Do you musical choices change with the season?

[Fire breath]

I like to play more AOR melodic rock stuff in the summer personally but overall there is no real pattern. I'll play anything anytime. Since I don't really listen to dark music I don't have the dark winter blues thing. I listen to a lot of death metal but I don't class it as dark music personally.

 

[skyrefuge]

Tell me again how you track this. Very curious.

I have a plug-in for iTunes that adds an entry to a text file (XML format) every time I listen to a song. Each entry contains the artist, album, track, timestamp of when it was played, and some other basic information. Periodically, I add the contents of these XML files to a SQL database. Then, whenever an interesting question like this comes up, I write a script/query to mine that data.

You can download the framework here:

http://www.tpom.com/download/AllPlaysFramework.zip

The second and third components of it are somewhat raw and require a fair bit of technical knowledge and screwing around, but the first component (Play Tracking) is probably pretty valuable. If you're using iTunes on Windows, it should be very simple to install and will start keeping track of your plays. At that point you'll just have an XML file which isn't terribly useful, but at least you'll have the data stored, so if I ever release a more user-friendly way to parse the XML, then by that time you'll already have a big hunk of data that you can mine. Particularly since the data-mining only becomes interesting once you have at least a year's worth of play-tracking collected. It's all documented in the README.txt file.

If you try it, let me know if you have any trouble/questions.

Neil

 

[Jasonic]

Damn Neil!!! Someday metal may be your perfect alibi!!!!!!!!!!

"No judge!! I was listening to Iced Earth's "Horror Show", the track "Dracula" to be specific, at 7:13PM on the Friday you speak of"

 

[skyrefuge]

And in the meantime, I think I came up with a query which *does* actually reveal seasonal tendencies. Note that like many others, I listen to anything at any time, so if you looked at a day's listening for me you wouldn't really be able to guess the season, but when averaged over a large amount of data, some patterns seem to emerge.

So for this analysis, I chose four dates (Jan 1., Apr 1., July 1., Oct. 1), and for each album I own, calculated how far away from the target date each listen occurred, and then calculated an "average distance" for the album from that date. For example, on average, I listened to "Norwegian Native Art" only 56 days away (plus or minus) from January 1st, while my listens to "Brave New World" happened 129 days from January 1st, on average. Thus, Einherjer is very "winter" while Iron Maiden is very "non-winter". I filtered the results to only include albums that had gotten 10 listens or more, in a period ranging from one year after their release date to the present (to eliminate false positives where my listens were more dependent on the album's recent release than on the seasons).

There are still some outliers, but a lot of this really fits the gut-feel I had.

WINTER ALBUMS
Einherjer - Norwegian Native Art - 55.8 (Norwegian, sure)
Anathema - Judgement - 57.8 (yup)
Immortal - At The Heart Of Winter - 64.3 (Perfect!)
Enslaved - Isa - 70.7 (What, no 'Frost'?)
Estatic Fear - A Sombre Dance - 73.6 (Sure)
Omnium Gatherum - Spirits And August Light - 74.3 (That chilly Finnish vibe?)
Alchemist - Organasm - 74.5 (nah, this is much more a summer album)
Enslaved - Mardraum: Beyond the Within - 75.1 (what, no 'Vikingligr Veldi'?)
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven! - 76.9 (sure, I guess)
Root - Kärgeräs - 78.3 (yup, though it rightly ranks higher on the fall list)

SPRING ALBUMS
Dance Hall Crashers - Honey, I'm Homely! - 57.1 (crazy-happy ska, of course!)
Sentenced - Down - 59.3 (yup, 'Down' is my spring-Sentenced, 'Frozen' is for fall)
Blind Guardian - A Twist In The Myth - 61 (yup)
Einherjer - Norwegian Native Art - 61 (still kinda cold in the spring)
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven! - 61.4 (ok, sure)
Sentenced - The Funeral Album - 63.1 (I guess this is spring-Sentenced too)
The Devin Townsend Band - Accelerated Evolution - 63.7 (oh, totally!)
Ours - Distorted Lullabies - 64.4 (yeah, I can see this)
Primordial - Spirit The Earth Aflame - 64.8 (getting ready for summer)
Without Grief - Deflower - 65.3 (sure)

SUMMER ALBUMS
Iron Maiden - Brave New World - 52.8 (yes, totally)
Angra - Holy Land - 53.7 (yes, totally)
Supared - Supared - 57.8 (yes, totally)
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - The Boatman's Call - 60.8 (uh, no)
Primordial - Spirit The Earth Aflame - 64.2 (yes, totally, my 'hot oppressive sun' album)
Peeping Tom - Peeping Tom - 65 (summer party!)
Matisyahu - Live At Stubb's - 65.5 (summer party!)
Demonoid - Riders of the Apocalypse - 65.8 (death metal party!)
Grey Skies Fallen - The Fate Of Angels - 66 (uh, no)
Therion - Vovin - 66.3 (uh, no)

FALL ALBUMS
Estatic Fear - A Sombre Dance - 59.9 (yes, totally!)
Kultur Shock - Kultura-Diktatura - 66.7 (not really)
Godgory - Resurrection - 68.3 (yes, totally!)
Root - Kärgeräs - 68.5 (yes, totally!)
Riverside - Out Of Myself - 70 (yes, totally!)
Meshuggah - Nothing - 72.1 (yeah, sure)
Denali - Denali - 72.8 (yes, totally!)
Devics - If You Forget Me... - 74.6 (yes, totally!)
Forgotten Silence - Bya Bamahe Neem - 75.3 (yes, totally!)
Aterciopelados - La Pipa De La Paz - 75.5 (uh, no)

Growly vocal albums:
Winter: 7
Spring: 3
Summer: 3
Fall: 3

Nordic albums:
Winter: 5
Spring: 4
Summer: 2
Fall: 2

Melodic/classic/power metal albums:
Winter: 0
Spring: 1
Summer: 3
Fall: 0

See, it works!

Neil

 

[skyrefuge]

"No judge!! I was listening to Iced Earth's "Horror Show", the track "Dracula" to be specific, at 7:13PM on the Friday you speak of"

Pfft, come on, who would believe that someone would listen to "Dracula" at 7:13PM? Closest I came was 7:16PM in 2007, and that was on a Tuesday.

2006-08-08 17:38:27
2006-09-23 16:17:56
2007-01-08 17:04:30
2007-04-14 14:51:40
2007-12-11 19:16:18
2008-01-16 08:52:57
2008-06-02 14:16:46
2008-07-15 10:37:11
2008-08-06 21:39:38
2008-11-01 10:49:17
2008-12-22 13:31:40
2009-08-21 14:34:51
2010-01-05 15:50:55
2010-09-24 21:31:33

 

[JenniferLynn]

Other than listening to a montage of Seventh Wonder, DGM and Circus Maximus for my birthday, my musical 'flavor' totally changed for about the last 3 or 4 weeks...

I've been listening to alot of (someone's going to flip out/ laugh hysterically) Enrique Iglesais, Ricky Martin, Roselyn Murphy, Matt Nathanson... Pink.. Will Smith... I have a SERIOUS ITCH to get out n' go dancing...

However, December 3rd, my tastes will switch back to Seventh Wonder

 

[nomisofsiman]

It changes, but not much. Much like Claus, I can't listen to TSO anytime between January and October. I noticed I listen to more Black Metal during the winter (especially when I take my dogs for the walks at night, lol).

Yeah, same here. I would say 90 percent of my listening habits stay the same, but in the winter TSO and that "Metal X-mas" cd are added into my rotation. Also, much like you I tend to listen to more black metal, especially Satyricon and also more Amon Amarth than usual.

 

[nomisofsiman]

Fixed.

I can't say this has happened to me personally, but I see how the seasons could impact what I listen to.

I have noticed that bands I see live impact what I listen to.
For example, after the Katatonia / Orphaned Land tour, I pulled out the My Dying Bride stuff.

With Blind Guardian coming up, I have been spinning some Grave Digger and Helloween lately as well ,but them both having new releases certainly has something to do with it.

Btw, what are your thoughts of the new Grave Digger Jason? I'm currently listening to the new Helloween as I'm typing this.

 

[Mardoch]

The seasons themselves don't have much effect, but my work tends to kind of swing with the seasons. When winter's coming and we have to do all the Christmas and NYE shit and our customers are getting pissy, I tend to trend toward a lot more melodeath. Actually I just tend to swing towards melodeath whenever there's a crunch, so next to any holiday. For the most part, when things are slower I trend toward power/prog and random stuff (game soundtracks and the like).

 

[nomisofsiman]

Damn Neil!!! Someday metal may be your perfect alibi!!!!!!!!!!

"No judge!! I was listening to Iced Earth's "Horror Show", the track "Dracula" to be specific, at 7:13PM on the Friday you speak of"

 

[nomisofsiman]

Other than listening to a montage of Seventh Wonder, DGM and Circus Maximus for my birthday, my musical 'flavor' totally changed for about the last 3 or 4 weeks...

I've been listening to alot of (someone's going to flip out/ laugh hysterically) Enrique Iglesais, Ricky Martin, Roselyn Murphy, Matt Nathanson... Pink.. Will Smith... I have a SERIOUS ITCH to get out n' go dancing...

However, December 3rd, my tastes will switch back to Seventh Wonder

Funny you mention what you listen to for your birthday. I know for me, for as long as I can remember I always listen to AC/DC's Highway to Hell and Helloween's first two Keeper albums.

 

[BenMech]

I think my tastes are wide and erratic enough to say both yes and no to the query, but I pop some cds into the car stereo more with a "what's been out of rotation" mindset more than not. It seems, these albums (by bands like In the Woods and Woods of Ypres and Agalloch and Root tend to hold ground in Spring and/or autumn, while Winter and Summer have other things lodged in place

 

[See You In Hell]

No, it appears that my listening habits do not change (at least to the point where I have noticed it) with the seasons. I'm more of a "what mood am I in" or "what is it that I need to be doing" kind of listener. While I agree that certain bands have a seasonal feel to them it seems that I'm apt to listen to just about anything at any time. Interestingly, if I have noticed any variance in my listening habits it is when I am working. My employer a couple of years ago made the decision to have its employees work remotely from their homes rather than keeping up with the overhead of actual branch offices. Thus, now working from home, I can listen to whatever I want, when I want, so needless to say I've got iTunes up and running for the bulk of the workday. When I am working I've noticed that I gravitate towards cleaner, more melodic, or more complex types of songs as opposed to something extremely aggressive or extremely fast. For example, Therion, Iron Maiden, BOC, Kamelot, HammerFall, Ayreon, Liquid Tension Experiment, Moonsorrow, Sonata Arctica, etc., all seem to be in regular rotation when I'm working. While there are exceptions of course normally I don't listen a lot to bands like Absu, Immortal, Amon Amarth, Kataklysm, Manegarm, etc., while I'm working. But when I am at the gym then anyone and everyone is eligible. My iPod has a mix of melodic, black, pagan, viking, symphonic, you-name-it metal on it. Not sure if others in this forum share the same tendencies or not......

 

[edgeofthorns]

Savatage is a year around listening affair for me, but I have certain albums that I listen to at certain times. For example, Wake of Magellan and Gutter Ballet for the summer and Dead Winter Dead for the winter months. I also like listening to doom and goth in the winter. Agalloch is essential for winter listening.

I agree with Palabra, Dio's music is great for spring/summer listening!

~Brian~