Musical Audience Participation Day!

[theweaselking]

Open your music playing application of choice! Load your entire library. If it does not keep statistics, uh, DO NOTHING. Play some music or something. But if it tracks things like "most played" and "date added" and "times skipped" and you maybe rate tracks to make ones you like come up more often, keep going!

1. What's your Most Played song? How many times have you played it?
2. If your app tracks the number of times a song comes up and you skip it, what is the most-played song that you have never skipped? How many times have you played *it*?
3. If you rate tracks, what's the most played track that DOESN'T have the highest rating available?
4. What is the track with the earliest "date added"?
5. Most Skipped: What is it, and why do you keep it around?
6. What other interesting kinds of stats can you think of pulling from this kind of data?


For me:

1. Most Played: Apoptygma Berzerk, "Love To Blame". 53 plays since 2008, last played Jan 18. Skipped 4 times.
2. Most Played While Never Skipped: Judas Priest, "Worth Fighting For". 44 plays since 2008, last played March 7. Second overall.
3. Most Played While Not Highest Ranked: A TIE! Mastodon, "Sleeping Giant" and Motörhead, "Teach You How To Sing The Blues", 25 plays each. Tied for #34 in the most-played list.
4. Earliest Added: A several-hundred-way-tie for 3/3/2008, since that's when I got the grandfather of my current computer and my library stats got lost before that. Since then, I back up, but y'know. The actual oldest file in the bunch is Danzig (with Alice Cooper), "Five Finger Crawl", circa 1999, which I remember because I spent about 45 minutes on "sz danzig.mp3" and then "sz winamp.exe" on a 14.4K dialup connection.
5. Most Skipped: Dokaka, "Smells Like Teen Spirit". Played once, skipped 17 times, last played all the way through April 13 2008. Why do I skip it? Because it's... uh... a Japanese beatbox guy doing an a capella cover of Nirvana. That's not something I want to listen to very often. Why do I keep it? Because it's a JAPANESE BEATBOX GUY DOING AN A CAPELLA COVER OF NIRVANA. Seriously. If you don't see why I love this track despite almost never wanting to listen to it for long, you must be new here.
6. Other Questions: If I had other questions, I'd have added them already.

YOUR TURN! Either comment, or post it yourself and link to it in the comments!

Comments

[xomox.livejournal.com]

Do you also often listen to a monsterous, all-encompassing playlist on random much of the time? Unfortunately, I turned of scrobbling a couple years back, and winamp doesn't give me useful information anymore. Plus, I listen to this library in about 4 different locations / across 5 devices.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I, in fact, throw a 5000+ item list on "shuffle" regularly.

This is important information!

[kowh.livejournal.com]

1. Gotye - Somebody That I Used To Know, which I ascribe to it feeling like 2/3rds of a song and thus able to be played repeatedly.
2. Same as #1. #2 on this list is The Black Ghosts - Anyway You Choose to Give it
3. Also #1. #2: A-Ha - Take On Me
4. Itunes used to eat my library regularly, so any data previous to "13/03/2009" is lost. I'm not sure which one was actually first, so I'll just say Creedence Clearwater Revival - I Put A Spell On You
5. Dandi Wind - Drawing Straws, which I like, but get tired of easily so when itunes' horrible shuffle keeps playing it, I skip it as often as not.
6. Of 3459 songs in my library, only 667 are on the list my shuffle draws from. Some songs I never tire of, others get slowly demoted until they fall off the list. Before Winamp started sucking, I used The Brain rather than manual ratings and I sorely miss it. It downrated skipped songs and uprated the first unskipped song, among other things that worked quite well to pick what I actually wanted to hear, not what I thought I liked hearing. Alas, now I'm locked in to itunes, and what few plugins it has are Mac only.

[kowh.livejournal.com]

#1 I picked up via JWZ's mixtapes back in Jan, and has given me the novel experience of being a hipster.

Usually I'm so far behind on "new music" when I acquire a track it's either it's already popular, or never will be. I figured this was one of the latter, but all of a sudden (to me anyways) it's exploded in popularity and is now stalking me (neighbours, stores, etc.). Part of me can't quite accept that a top ten radio station is playing something I like and wants me to hate it now, but the wiser part of me is enjoying shopping without wanting to drill my ears out.

[kowh.livejournal.com]

The similarity of the vocals on "Apoptygma Berzerk - Love To Blame" to They Might Be Giants is causing a little cognitive dissonance, but I think I just might have to acquire some of their work.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

"I'm your only love, it's only love to blame but I'm your only love but actually it's love but to blame?"

[dscotton.livejournal.com]

This goes back to mid 2007 - I lost my previous play counts due to a buggy itunes update. This also only covers things I listen to at work, which is probably about 70% of my overall music listening (and obviously doesn't cover stuff I listen to on youtube).

1. My most played song (91 plays) is something almost no one has ever heard (http://oraclechallenge.com/b8compo/B8CC1%20Week%202%20-%20Forest%20-%20Liquid%20Wind.mp3), written for a casual music contest on a message board by an internet acquaintance. This was also my most-played song before the library reset with around 60 plays from what I remember. I've also listened to this one disproportionately at home (some of that from the FL project file.)

2. Same as #1. I pretty rarely skip songs.

3. Something I wrote myself, from the same contest I mentioned in #1. (Part of the reason it has such a high count is that it was from a really good week of the contest, so I've played all of that week's songs quite a bit.)

4. Several thousand songs with 2007/07/05, apparently the date of the bad itunes update that wiped my previous library. But I'm almost certain the oldest file is Enjoy the Silence by Depeche Mode dating to late '96 or early '97.

5. Most skipped is another song I wrote myself. In addition to the obvious reason, I keep it around because I save everything from that composition contest, including some pretty awful tracks.

6a. Not counting the several hundred songs I haven't listened to at all on this iteration of the library, apparently the song I've gone the longest without listening to is Love Song by the Cure. Except that's a lie because I know I've played it in the car. Next after that are a bunch of songs from the soundtrack to Lunar 2: Eternal Blue.

6b. The most-played song that wasn't written for one of my compo contests is a three-way tie (for 7th, at 52 plays) between Dire, Dire Docks by Koji Kondo (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqwLjdJd2k0) (from Super Mario 64), Forest Birdcussion by Protricity (http://ocremix.org/remix/OCR01138/) (an OCRemix of a Donkey Kong Country 2 song), and The Liberation of Gracemeria by Keiki Kobayashi (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgGPRcUgGNk) (from Ace Combat 6).

[skington.livejournal.com]

I've recently started re-ripping a bunch of music from CD to lossless, and I think I've lost some meta-information on the way.

#1: Most played: Sting, Sacred Love, The Book Of My Life (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2J_ppUwuW4). No skips. It's a quintessential album track, inasmuch as it won't ever feature on compilations or be played in concert, but it's still magnificent. Cello, subtle drumming, delicate percussion, intricate production, wonderful songcraft, and an uplifting key change at the end that isn't a truck driver's gear shift.

At one point the winner would have been U2's Electrical Storm, because I listened the fuck out of that track for quite a while, but I think iTunes reset it.

#2: Most Played While Never Skipped: #1, because I listen to music on a per-album basis, and it's track 10 of 11. Having got that far, I'm not going to skip it. Also, track 11, Sacred Love (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03cW4O6UbXo) (the title track), is arguably as good, but it's got a lengthy run-off, which I think makes iTunes decide that I haven't in fact played it when in fact I'm skipping dead air.

#3: I started ranking stuff for a while, but then gave up. So most of my stuff doesn't have a rank. Having said that, the "Shut your fucking face Unclefucker" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmS5GTrb72Y) song from the South Park movie should probably win this award.

#4: I've re-ripped a bunch of stuff recently, and that's played merry hell with "earliest added". Paul McCartney's 'Tripping the Live Fantastic" was the first CD I ever owned (thanks to it being something I asked for, not realising I was getting a CD player, rather than something I'd have chosen to be the first CD I ever owned), so it's probably something off that. The live version of Coming Up is reasonably good. Most of the other tracks can be gleefully avoided.

#5: Most skipped: "I See Red" by Split Enz, but that's because I hear a few seconds of it (which is enough to register it as a listen with iTunes) before I skip to the next track or two on the album. Lammas' version of "Ae Fond Kiss" I skip because it's nothing like as good as the Corries' version (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQEHuQZB7wY), yet the rest of their stuff is good.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

iTunes decide that I haven't in fact played it when in fact I'm skipping dead air.

Yes. iTunes doesn't count a play unless you run off the end of the track. It counts a "skip" if you jump forward off the track after the first few seconds but before 10-ish, and it counts a "play" if you complete the track.

[dscotton.livejournal.com]

However, you can tell it to stop short of the end of the file, eliminating the need to skip the empty portion. This is under the "options" tab in song info.

[plantyhamchuk.livejournal.com]

I've had some crashes and stuff so I'm afraid I don't have much data, but the most played songs are Aesop Rock - None Shall Pass (I had an ipod that went wonky, IIRC the screen broke and some buttons broke, this was the first song on the ipod) and Cut Chemist - The Garden (later playing device, this was my train commuting song). I don't recall how many times these were played but both were easily 200+. On this OSX partition of the computer the top song is Death Cab for Cutie - I will possess your heart (180), but the other part of the computer will say something else, maybe an old recording of Besame Mucho or something. If I reboot I'll try to remember to check and report back.

I skip stuff all the time, well over half of my music collection is 'once in a blue moon I'd like to hear this, I'd toss it but it would be very hard if not impossible to find again'. I've ended up making mixes to fit various moods or uh stages of Civilization, to better avoid such music (and to lessen V's suffering, he does not care for my Mongolian music collection).

Unfortunately my music collection is something of a mess, different songs on the different partitions, some are attempts to rip mp4s to mp3s and one day I will have all of my music once again in one location so I can lovingly organize it my heart's content...

[opaqueplanet.livejournal.com]

I just made a new computer and brought all my stuff over to it a few months ago, so these are only about 5 months of stats.

My most played song is "Without Mythologies (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZ8Yrq2oToY)" by the Weakerthans. 29 times, vastly outpacing the next two songs at 12 times each, mostly because I was drawing it and had it on repeat the whole time.

The next two songs are "Nautical Disaster (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8Fi46BFAF0)" and "'It's a Good Life If You Don't Weaken' (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwNVxvczgCs)", both by the Tragically Hip. (apparently I am very dedicated to CanCon)

The rest I either don't know how to check, or else the information is useless, an the earliest added song is almost every song, sometime in November.

[harper-knight.livejournal.com]

Last.fm doesn't track 'skipped', and I've swapped music players, some that track data and some that don't, way too many times over the past six years or so for my most recent one to be of any sense.. especially as I dual-boot at the moment, so foobar2000 doesn't really have accurate stats. Also, I haven't scrobbled my iPod plays in years.. and I listen to a significant amount of music on youtube lately. What I'm saying is, these stats are way off the truth of my listening habits. Might be interesting anyway

However-

Most Played: Kr1z, "Forever (Extended Mix)" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmcICrbfn54)
Most Played, no skips: N/A
Most Played while not Highest Ranked (which I am taking to mean 'not loved' on last.fm): Britney Spears, "What U See (Is What U Get)" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joHdwN-E5nA)
Earliest Added (first song scrobbled): Lullacry, "Stranger in You" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1y_WuGR8Tg)
Most Skipped: N/A

These songs are really not representative of what I listen to that much.

For more information: My most listened to *artists* are Nightwish, E Nomine, Britney Spears, and Judas Priest, in that order. Judas Priest and Britney used to fight for third, but Britney has a pretty solid lead now.

I listen to music with my whole library, 11,000 tracks or so, in the playlist all the time. Mostly on shuffle, or using skip to shuffle my way to something that appeals me and turning it off for a while.

Reference - Vesperae on last.fm (http://www.last.fm/user/Vesperae)

[concourse.livejournal.com]

Musical games!

1. Most played: Boards of Canada, "Dayvan Cowboy" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lEsLcGB7Vo). 113 plays since 23rd October 2005, last played 11th April 2012, skipped 3 times. It's the music we had played while we left our wedding ceremony.

2. Most Played While Never Skipped: Modest Mouse, "Float On" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmuiMQHNiPY). 80 plays since 5th December 2004, 9th overall. From an emo summer.

3. Most Played While Not Highest Rated: Aphex Twin, "Pulsewidth" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVrSr-yxqmE). 84 plays since 9th August 2003, 6th overall. Two of the higher-placed tracks come from the same album.

4. Earliest Added: 259 tracks in a tie on 31st July 2003 at 9.23pm, but the earliest "Last played" date is Cliff Martinez, "Garbage" from the film Sex, Lies And Videotape (http://cliff-martinez.com/download.html) (1st August 2003, 7.52pm).

5. Most Skipped: Junkplanet, "Ker-Punk!!". Played nine times, skipped 17 times. It's short and hyperactive and I think I used it on a compilation because it's quite fun, but nine times out of ten* I'll skip it as I've got to be in a particular mood. Not entirely unlike Dokaka, for that matter. (Dokaka is great, by the way.)

6. Total running time of all the tracks that have been listened to (if they'd all been listened to once): 115 days, 13 hours, 47 minutes, 26 seconds. Total running time of all the tracks that have only been listened to once: 46 days, 12 hours, 34 minutes, 55 seconds.

*Stats suggest this is actually 17 times out of 26, but who's counting.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

1. Well, if i consult this instance of iTunes, it says "No One Loves Me and Neither Do I" by Them Crooked Vultures, 20 times, 0 skips. If i check my last.fm profile, it says The Trey Gunn Band's "Arrakis", with 58, but i have three versions of that track, and i can't distinguish them.

2. See above.

3. I don't rank `em. Waste of time.

4. Can't recall, although i do know that the first CD i bought was Jean Michel Jarre's "Waiting for Cousteau", back in 1990 or `91, and yes, i still have it.

5. There's a bunch of "skipped 3 times"; the one with the lowest playcount (1) is Rush's "By-Tor and the Snow Dog", which is a bit odd, since i do like that song in all of its silliness.

[rbarclay.livejournal.com]

I have no idea when the current version of amarok started its statistics (I use it for some 5-7 years I guess), but it says:
- most played song, 8 times: JBO - I Don't Like Metal
last.fm (which was the reason I started to use amarok!), OTOH, says I played Metallica - Fuel just as often, and in the last 12 months alone, and that most-played sond is Bloodhound Gang - The Bad Touch (which probably ain't true, and by a long shot - guesstimating I'd say Motörhead - In The Year Of The Wolf).

Clearly, those stats are all completely worthless for me.

[davidcook.livejournal.com]

1. 19 plays for Dead Souls, by Sopor Aeternus, from the album "Es Reiten die Toten so schnell". Only skipped once.
2. 18 plays for Am Morgen Fruo, by Qntal. (second most-played)
3. Apparently I have no ratings ...
4. Earlier added here is from March 2008, most likely when this laptop was bought, two albums-worth of tracks (Philip Glass symphonies 2 & 3, and Miroque XIV (compilation).
5. Most skipped (4 times) is a techno mix from 2004 - the likely reason for skipping it is that if I accidentally hit play on the iPod with no shuffle, it's the first track to come up.