songs du jour


How do you visualize the life cycle of listening? From March 1, 2017 to March 1, 2018 I tried to do just that. I tracked every song on my rotating Songs Du Jour playlist, then used that data to create an infographic. Now, I could actually look at my listening habits – in full color.

Songs Du Jour is, simply, the playlist that contains all the songs I’m into at the moment. When I am bored of a song or find myself skipping it, I take it off the list.

I wasn't sure what it would look like when I started. I knew my goal was to pack as much relevant information as I possibly could into the graphic. However, I also had to maintain a clean design that told a story at a glance.

 
 
 
 

if you want to peruse the entire march 2017-march 2018 spreadsheet, you can download the pdf.

 

process/conclusions


One of the reasons I started this project was to do a project that involved a large set of raw data. I started by asking myself a bunch of questions: "how many songs do I keep on the playlist in a year?" or "how often do I add songs du jour songs to another playlist?" (A lot of my listening is playlist-based.) As the project continued I found new questions emerging, like "what was Spotify's most successful Discover playlist?" or "do I still add songs when I'm traveling or visiting my family?".

I answered those questions (245, about 25% of the time, 4/3/17, not as often), but even cooler was discovering stuff about my own listening habits by creating the infographic. These included the cycle of genres (I never realized I had such distinct punk phases, for example!), the more even genre mix that occurs when my playlist turnover is higher, and the simultaneous rarity and longevity of the few pop songs that showed up.

you can listen to the songs du jour spotify playlist too:

deliverables: poster

date: march 2018

project type: information design, poster