Using Spotify to measure the popularity of older music

What strikes me are the missing artists. For instance, no Beatles. I'm pretty sure I hear the Beatles on TV, radio, etc more than all other 60s music combined. Ditto AC/DC: 1980 "Back in black" is the best selling rock album ever, and I hear AC/DC really, really often in the background. I'm afraid Spotify isn't _that_ representative of all available (pop) music.

I'm wondering how much this is skewed by playlists -- i.e. a popular song's stats are amplified by its inclusion on popular playlists and Spotify radio. It'd be fun to see if these stats would change if you included only songs that people actively seeked out.

Chet Faker released a cover of No Diggity a few years ago, which is responsible for all of my plays of the original on Spotify.<p>A popular cover can probably drive a lot of popularity for an older song on Spotify.

If you liked this, you may be interested in Dorothy Gambrell&#x27;s analysis from the other direction. She took the top songs from billboard over the past 100 years, and tried to find out which ones have remainied popular.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.verysmallarray.com&#x2F;?p=1752" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.verysmallarray.com&#x2F;?p=1752</a>

author here, if there&#x27;s any questions

Very slick analysis!<p>No Diggity is a great song, but the song it samples might be even better: Grandma&#x27;s Hands by Bill Withers.

Were you thinking about creating spotify playlists from those top lists?

First of all I do dislike blog posts which lack a comment section to ask questions, criticize or praize.<p>Second of all I do dislike texts on data which lack information on where the data comes from.<p>I can think of ways to mine present day play counts from Spotify (while not working there) but I wonder where did he get the daily counts from he used in the last chart. Any ideas?<p>Furthermore I doubt that Spotify is necessarily a good indicator on how songs are being perceived in the long run. Especially b&#x2F;c there are local platform-specific attractor dynamics at play.

* in US pop culture

Isn&#x27;t it ironic that Ironic is on there largely because people go listen to it because people tell them that none of the examples are actually ironic?