use XMMS) and these do not get tracked in DigitalDJ’s database. My most frequently manually-played artists are probably Yes and VNV Nation.

    1. Most played: Lastlight, by VNV Nation, from Burning Empires: 70 plays.

    2. There are 162 songs tied at 35 plays. They include a-ha (2 songs), ABBA (4 songs), AC/DC (1), Antonin Dvorak (1), Apoptygma Berzerk (1), Asia (3), Ayreon (3), Berlin (1), Boiled in Lead (4), Bonnie Tyler (1), Boston (2), Bruce Springsteen (2), Cat Stevens (1), Celine Dion (2), Chris de Burgh (5), Christopher Franke (1), Clannad (2), David Bowie (3), Def Leppard (2), Dire Straits (1), Dissonance (2), Don Henley (1), Electric Light Orchestra (2), Enya (6), Eric Bogle (2), Front 242 (2), Front Line Assembly (3), Genesis (8), GTR (1), Hawkwind (7), heart (3), Heather Alexander (2), In Extremo (1), Information Society (1), Jethro Tull (2), Jimi Hendrix (2), Johann Strauss II (1), Journey (2), Kansas (1), Kate Bush (1), Larry Greene (1), Loreena McKennitt (1), Lycia (2), Makem & Clancy (1), Matchbox 20 (1), Meat Loaf (5), Men of Worth (4), Midnight Oil (2), Mr. Mister (2), Paradise Lost (1), Pete Townshend (1), Phoenyx (2), Queen (1), Renaissance (1), Rush (6), Saga (4), Shriekback (3), Shunt (1), Steeleye Span (1), Steve Earle (1), Sting (3), Tempest (5), the Bangles (1), the Chieftains (2), the Clancy Brothers (3), The Crystal Method (1), The Doors (2), The Who (1), This Mortal Coil (3), VNV Nation (1), Voltaire (1), Warren Zevon (2), Wolfstone (2), and Yes (4 songs).

    3. There are 39 songs tied at 18 plays. They include ABBA (4 songs), Assemblage 23 (1), Bonnie Tyler (1), Bryan Adams (3), Caliban (1), Chris de Burgh (1), Fleetwood Mac (1), Genesis (1), Gustav Holst (1), Hawkwind (2), Mike and the Mechanics (3), New Model Army (1), Paul Ruskay (1), Phoenyx (1), Pyotr Ilich Tchaikovsky (1), The Church (5), The Cure (1), The Doors (1), The Lightning Seeds (2), The Moody Blues (1), The Police (1), Warren Zevon (1), Wilson Phillips (1), and Yes (3).

    4. Let’s shed a little more light on this:

    43 songs have played only once
    305 songs have played 5 times or less
    747 songs have been played 17 times or less.
    2186 songs have been played 18 to 35 times
    1490 songs have been played 36 to 52 times
    57 songs have been played more than 52 times
    Only 1 song has played more than 65 times

    Everything in my catalog is there because I like it. I also like variety. I hate fixed playlists, and can’t imagine why anyone would want to listen to the same playlist over and over and over, day in, day out. DigitalDJ builds my playlists randomly each day, and does a pretty reasonable job of it. I suspect that plotting the play frequency of all songs would yield a fairly reasonable (albeit somewhat skewed to the lower limb) bell curve centered somewhere between 30 and 33. The actual closest number of plays to hit half the total songs in the catalog is 32 (2273 songs have been played 32 times or less vs. the “perfect” 2288.5, while 2434 have been played 33 times or less.) The lower limb of the curve is a little fatter than the upper limb simply because more recently ripped discs have had less opportunities to be played.

    1. Hmmmm. Statistically, that’s interesting.

      More detail from me: there are 106 songs with more than 50 plays, but only 28 with more than 100.

      My library has 5664 songs in it, for a 17-day running time. There are 1046 artists and 432 albums (lots of tracks where the album is “OCRemix.org”)

      1707 songs have never been listened to (which really means I’ve never let that track play until it rolls to the next track — most of ’em I’ve heard at least briefly before deciding to keep it or pitch it.)

      1391 songs have been played exactly once.

      1. It didn’t occur to me to check the number of songs in the catalog which have never played via DigitalDJ. Turns out 74 of those 305 songs played “5 times or less” have actually never played at all. (Through DigitalDJ, anyway.) 49 of those are accounted for by five Ayreon CDs that we just got. The most recent VNV Nation CD, which we’ve only had about about two weeks, accounts for eight more (but they have been played, they just haven’t come up yet via DigitalDJ).
        Of the remaining 19 … well, at least five of them I’m pretty certain are wrong. They HAVE been played by DigitalDJ, and for some reason weren’t counted. This bothers me, less because it means the stats may be wrong than because it implies there’s a bug somewhere.

        1. I just peeked at the stats now, and indeed, the play count for the song playing now (Days to Dust, off Eventide by Grey Eye Glances) did update when the song started playing. I’m still puzzled by the at-least-5 that should show non-zero play counts but don’t.

    2. helpless laughter

      And I can’t understand how someone can want infinite variety with no control over it.

      I don’t play music with anything that would track my stats. I would say that probably my most played song at the moment is Dashboard Confessional’s Vindicated. The one in the middle of that would probably be Bryan Adams – Getaway and after that would be Vienna by Ultravox. Least played would have to be … dunno. I tend to forget what I don’t want to listen to and concentrate on what I do.

      1. Re: helpless laughter

        Well, it’s not infinite variety with no control. It’s endless variety from a huge volume of Stuff I Like. 🙂 And I can always re-order the playlist, or skip a song I don’t want to hear right now, or insert a song I do want to hear Right Now that isn’t in the playlist.

  2. Unfortunately, my music player of choice is Foobar2000, which doesn’t keep statistics. But I am surprised to see a song I like (Right Now, by SR-71) is one you listen to a great deal.

    That song always reminds me of my first girlfriend. Needless to say, being young, stupid and lacking in self-confidence causes a dude to date women he really shouldn’t.

    1. I like it because of the guitar riffs. I’ve never had a dating experience like that one. And I have no idea what “cheap plastic submarine” means in that context.

    2. Needless to say, being young, stupid and lacking in self-confidence causes a dude to date women he really shouldn’t.

      Been there, done that.

      No, wait, that doesn’t really convey it. let me try again:

      BEEN THERE, DONE THAT.

      The only thing we have in our music library by SR-71 is a cover of Cheap Trick’s “I Want You To Want Me”.

    3. sure foobar2000 keeps stats. or at least a very simple plugin from the official wiki does. i don’t remember which one exactly ’cause i’m running linux now, but i swear it wasn’t hard for me to find the thing.

  3. I did an entry tagging the meme in my own LJ. It was an interesting glimpse into my brain and listening habits.

    Even more interesting are the plethora of songs I’ve never listened to once.

  4. 1. Most Played – Hinder – Lips of an Angel
    2. Half That – Evanescence – Going Under
    3. Half Again – Eisley – Golly Sandra
    4. Explain – Currently in my playlist, there are 2573 items. Some of those are full CD’s or album wraps. I don’t currently have all of my music loaded, as I’ve left out Christmas music, children’s songs, and artists/songs I’m tired of at the moment. I also have a tendency to take off music I’ve burned onto CD, unless I currently play it a lot. I just changed my list about a week and a half ago.
    I wonder what my playlist would say if I hadn’t lost my slave drive – with over 10,000 mp3 files on it, amongst other things…(cry).
    I had a LOT of Ties. I found that I listen to System of a Down a LOT (good workout music), and that there’s not a single file that has never been listened to. Not bad for a week and a half.

  5. The Very Quick Play-Count Meme

    For this little three-question game you’ll need some sort of play-count record on your mp3 library. No guessing!

    1) What’s the most-played track in your mp3 collection, and how many times has it been played?
    Interpol – PDA: 15

    2) Divide that play count in half and round up. What’s the nearest song?
    There are 15 songs on my list that have 8 plays. A few highlights: Bis – Dead Wrestlers, Smashing Pumpkins – Stand Inside Your Love, Apples in Stereo – Baroque, Interpol – Hands away, The Presidents of the United States of America – Lump, The Hives – A get together to tear it apart.

    3) Divide that play count in half, and round up again.
    There are 100 tracks on my list that have 4 plays… Too many to even summarize, so here’s my list. http://www.last.fm/user/Kazriko/charts/?charttype=overall&subtype=track

    4) Care to explain yourself?
    I need to start using the scrobbler at work, because I rarely listen to music anywhere but at work or in the car. Too many other choices for entertainment at home. Interpol is a superb band, and one that deserves more recognition. This may be more interesting though if I talk about what bands that match these criterion…

    1) Top band?
    Dressy Bessy: 173 plays

    2) Half?
    The White Stripes: 88 plays

    3) Half again?
    Tears for Fears: 42 plays

    4) Why?
    Dressy Bessy, like They might be giants at #2, tops my list just because I have so much of their stuff. Both of them have their entire catalog up on emusic.com and both of them make lots of very tiny songs. I think to make up for it I need to get more cds from other bands. White stripes are good, but not my favorite. Tears for Fears made 2 excellent CDs early on, and several decent CDs later. I got on a kick of listening to their cd “The Hurting” awhile back. It’s excellent.

  6. This looks pretty interesting, unfortunately, I use WMP as my mp3 player. I don’t believe it has a “Track stats” option in it.

    1. WMP= Winamp? That’s what I’m using, and it does.
      Go to “Options” , click on “Media Library” – then look to the right – a big screen will have come out form the side of the player.

          1. darn, I was hoping you were going to tell me it does have a tracker and how to use it. I’m switching mp3 players now to something that does track. And actually has *random* random, not the fake “shuffle” that WMP uses that plays the same artists in a row every time, just a different song if there are more than one.

  7. 1) What’s the most-played track in your mp3 collection, and how many times has it been played?
    “Hazy Shade of Winter” by the Bangles. 186.

    2) Divide that play count in half and round up. What’s the nearest song?
    “Piano Bar I” by Yoko Kanno, from ‘Cowboy Bebop: Vitaminless’ 97.

    3) Divide that play count in half, and round up again.
    “Ave Maria” by Bruckner. 48.

    4) Care to explain yourself?
    “Hazy Shade of Winter” is the first song in the play list I habitually play when I’m working. I really dig Yoko Kanno’s animae soundtrack work … Bruckner soothes me.

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