{"id":1545,"date":"2017-04-14T23:14:28","date_gmt":"2017-04-14T23:14:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/dataviz\/?p=1545"},"modified":"2017-04-14T23:15:28","modified_gmt":"2017-04-14T23:15:28","slug":"history-of-popular-music-a-musicophiles-treat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/dataviz\/2017\/04\/14\/history-of-popular-music-a-musicophiles-treat\/","title":{"rendered":"History of popular Music- A Musicophile’s treat"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bikram Patnaik<\/strong><\/p>\n

Google Play Music\u00a0timeline\u00a0<\/a><\/h5>\n

‘What would you do if you want to listen to an old classic country music\u00a0on Friday evening after a hectic day at work?<\/strong><\/em>‘<\/p>\n

Generally we turn up to various\u00a0websites, blogs, TV channels\u00a0and radio which lists\u00a0the top 20 music tracks\/albums of a particular year but, Google Play Music’s makes it easy with it’s new Music Timeline visualization which gives us a bird eye view of our\u00a0past musical favorites and gives us a chance to revisit them. It helps us visualize which music has stood the test of time, and how genres and artists have risen and fallen in popularity.<\/p>\n

The Music Timeline uses data from Google Play Music users’ libraries to categorize artists by genre, and the genres are then subdivided. What it provides, then, is a rough-and-ready map of the popularity\u00a0of genres and artists over the years.The X-axis shows us the transition of time from mid-50’s to 2010 while the Y-axis scales the popularity of that particular genre. Here, the visualization uses stacked area chart which are usually used in situations when we need to display some changes in time, when it\u2019s important to show that those values in a sum form a whole. For all the music loving audience there can’t be a better way of representation than this.<\/p>\n

UNDERSTANDING THE DATA:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Let’s dive deeper by understanding it’s working dynamics. When you\u00a0glance across\u00a0the timeline it gives a soothing treat to the eyes with it’s subtle color combinations. You can figure out straight away that during the early 50’s ‘Jazz’ & ‘Vocal\/Easy-Listening’\u00a0genre were very popular among people. But as time elapsed ‘Rock’ and ‘Pop’ culture picked up the pace and overshadowed other genre. In the early 80’s\u00a0‘Jazz’ along with other genre reached their\u00a0threshold and people\u00a0developed a different taste of music. Emergence of new artists like Snoop dog,Eminem and Nirvana\u00a0resulted in the up rise of\u00a0‘Alternative\/Indie’ and ‘Hip-hop\/Rap’ culture and made it a craze.<\/p>\n

Once you\u2019ve drilled down to your selected genre, the timeline takes the form distinctive audio wave showing\u00a0the flow of popular individual artists\/bands and displays a short bio and relevant albums. For example, by clicking on the Pop\u00a0stripe, we can see the combination\u00a0from ’50s Pop\u00a0to ’60s Pop\u00a0to Adult contemporary within the growth of the overall genre, as well as some of the most popular artists that composed each sub genre. This helps audiophiles to choose the artist of their choice and buy relevant songs.<\/p>\n

Another interesting feature is that\u00a0we can\u00a0search for a particular artist to see the trajectory of their career through the decades. Let’s say, Michael Jackson who\u00a0started his music career in 70’s but didn’t hit his stardom until the release of his famous album Thriller and Bad in 80’s after which his legacy still continues till date. The same feature also applies to music albums.<\/p>\n

DRAWBACKS:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now talking about the loop holes in this visualization,\u00a0the data collected is only restricted to Google Play Music user’s libraries and doesn’t take into account users from other music friendly platforms like Apple music, Spotify,Pandora or Sound-cloud. If we collate the data from all sources, there is a high probability that it might give us a different picture altogether. More ever, the very existence of Google Play Music<\/em> in 1950 or it’s use by the old generation people, who mostly prefer traditional ways (cassette players and cd-player) of listening to music is questionable. I leave that up to you to decide. But certainly the variety\u00a0and easy usability\u00a0of Music Timeline over powers it’s flaws.<\/p>\n

FROM A CRITIQUE’S VIEWPOINT:<\/strong><\/p>\n

While exploring a particular genre say ‘ROCK’ and diving deep into\u00a0it’s sub-genres, if you examine\u00a0closely the word ‘ROCK’ is embossed\u00a0in the background throughout the entire audio wave format. This seems to be overwhelming specially when you have multiple sub-divisions each highlighting it’s own name. A color contrast is much\u00a0needed to distinctly identify the sub-categories. Lastly, the font size needs to be\u00a0standardized across the timeline to reduce the probabilities of missing out on words\/texts.<\/p>\n

ALTERNATIVE APPROACH:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Though it’s visually appealing there are certain hiccups with stacked area charts as well. Ideally one should be able to interpret each individual series by its height, but unfortunately most interpret the curve of the top of the area as indicating quantity ( In line graphs). So, as an alternative\u00a0I would recommend individual line charts, with an additional line in a stark color for the total or\u00a0we\u00a0can use interactivity and gray out series in the background, such as in this amazing visualization of housing prices from\u00a0THE New York Times\u00a0<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

CONCLUSION:<\/strong><\/p>\n

I feel that this kind of visualization is really helpful \u00a0when we have to organize huge data sets (live data) across a defined time-line. Similar approach\/viz can be an advantage\u00a0for organizations to analyze\u00a0their product sales along with their\u00a0respective popularity. It will allow them to come up with business metrics targeting valuable customers.<\/p>\n

Reference:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/music\/musicblog\/2014\/jan\/17\/google-play-music-timeline-punksoul<\/p>\n

The NYT<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bikram Patnaik Google Play Music\u00a0timeline\u00a0 ‘What would you do if you want to listen to an old classic country music\u00a0on Friday evening after a hectic day at work?‘ Generally we turn up to various\u00a0websites, blogs, TV channels\u00a0and radio which lists\u00a0the top 20 music tracks\/albums of a particular year but, Google Play Music’s makes it easy … Continue reading History of popular Music- A Musicophile’s treat<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1992,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"qubely_global_settings":"","qubely_interactions":"","kk_blocks_editor_width":"","_kiokenblocks_attr":"","_kiokenblocks_dimensions":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"gutentor_comment":0,"qubely_featured_image_url":null,"qubely_author":{"display_name":"Patnaik Bikram","author_link":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/dataviz\/author\/bikramptnk095\/"},"qubely_comment":0,"qubely_category":"Uncategorized<\/a>","qubely_excerpt":"Bikram Patnaik Google Play Music\u00a0timeline\u00a0 ‘What would you do if you want to listen to an old classic country music\u00a0on Friday evening after a hectic day at work?‘ Generally we turn up to various\u00a0websites, blogs, TV channels\u00a0and radio which lists\u00a0the top 20 music tracks\/albums of a particular year but, Google Play Music’s makes it easy…","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/dataviz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/dataviz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/dataviz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/dataviz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1992"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/dataviz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1545"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/dataviz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1687,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/dataviz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1545\/revisions\/1687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/dataviz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/dataviz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/dataviz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}