Decade of Data

Some time in mid-May of 2004 the hard drive of my otherwise trusty PowerBook G4 gave out. It was probably a direct result of the emotional stress I had subjected it, and everyone else that I cared about, to over the preceding week. I had just finagled an A in my final undergraduate class; somehow getting credit for building a functional bagpipe while simultaneously not building a functional bagpipe. And also breaking Jobonga's sewing machine.

The point being, I had lost all of the backup for the past 4+1 years of college; except for my WeBWork―my entire collegiate career's worth of work, gone. The other point being I still had 2,388 mp3s on my reliable 2nd generation iPod (back when 10GB sounded like a lot). And luckily, that was the important point.

At 1:01 PM, May 18th, 2004 I started importing these songs back into my iTunes library. And now, exactly a decade later, I have 10 years of uninterrupted iTunes metadata at my fingertips. And guys, I'M REALLY EXCITED ABOUT IT.


Some important notes:

1. The 1st song added back into my library, and thus, the song which will forever be my oldest iTunes entry: "When The Angels Sing" by Social Distortion. It's not what I would have chosen to be the originating entry, but the data doesn't lie. My oldest songs, in reverse order:

I do feel pretty good about "Informer" showing up there at #4. Also, "Boogie Shoes" by KC &/or The Sunshine Band has proven to be a really insightful Napster grab for me. Pre-2004 Whitney had some insightful predilections. 

2. In 10 years I have acquired 35,999 songs (see above). Which is roughly 9.8 songs/day for 10 years, which are basically Wangari Maathai numbers. Or, in other words, if I started playing my library today it would continue non-stop until August 19th. It's a little disappointing that I didn't hit the 36k mark, but it still feels good. Really good. And I'm sure that it's still more than Schwenn has. 

(At this point I'd like to throw out a shoutout to Napster, The CIF server, and the internet in general. Actually, mostly The CIF server. To this day its Internet2 connection is the ideal by which I judge my life. It would be enjoyable to have today; in 2002 it was transformational.) 

3. Most Played Song: "No One" by Alicia Keys. By a wide margin. Obviously.

Other highlights: "Bring It On Home To Me", because it's amazing. "The Dreamer" by The Tallest Man On Earth, because it's what I whistled in my jail cell that time I got arrested. "Break My Stride" by Unique II, because BIKETUB.

4. 196 Genres, 4316 Artists, 5377 Albums

5. My Oldest Play: "Freeze Frame" - Less Than Jake. 

That's right, the last time I listened to it was a decade ago, while I was still importing those 2,388 songs. IT WAS NUMBER 2368! And then never again. Over the course of 10 years. #memories

6. THE DENSITY .

Because, THE DENSITY. After Crapples and my Sweater Book, this is the thing I am most proud of.

Because my Play Density is what I live for. Sorry, for which I live. It's the reason Pandora, and Spotify, and Jennjamin's Mix Tapes, and Rdio have no appeal to me. I need the data, and I need the playcount. Always. Otherwise what will the next decade of my life mean? 

More Plays; More Densities

It's not like I'm going to stop talking about this awesome thing I came up with. The latest from the density factory:

A new hit:
Hot N' Fun (Ft. Nelly Furtado) - N.E.R.D.

An old hit:
I Want Love - Elton John

And a taste of what'll make it onto The Densitometer next week:
Bang Pop - Free Energy

I've got some news for you:

Two can play at this game. I'm in the midst of my biggest Play Density reshuffling since version 2.0 was released. It's an exciting time over here. Surprises? Only one: how did Fembot not make it any higher up the list?

Fembot - Robyn

Back On Top!

The Continuing Story of Density, Play

If you've been hoping that I was going to stop talking about this Play Density thing sometime soon, skip ahead now. If you've been waiting to hear about the latest developments, I've got just the thing for you!

First up is some new terminology via the brother Evan—The Densitometer, i.e. the tool that measures the densitosity of a song in the burgeoning field of Densitometry. This was the sole useful contribution that came from our lengthy, multi-day email exchange we had on the topic last week. It wasn't worth it.

Next in line, the long awaited playlist function! Finally, a playlist of your Dearest Densest songs. It's like they're just lined up waiting to be played again. This requires a little bit of applescripting; it's like regular scripting, but on a Mac. Don't try it on a PC. Also, don't judge me on my questionable skripting skillz.

Requirements:
1 Macintosh
1 updated Play Density excel document [see previous post for setup instructions]
1 AppleScript application [available below]
1 double click of the mouse

What you'll need to do:
⓵ open that file in your AppleScript Editor
⓶ change the values at the top of the document for file_path and file_name to suite your own computer/file location

➠ file_path is where you keep your Play Density documents in correct "Hard Drive Name:Users:user name:folder name:" format

➠ file_name is the name of your Play Density excel document

⓷ choose Save As from the File menu and set File Format to Application
⓸ double click your newly saved application
⓹ wait while Excel gets itself together
⓺ watch as iTunes populates your playlist
⓻ indulge your STOS

Fest O' di Pesto

My oldest brother was born 32 years ago on Friday. Luckily I happened to be back in Philadelphia for a few days before we head up to a cabin in Pennsyltucky for the week. I'd missed the other brother (the stupid one)'s 30th birthday a couple of weeks ago, so I was glad I didn't have to forgo another event at the B²G². And this time I brought cheeseheads for all the Barnebey Boys! It wasn't an EEE, but we did have 3 varieties of pesto. Have you ever had a mint pesto? What about a cilantro? Highlights of the night included the wood grilled legs of lambs, the boots of beers, and Ben Sears (the backdoor neighbor)'s speech about how the rest of the world needed to be more like the Barnebey's side yard. I don't remember going to bed.

But today was also jumentous momentous. I bought a deck of cards that I'm pretty sure was manufactured sometime during the Truman administration. For 25¢! They're red and say Aries on the backs. There's even a special explainer card that lets you know that Aries are idealistic and enthusiastic. Then we came home and played several rounds of Euchre, over Yuenglings. Spell that 3 times fast. And Joanna called! We discussed how she had been ruining situations left &/or right for awhile now. She made a resolution to start choosing fun. The Play Density spread. I love Saturdays.

Play Density 2.0

My PlayDensity habit has slowly been spreading across Southern Wisconsin over the past 7 months. Any day now it's going to jump the shark and go mainstream. Or at least make it to Iowa. Doesn't everybody want to know what their most commonly played songs are‽ I never stop thinking about mine, and yours. I hope that's not kreepy, I'm just curious. With that in mind, I'm ready to release the PlayDensity 2.0 update which has been in public beta testing for the last month.

What began as a simple ratio of (playcount) ÷ (# of days in library) had been updated to exclude songs less than 7 days old by the time Version 1.0 was released. Why 7 days? A song that's played twice in 2 days may not be that special, but one that's played 7 times in 7 days deserves some recognition. So what does v2.0 have to offer? More standardization(!) and a playlist. To account for the increasing variability as the # of Days increases we'll now be taking the logarithmus naturali of each of our variables, and then doing a small correction to convert into percentages.

pd 2.0 = 100(e^{^(ln(playcount)/ln(# of Days))/100} -1)

Now it's your turn.

⓵ Make a smart playlist with these criteria:

⓶ Export your playlist to a text file.

⓷ Download this Excel sheet:

⓸ Open the Excel sheet. It'll try to read the exported text file, you'll have to tell it where it is the 1st time you open it by editing the text import settings. Once you've chosen your file the other settings should be set already; click through to 'Finish'.

⓹ Select your newly acquired data and sort by descending values of Play Density.

⓺ Show it to me.

Musical Standardization

Playcount vs. # of Days in Library = Play Density