Last.fm All-Time Charts

I think it would be a great idea for Last.Fm to have all-time charts reflecting the most played songs and artists since last.fm began (number of listeners and number of plays), and the most loved tracks total (not just reflecting a single week). I love the weekly charts and look forward to them every monday and I think would be great to have these charts as well.

I know it says on an artists page how many listeners they have had, and on a songs page it also has the number of listeners it has had, but to see it laid out as a chart with the most listened to in the history of last.fm would be much more convenient than having click on every song on last.fm to see which song has been the most played in last.fm history.

Just something I think would be great for the site. Thanks.

I find myself looking for this kind of chart on a regular basis and always shrug my shoulders and give up because I can't find it. Glad to know it's not because I'm too stupid to find it, it's because, you know, no such chart exists.

Would love it if one did though.

Been looking for this myself

+1

There aren't any proper all-time charts but there are a couple of (slightly outdated) attempts at an all-time artist chart on this discussion thread: All-time Last.FM artists. Hope that helps.

Bring it back!

would love to see all time charts been looking for them for a while

We all who know the all time charts will be. What about an all-time NON MAINSTREAM list? You know, artists who have less than X plays/listeners?

ShadesOfIce said:
We all who know the all time charts will be. What about an all-time NON MAINSTREAM list? You know, artists who have less than X plays/listeners?You'd just end up with a massive tie for whatever listener ceiling you establish. Plus whatever upper bound you set would be pretty arbitrary.

Yeah fmera I think that's what ewok20t3 is saying, that he'd like them to be ranked by either playcount or total listeners, and that it would be nice to have some sort of graphical representation in addition. I think something of that sort would be awesome... I also think it is very important in general to have this kind of data because it seems that last.fm is the largest and most accurate source of information on music listening, and pretty accurately reflects the trends in the global population.

berban said:
it seems that last.fm is the largest and most accurate source of information on music listening, and pretty accurately reflects the trends in the global population.

If you think this is so, you're pretty misguided. Last.fm is strongly skewed towards rock/pop/indie, and perhaps metal too. Hip hop, country, classical, electronic, funk, soul, r&b, jazz, latin, and various styles of world/folk music - these are all highly underrepresented here. This makes perfect sense if you consider what the dominant demographic of last.fm users is: tech-savvy, middle- to upper-class Westerners in their teens or twenties.

Despite that, I still agree that all-time charts would be a good idea. I've pretty much given up on it returning though - been waiting nearly 2 years.

gadgetchannel said:
The problem with the all-time charts was they became a bit stagnant. As I recall, positions 1 and 2 were invariably The Beatles and Radiohead and I think Coldplay was fairly high up there as well. I doubt that it would be much different if they returned.

To make all-time charts more interesting you could add new filters to the lists. Last.FM does store information about geography for instance. Maybe it's just me, but I'd love to see what the all-time chart would look like for Ireland and compare it to the one for the UK or Germany vs. France. Or Pakistan vs. Colombia. Or compare US versus the rest of the world or 'Europe'.

Last.FM's API also has a Metro option, with which it seems possible to filter per (big) city. So that would give us the option to look at all-time hits on an even more granular level. Do people in New York value Radiohead just as much as people in Kansas City? And what do people in Berlin think?

On top of that, the all-time lists could be filtered per year. What was the most listened to album in 2009? (I know Last.FM has made a 'top played albums that came out in 2009', but was Sgt. Pepper's listened to more often in 2009 than Abbey Road?)

What was the most played song in 2008, in May 2007? And of course, the filters could be on top of each other, giving you filters for time periods and geography.

Another filter idea could be a filter on age groups. Does the 30-35 age group listen to the same stuff as the 15-20 group? What would that tell us about the generation gap?

Male/Female? Would there be a difference in preference? Metallica listeners are they evenly split male/female? Take That?

A different idea could be to make a stat based on 'plays per listener'. The weekly charts show quite a difference in this area, with some bands having far more listeners, but far less plays. To give you an idea, The Beatles had 13.7 plays per listener last week, whereas Coldplay had 7.6 plays per listener. I find that difference intriguing...

Anyway, as with all stats, the sky is the limit. It would be great to be able to play with different kinds of stats, at different sub levels etc.

In response to gwalla and ShadesOflce's discussion about having cut-offs with regards to plays/listeners: while gwalla's correct, Shades is on to something. If you have a cut-off for the number of listeners, but then sort the artists by plays, you do get some reasonably good (though far from perfect) lists of non-mainstream artists. See here.

In response to NotoriousBiggles' comment about sales vs. LastFM popularity: see my journal here. You'll see that there is very little resemblance between all-time Last.FM plays and all-time sales.