Coldplay Are to Last.fm, as Beatles Were to Billboard
Leading online music app last.fm has released its most popular songs, albums and artists of 2008. The rankings come from last.fm's database, based on number of listeners. The music had to be released in 2008 to qualify for the charts.
The Top 10 tracks is absolutely dominated by Coldplay's Viva la Vida, with 6 songs - including numbers 1 and 2. The title track was number 1, with more than three million listens in about 6 months. Coldplay also features at 5, 6, 8 and 9. This is reminiscent of the dominance of the Billboard singles chart the Beatles enjoyed in April 1964!
MGMT also had multiple tracks in the top 10, with entries at numbers 3, 4 and 10. The New York synthpop group also took the number 1 slot in the Top Artists category, but only because Coldplay didn't qualify - it's limited to artists who released their debut album this year. MGMT's album "Oracular Spectacular" gained it over 398,000 Last.fm fans.
The only other artist to make the top 10 tracks was Katy Perry at number 7 with 'I kissed a girl'.
Guess what's the number 1 album? Coldplay's Viva la Vida. Coldplay did have an impressive online launch for that much-anticipated album, which certainly helped. Indeed the album was also the biggest selling iTunes album download of 2008.
These charts, although depressingly dominated by a few bands, show that last.fm is a data generating machine. Its Scrobbler technology tracks what users listen to on a variety of media players - such as iTunes, Songbird, Hype Machine, Blip.fm. It tracks data at the rate of about 650 songs per second, from a community of over 25 million users worldwide according to the analytics firm Omniture. Last.fm claims this is the largest global database of online music behaviour.
Head of The Long Tail Wins Again
Last.fm says it currently has 43 million distinct pieces of music from more than 12 million artists in its database. Of course, even with such a 'long tail' of music data, clearly the Coldplays of this world will continue to dominate. It's not just Coldplay either, Radiohead probably would've been just as successful in 2007. According to one digger, last year "Radiohead would have been the entire top 10 tracks...". We can't verify that claim, but it sounds all too plausible given the 2008 data.
Although it's disappointing that mainstream artists can dominate charts even on the Internet, the beauty of online music services is that users can create their own Top 10's too. Thousands of those won't include Coldplay (including this author's!).
The complete "Best of 2008" lists from last.fm:
Best Artist (artists who have released their debut album this year)
1. MGMT - Oracular Spectacular
2. The Ting Tings - We Started Nothing
3. Sara Bareilles - Little Voice
4. Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
5. Katy Perry - One Of The Boys
6. The Last Shadow Puppets - The Age of the Understatement
7. Foals - Antidotes
8. Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago
9. Does It Offend You, Yeah? - You Have No Idea What You're Getting Yourself Into
10. Santogold - Santogold
Best Album
1. Coldplay - Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends
2. MGMT - Oracular Spectacular
3. Portishead - Third
4. Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts I-IV
5. The Ting Tings - We Started Nothing
6. The Kooks - Konk
7. Death Cab for Cutie - Narrow Stairs
8. Hot Chip - Made In The Dark
9. Jack Johnson - Sleep Through The Static
10. Sigur Rós - Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust
Best Track
1. Coldplay - Viva La Vida
2. Coldplay - Violet Hill
3. MGMT - Time To Pretend
4. MGMT - Electric Feel
5. Coldplay - Life In Technicolour
6. Coldplay - Cemeteries of London
7. Katy Perry - I Kissed A Girl
8. Coldplay - 42
9. Coldplay - Strawberry Swing
10. MGMT - Kids
Comments
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You know how some songs will always remind you of specific times or places? Viva La Vida is the song that puts me right back in the hospital the day after my twins were born. Hearing that song makes me remember the amazing and very new time when Matthew was with me and my wife, yet Sarah was still in the special care nursery, fighting to keep up her weight and keep up her temperature. While my wife was recuperating, and Matthew was sleeping, I was listening to Coldplay, and that song is now hard-wired for me. A great group, great album, great song, and great memory.
Posted by: Louis Gray
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December 7, 2008 10:54 PM
What does "head of the long tail" mean, especially how it's used in the article. Is it used because it's the current cool buzzword?
When you aggregate long tail data, it shows the opinion of the general population, which is no longer obscure. Therefore, it isn't long tail at all.
Posted by: warren | December 7, 2008 11:33 PM
Louis, what a great memory indeed! It's a beautiful thing when music can evoke a happy time in one's life.
Warren, I had no idea "head of the long tail" was a current buzzword(s). What I meant was precisely what the Long Tail theory describes -- there is a small percentage of data that gets the majority of attention. The head, if you will.
Interesting analogy coming on the 28th anniversary of John Lennon - today
Posted by: Beatles Fan | December 8, 2008 12:34 AM
I'm not sure if the prevalence of Coldplay tracks is a damning indictment of Last FM users, the music listening public as a whole, or the state of the music industry. Either way it's depressing that such a bland, miserable bunch should have such a hold on the top ten.
Also interesting to note that this comes a week after Coldplay swept the board at the Grammy nominations. Are downloaders being led by mainstream critics or the other way around?
On the other hand, it's good to see the Ting Tings, Fleet Foxes, and Bon Iver getting some recognition.
Talking of memories, I remember exactly where I was 28 years ago when I heard John Lennon had been shot. Can't imagine I'll remember anything about Coldplay in 28 years time.
Posted by: Kenny | December 8, 2008 1:17 AM
Last.fm really went downhill the past 4 years. This Top 10 more than proves it.
Posted by: kitsune | December 8, 2008 2:31 AM
Glad I came to a forum that's all about imposing my own beliefs about the virtues and vices of Coldplay... the perfect place for this sort of discussion. First of all what the listeners on Last.fm listen to says little if anything about Last.fm itself. Secondly if you don't like Coldplay don't assume that your opinion of them is some absolute truth. Get over yourself.
Posted by: plux | December 8, 2008 8:29 AM
Whatever they say, I'm still a Coldplay and Last.fm fan. :)
Posted by: ipanema | December 8, 2008 8:36 AM
Loved the best artist list. A lot of great new acts came out this year. And seeing Cold Play dominate the top ten tracks? Not surprising: they are a very popular band. And, statistically, they led play counts but a few million listens (from dozens of millions of listeners) is not so dominant as to be disturbing or anything. People like what they like. Any top listening list will have big established acts in it. It is why popular music is popular, right?
Posted by: Steve | December 8, 2008 12:21 PM
Coldplay makes me want to vomit.
Posted by: Shaun | December 8, 2008 12:27 PM
Just for the record, I do like Coldplay too. I haven't listened to the latest album tho, but I like their older stuff.
In terms of it being no surprise Coldplay dominates the tracks list, I agree. It's just as much a mainstream chart as Billboard, which was one of the points of my headline :-)
What would be really interesting is to find out what are the top 10 tracks from people who have similar music tastes to mine - e.g. fellow Nirvana fans, what do they regard as their top 10s. Some kind of aggregation system which shows e.g. "Top 10 Tracks of Nirvana Fans" would be real interesting to me. Hopefully last.fm can do this kind of thing in future.
Suprising they not have an API for this very sort of thing? I guess they see the results as a saleable commodity in terms of advertisers and music companies alike.
Posted by: thomasrdotorg
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December 8, 2008 1:42 PM
Richard,
Check your inbox. It's coming this January...
Adam
Posted by: Adam Wexler | December 8, 2008 2:34 PM
That is extremely offensive to ever compare Coldplay to the Beatles. The Beatles whether your a big fan or not, created something unique and original. The number one song according to this sight (Viva la Vida) has been done like 100 times and codplay's even getting sued for it right now.
Posted by: Hans | December 9, 2008 9:55 PM