The viz above shows the top 20 artists I've listened to on Spotify so far this year - here's the back story:
For the last few years I've enjoyed reading Andy Cotgreave's blog posts where he takes a look at his listening habits by using data from Last.fm, here's a good example. And of course my pal Jewel has also played around with her listening data too. So I finally decided to get myself in on the action.
I should add also that this last year I've really fallen back in love with listening to music and discovering new bands. I was really into music as a teenager but kind of lost interest. But my Spotify subscription has really helped me get back into it and I probably listen to more new music than ever now - while still listening to all my old favourites.
So, first of all how to collect the data. Its pretty simple:
1) Get a Spotify account
2) Get a last.fm account
3) Link them on ALL your devices
4) Download your data here thanks to Andy's friend Ben https://benjaminbenben.com/lastfm-to-csv/
So to look at my data, first off lets check out the data quality:
As you can see, I've had a few problems. A couple of times last.fm and Spotify got disconnected. I kept an eye on last.fm and noticed it had stopped Scrobbling (Scrobbling by the way is just keeping a record of your listens). And then very recently I realised that it wasn't picking up my mobile listens - I didn't know I had to change the settings on my devices individually.
So I've lost quite a bit of data, but oh well. I'm also not 100% convinced its picking up ALL my Spotify plays.
What else have I seen?
