🎵 Spotify Data Stories

Interactive Analytics of 500 Curated Tracks Across 15 Genres

🔊 Story 1: The Loudness Wars

The "loudness wars" refer to the trend of increasing audio loudness in recorded music. Let's explore how loudness affects popularity and varies across genres in our dataset.

Popularity by Loudness Deciles

Top 15 Loudest Genres

Loudness vs Energy

Key Insights:

  • Moderate loudness levels (-8 to -4 dB) show the highest popularity scores
  • Electronic genres like minimal-techno and progressive-house dominate the loudness charts
  • There's a strong positive correlation between loudness and energy across tracks
  • Very quiet tracks tend to have lower mainstream appeal

🎨 Story 2: Artist Uniqueness Analysis

Some artists develop distinctive sonic signatures that set them apart. We calculate uniqueness scores based on how far each artist's audio features deviate from the dataset average.

Top 15 Most Unique Artists

Artist Audio DNA Comparison

Key Insights:

  • Artists with high instrumentalness and acousticness tend to be most unique
  • Pop and mainstream artists cluster closer to the dataset average
  • New-age and ambient artists show the most distinctive audio fingerprints
  • Uniqueness doesn't always correlate with popularity - some unique artists have niche appeal

⏱️ Story 3: The 3-Minute Rule

The "3-minute rule" suggests that radio-friendly songs should be around 3 minutes long. Let's examine how song duration relates to popularity and varies across genres.

Popularity by Duration Bins

Song Duration Distribution

Average Duration by Genre

Key Insights:

  • Songs between 3-3.5 minutes achieve the highest average popularity
  • The sweet spot for radio play appears to be right around the traditional 3-minute mark
  • Progressive and new-age genres favor longer compositions
  • Very short songs (<2 minutes) and very long songs (>5 minutes) tend to have lower popularity

🚫 Story 4: Explicit Content Impact

How does explicit content affect a song's characteristics and popularity? We'll compare explicit and clean tracks across various dimensions.

Popularity: Explicit vs Clean

Explicit Content by Genre

Audio Features Comparison

Key Insights:

  • Explicit tracks show slightly higher popularity on average
  • Hip-hop and rap genres have the highest percentage of explicit content
  • Explicit tracks tend to have higher speechiness and energy levels
  • Clean tracks show higher valence (positivity) scores on average