Polling Without Context

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

[Poll #1018696]

Comments

Album artists

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I would say most of these artists focus on albums rather than singles, and their listeners are more likely to play an album in its entirety before skipping to a different artist than rnb or dance fans (the latter would also be more likely to consume music via compilations or dj mixes - I know I do!), therefore you would get 12x songs for that artist instead of 'that one Beyonce song I liked and bought off iTunes'.

Amiright?

Re: Album artists

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yes - but they're being ranked on # of listeners not # of plays. So 1 play of "Umbrella" wd be equal to an entire Incubus box set.

Re: Album artists

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

If you look at the actual last.fm page you can get an idea of this actually - they list listeners and plays, and you can work out plays-per-listener.

Re: Album artists

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but it's by number of listeners to anything rather than number of tracks listened, so things that attract magpies should do better than acts where the fans are wasting their time playing an entire album!

Re: Album artists

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

OH YEAH - r&b and hip-hop particularly suffer from uh VARIED tagging eg you could play one whole Ciara album and record 7 or 8 different artist tags viz. Ciara, Ciara ft Ludacris, Ciara feat Ludacris, Ciara and Ludacris &c &c. MYSTERY SOLVED, depression averted :)

Re: Album artists

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Sadly not - this wd still be a listener for Ciara (AND all the others). (I agree though that last FM is INSTITUTIONALLY SOMETHINGIST in terms of how it deals with our friend "ft.")

Re: Album artists

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure Ciara, Ciara ft Ludacris, Ciara feat Ludacris and so on are all counted as different artists - though Oh, Oh ft Ludacris, Oh feat Ludacris, Oh (ft Ludacris), Oh (feat Ludacris) and so on are all credited as plays for Ciara (but as different songs thus reducing the song's number of plays...)

INSTITUTIONALLY RACISTANTI-SOCIAL: collaborations are signifiers of social skillz and no one who listens to those top 30 artists could possibly have social skills.

Re: Album artists

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yes, they are counted as different artists, but it makes little difference in the example you cited as long as ONE track on the album is correctly marked.

It might make a difference with eg Umbrella, if single-play listeners are split between Rihanna and Rihanna ft Jay-Z.

Re: Album artists

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Oh indeed - but then listeners to this sort of music don't tend to listen to albums. In the week that Umbrella leaked, most of its listeners probably listened to no other Rihanna - but the Rihanna/Rihanna ft/feat Jay-Z split probably ensured that it never placed near this list :(

Re: Album artists

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Not to mention Rhianna!

She's at #69 on this list - phwoar etc.

I doubt leaks register in the top 30, to be honest.