What I learned by analyzing my Spotify streaming history

I think that the music people listen to can tell us more about them than a simple musical preference. I think music can reveal the personality of people, the activities they do, their productivity at work, their ability to focus on a task, and even the way they face challengers in their lives. To show you what I mean, I am going to explain you what I learned about me by analyzing the music I played on Spotify during the last three months but first, I am going to teach you how to obtain your own streaming history so you can do your own analysis.

How to obtain your streaming history on Spotify

If you are already a Spotify user, you just need to visit www.spotify.com and click Log In to enter with your username and password. Then, find the privacy settings tab and follow the simple instructions on screen. It’s literally one click to get your last three months of data about your streaming history, searches, playlists, and more. The only inconvenience is that it may take few days for you to receive your data.

Figure 1. Follow these simple steps to get your own streaming history of the last three months.

Minutes of music played

The first thing I did after receiving my data was to plot the minutes of music played for the downloaded period. This is an average of 70 minutes approximately for every of the 55 days in which I played music on Spotify, which results in a total of 3881 minutes of music played. This allowed me to notice that there was a period of about 20 days at the beginning of July in which I didn’t click the play button that often. This happened because I had my holidays on July and that temporarily changed my music listening habits, therefore, I decided to ignore the data on these days from the following analysis. This observation got my attention initially because I would have thought that I had more free time on holidays to listen some music, but it seems that I decided to use my free time on other activities such as visiting my friends, watching movies, and taking an online course.

Figure 2. Minutes of music played during the evaluated period.

The next step was to explore in which day of the week I listened more music. For this, I had to plot the total of minutes of music played for each day of the week. This allowed me to discover that weekends seem to be my favorite time to start the music. Usually, I enjoy some background music while I dedicate to my hobbies on Friday night, while I take the public transport on Saturday afternoon, and while I stay working at home on Sunday.

Figure 3. Minutes of music played for each day of the week.

Next thing was to figure out at what time of the day I usually listen music. As you can see in the following graph, it seems that I enjoy some music around midnight just before going to sleep. I hope this happens more often on Fridays and Saturdays, otherwise it would mean that my sleeping habits are not the healthiest ones. I also discovered that music starts playing as early as 06:00 and continues with more frequency until 12:00 to drastically fall at 13:00. This is because like to get away from my computer and phone to have something to eat at that time. Later, the minutes of music increase between 14:00 and 17:00 to fall again after I leave my workplace and have some rest at home between 17:00 and 20:00. Finally, I enjoy some music at night to relax or get some work done at home. What do you think? Is this familiar to your music listening?

Figure 4. Minutes of music played by hour of the day.

Well, up until this moment I have written only about the days and hours in which I play music, but now is the time to explore the artists and songs that I listen more often. You can observe this in the bubbles graph where each bubble corresponds to an artist or band I listened to, and its size represents the time I listened to them. There are a total of 181 different artists for the evaluated period, but to be honest, I don’t even know most of them since many were played randomly or recommended by Spotify. You can also see a short list with the artists with more minutes from which I get the next observations:

1. The artists in red are the ones that released new songs during the period, so I guess it is normal for me to listen them more often in the short term. This is the case of Turilli / Lione Rhapsody, Sabaton, Dragonforce, and Visions of Atlantis. Also, enjoying their new songs often makes me revisit their older albums and add more minutes to the count.

2. For some reason that I don’t know, some artists are registered with different names. Such is the case of ERA and Arielle Dombasle with 365.9 and 25.1 minutes played respectively, although they are actually part of the same artist. This should send ERA to the second place on my list of most listened artists.

3. ERA, Lesiem, and The Dark Tenor are the kind of artist I listen to while I do some work that requires my concentration. I am glad they are among the artists with more minutes because that means that I am being productive with my time, or that I am trying it at least. On the other hand, Kalafina, L’Arc-en-Ciel, and Kimeru are Japanese artists that I like to listen while I practice a hobby that is related to Japan, which I may talk about on another occasion. Finally, most of the remaining artists play European power metal, my favorite music genre that I can listen to at almost any occasion.

4. Avantasia, my favorite band and other of my most special artists such as Kamelot, Labyrinth, and Therion are hardly on the list. It may sound weird, but I find their music so good that I am probably looking for the perfect moment to listen to their songs. Sadly, it seems that the moment never arrives, or that I am not making enough effort to find that moment and do something I enjoy so much.

Figure 5. Bubbles graph of the artists I played in the last 3 months.

Finally, I show you my most played songs during the past 3 months. Most of them are found in the recently released albums whereas few others have been lucky enough to be played multiple times in random mode. Still, I am able to recognize some songs that have made me press the play button countless times, for example, Monster in my Closet, and both versions of The Future of Warfare. You may be surprised for not finding a single ERA song despite they are one of my most played artists. The reason why this happens is because I normally listen to them while I work, and at that point I am not concerned to listen a specific song and let them play randomly instead.

Figure 6. Top songs I played during the last 3 months.

Final thoughts

After analyzing my streaming history, I am glad to know that there are many artists doing the music that I enjoy, and that I am being productive at the same time I press the play button. The sad finding is that I do not seem to make time for the bands that I find the most special among my favorite ones. Their music is so good to me that I am waiting for the perfect moment without interruptions or daily life concerns to listen to them. I don’t know whether that moment will arrive or not, so I guess the best thing I can do is to find that time myself.