My original High Impact formula had a fundamental flaw, which I think I may have fixed.
I spent the last post talking about the albums that made the biggest “impact” on me during 2007, but what exactly does that mean? Over the summer, I came up with the general concept, which basically defined impact as the average number of times any particular song from an album or artist in my iTunes library had been played, showing who has received the most attention relative to their presence in my library. Add together the play counts of all songs by an artist or on an album, then divide by the number of songs. There’s the impact score.
While this method produced some interesting results, it suffers from a substantial deficiency: it grossly inflates the relative impact of artists and albums that have a low number of songs. Artists or albums with a lot of songs have to be played a lot more in order to keep up. I noted this in my original post on the subject:
In cases where an artist has a low number of songs, each play count is “worth more” in relation to other artists. A single play by an artist with only one song nets that artist a full “point,” whereas as single play by an artist with 20 songs would only gain .05 points.
The solution I devised at the time was to set a threshold for inclusion, eg. artists must have more than 5 songs in my library to be ranked.
I never really liked that workaround because the threshold was arbitrary and it excluded artists who should really have been able to be ranked. So I spent a bit time recently tweaking the formula and I think found something that works to my satisfaction:
Total Play Counts [squared] divided by the number of songs.
This is essentially the same as the original formula, except that the total play counts an artist or album has received is multiplied by itself. The effect of this is to give the impact of a single play more weight as the number of songs increases. My thinking goes like this: albums with a lot of songs should rightly have a larger impact vs those which have fewer, even when the average play count is the same.
Suppose we have an album with 10 songs on it and an EP that has 4. Each song on both albums has been played twice.
Using the original formula:
Album: total play count (10 * 2) / number of songs (10) = 2
EP: total play count (4 * 2) / number of songs (4) = 2
Eight (8) plays gives the EP the same impact as the album that has received twenty (20).
Now the new formula:
Album: total play count squared (10 * 2)(10 * 2) / 10 = 40
EP: total play count squared (4 * 2)(4 * 2) / 4 = 16
Even though both recordings have been listened to the same number of times, the album’s larger footprint leaves a greater impact score than the EP.
The best analogy I can think of is mass vs speed. More songs equal greater “mass.” More plays equal greater “speed.” Just as lighter objects have to travel faster to hit with the same amount of force as heavier objects, an artist with a lighter presence in my library has to be played more times to have the same impact as an artist with a lot songs. A ping pong ball must travel at higher speeds to equal the same force as a baseball.
This table below shows the formula in action.
Rank
Artist
# of Songs
Plays
AVG
Impact
61
The Cardigans
92
255
2.77
706.794
62
To Rococo Rot
34
155
4.56
706.618
63
Tomoyasu Hotei
1
26
26
676.00
64
Molotov vs Dub Pistols
1
26
26
676.00
65
National Skyline
17
107
6.29
673.47
The two singles by Tomoyasu Hotei and Molotov vs Dub Pistols happen to be in the top 20 most played songs in my library (out of ~16000). That showing places each of them relatively high on the list, but not overwhelmingly so, considering the differences between the various AVG play counts. That’s an equitable result I’m pretty happy with.
In my last post, I detailed the ten albums that earned the highest ratings from me during 2007. But while I did find them each to be fantastic recordings, ratings don’t necessarily reflect popularity. That is to say that the most highly rated albums might not have been the most often played.
Indeed that’s not the case. I took data from the past year and ran it through my Impact report, which measures the relationship between total play counts and the number of songs an album or artist has in my library in order to see who has received the most attention relative to their size
While the results show some significant overlap with the top rated list (of course I listen to what I like), it turns out that being highly rated doesn’t necessarily guarantee a lot of playing. So without further ado, here are the albums that made the biggest splash last year.
1 Nine Inch Nails – Year Zero
Impact Rating: 1072
Showing Trent Reznor at his best, Year Zero received significant airplay throughout the year, enough to earn it the title of “Tunequest’s Most Impactful Album of 2007.”
2 Air – Pocket Symphony
Impact Rating: 1064
I listened to Pocket Symphony in a huge burst after its March release and kinda petered out over the remainder of the year. Still, that initial burst was enough to coast to a second place ranking.
3 Rilo Kiley – Under the Blacklight
Impact Rating: 1021
Rilo Kiley is one of a handful of musical acts that both the modernista and I actively like. It should be no surprise then that despite its late summer release, Under the Blacklight was in heavy rotation for the duration of autumn, so much so that it claimed the number three spot.
4 The Polish Ambassador – Diplomatic Immunity
Impact Rating: 936
The Ambassador’s debut disc broke into my brain early last year and left a substantial wake in its path. Our intergalactic diplomat’s electrogrooves are really really catchy. In my library for nearly the entire year, Diplomatic Immunity garnered the most play counts of any album I acquired in 2007.
5 Radiohead – In Rainbows
Impact Rating: 355
Radiohead’s revolutionary distribution may have brought the record to my ears, but its quality kept it playing again and again. Though In Rainbows narrowly missed my Top Rated Albums of 2007, it was listened to enough to become the fifth highest impactful album of the year, quite a feat considering the early October release of disc one and the early December release of disc two.
Also of note, here we see a huge drop in impact ratings between places 4 and 5. It’s clear that the top four were the breakaway albums of the year. Those four albums were responsible for 20% of the impact points generated among new aquisitions last year. Which means that either those albums are fantastically good (and they are) or I need to diversify my habits a bit (which I probably do). But hey the ears like what they like.
Moving on:
6 David Arnold: Casino Royale
Impact Rating: 338
I’ve been checking in on David Arnold’s film works every so often since the late 90s, when I discovered his score for the original Stargate film. Since then his scores have continued to impress me, especially his work for the James Bond franchise. His composition for Casino Royale, the 2006 re-booting of the Bond character, is perhaps his finest contribution yet. Lush, inviting and full of suspense and action, Casino Royale projects the best of the Bond musical heritage with a suave confidence that’s the hallmark of the character. But it adds its own unique motifs and ambience, keeping it from sounding like a re-hash of John Barry’s seminal soundtracks.
A highlight of the record is I’m The Money, a short 27-second track. But those 27 seconds are filled with the distlled essense of the entire score and they evoke the predominate atmosphere of the film as well, from the exotic and intriguing to the dark and dangerous.
I’m The Money:
[audio:080121ImTheMoney.mp3]
The more I listen to this one, the more I might think it’s the best score of Arnold’s carreer and perhaps the best in the entire James Bond series.
Rounding out the Top Ten Impactful albums of 2007
All the remaining records also appear on my Top Rated 07 list.
7 Susumu Yokota – Symbol Impact Rating: 335 8 Pink Floyd – Dark Side of the Moon Impact Rating: 324 9 The Polish Ambassador – The Phantasmal Farm Impact Rating: 301 (A good year for the Ambassador around here) 10 The Smashing Pumpkins – Zeitgeist Impact Rating: 261
For those would would like a baseline, the average impact for all records acquired in 2007 was 68, while the median was 16. Additional math shows me that the top 20 records were responsible for just more than half the impact ratings generated throughout the year. So I’ve resolved this year to show some more consideration with my musical choices. Last year’s massive influx of new tunes was largely a response to having neglected many new records and trends in music while partaking in the original tunequest. This year I’ve decided to purposefully not seek out too many new records and spend more time with the ones I do get.
So, here’s to tunequest 2008, whatever form it may take.
After spending 2006 evaluating the status of my iTunes library and trimming some fat, I took the opportunity in 2007 to explore a lot of new material. And I must say that overall it was a pretty good year for both my library and for music in general. I had added 1,891 songs to my library by the end of October, which marks the fifth largest library expansion since I started collecting music. At that point, I decided it was time to start evaluating my acquisitions.
2007 was a year of rock in tunequestland. Each year seems to bring me another fascinating tangent of audio to explore in detail. In 2004, it was classical music and in 2005 it was audiobooks, podcasts and other learning materials, an itch that already seems to be acting up for 2008. But for 2007, rock was the operative mode, so much so that I’ve picked up a significant air-guitar habit. Nearly 50% of my library additions fell within the genre, with all other forms of music splitting the remain 50%.
Around here, the year was also a big one for newly-released music. 22% of my new acquisitions were released in 2007, while 50% were released between 2005 and 2007. Perish the though that there is no good music these days. That sentiment might apply to some corporate-backed music, but in total there is more good music released everyday than a single person can keep up with. I’ve already got a huge backlog of albums I didn’t get around to listening to by October.
But forget the stuff I didn’t listen to, what about the music I did? Read on for the albums, artists and songs that made for tunequest 2007. First, some numbers:
2007 By the Numbers
Applies to all new music added to my library during 2007. As a subset of my library in general, these figures do not include ratings, play counts and other stats from 2006 and earlier.
Total Songs: 1,891
Total Play Time: 5 days, 18 hours, 43 minutes, 1 second
Total Play Counts: 4,815
Avg Play Count per song: 2.55
Median Play Count per song: 2
Total Listening Time: 14 days, 3 hours, 35 minutes, 40 seconds
Avg Song Length: 4:26
Median Song Length: 4:01
Top Albums
I pulled out my trusty definitive* rating formula and ran this year’s selections through it. Here’s what it spit out:
The absolute best release I found this year:
Bonobo’s Live Sessions EP
Released in 2005, the EP fleshes out Bonobo’s attractive studio work with robust live arrangements. The energetic atmosphere of hypnotic future jazz presented on the disc earns it a phenomenal 4.58 / 5 stars. Music rarely gets better than when the live cut of Nothing Owed bursts to life from its humble introduction.
But since EPs are ineligible for Album of the Year ratings–their low track counts skew the results–here is the official list of the music that rocked my world this year.
1 Pink Floyd: Dark Side of the Moon
Sacrilege I know! But before this year I had never listened to Pink Floyd, save for a small part of The Wall that I saw a friend’s house while in high school. At some point over the summer though, I figured there must be something to 1973’s Dark Side of the Moon, since it’s become the de facto standard for judging the success of a new recording medium and that the record was in the U.S. Top 100 records for nearly 30 continuous years.
Turns out that two generations worth of music lovers aren’t wrong. This thing is fantastic. Expertly-crafted, catchy, thought-provoking and teeming with existential quandaries, the record quickly became one of my favorites of the year. Highlights: the haunting mortality implicit in Time and the swagger of Money. Then there’s all the air-guitaring again.
4.51 / 5 stars
2 Nine Inch Nails: Year Zero
Trent Reznor was in the news a lot in 07, from publicly insulting his record company to encouraging his fans to steal his music to setting up a website for people to exchange homemade remixes of his songs. Ignore all that. His real achievement this year was Year Zero, the nightmarish dystopian concept album that broke out into the real world.
Beyond marketing games though, Year Zero features some of Trent’s tightest and most clever songwriting. From the straight-ahead bombast of The Beginning of the End to the almost-hymnal Zero-sum, this record doesn’t disappoint.
More accolades around here for Bonobo’s particular brand of laid back energy with 2006’s Days to Come. Bonobo’s music gets more complex with each release and this one is 51 minutes of pure brilliance. Watch out for the pairing of Nightlite and Transmission94. Swingy jazz, melancholic brass and clever rhythms held together by superb production.
3.97 / 5 stars
4 Maserati: Inventions for the New Season
Athens, Ga-based postrock outfit Maserati piles on thick layers of instrumental delight on 2007’s Inventions for the New Season. Crisp, melodious and spirited, this record is the band’s best yet. It almost like the soundtrack to the best roller-coaster ride of your life.
3.93 / 5 stars
5 Les Baxter: African Blue: Exotic Rhythms of Les Baxter
I’ve had a soft spot for master of exotica and light classical composer Les Baxter since I stumbled upon his rendition of Calcutta nearly ten years ago. Being a master of course, Baxter delivers his own unique lounge-inspired spin on traditional African music on African Blue. The version I got from eMusic (bundled with Colors of Brazil) was re-issued in 1993, but I haven’t been able to track down the original release date. It probably dates to the late 1960s.
No matter, it sounds good regardless of when it came from. African Blue might be inspired by the sounds of the Dark Continent, but it could hardly get more chic. The woodwinds and percussion on Zebra are to die for.
3.9 / 5 stars
Listen to Zebra:
[audio:http://www.tunequest.org/download/LesBaxter-Zebra.mp3]
6 Susumu Yokota: Symbol
Japanese sound-bender Susumu Yokotainfatuated me in a big way near the beginning of the year. His ability to not just make beautiful music, but make and harness beautiful sounds–building blocks of music–captivated me almost instantly. On 2005’s Symbol, Yokota takes his inspiration from a wide spectrum of classical music heritage, directly sampling a mashing together multiple works and styles. It’s breath-taking. The Steve Reich meets Claude Debussy and a plethora of other composers on Blue Sky And Yellow Sunflower strikes my fancy like you can’t imagine.
Even the song titles are poignant and beautiful on this record.
3.87 / 5 Stars
7 The Polish Ambassador: The Phantasmal Farm
When it was put on the internet as a free download in July 2007, The Phantasmal Farm was the second full-length album released in the span of six months by the inter-dimensional envoy of electrogroovocity, The Polish Ambassador. Some people might assume that such a rapid-fire release rate would have affected the quality of the music. But not in this case. The Ambassador’s powers are mighty and The Phantasmal Farm’s beats, grooves and mind-blowing electrotunes actually edge out the score of The Ambassador’s debut record, Diplomatic Immunity (which I thought was pretty damn awesome), by 0.12 points.
By downloading this record, not only will you experience some of the most seductive and mesmerizing electrofunk you might ever hear, you’ll be helping to preserve the Phantasmal Farm itself, which can only persist if people remember it. When you’re there, check out When The Robo B-Boys Just Kill It and Astro-American Anthem, then just try to keep from dancing.
3.86 / 5 Stars
When The Robo B-Boys Just Kill It
8 Rilo Kiley: Under the Blacklight
The fifth album and major label debut from Los Angeles rock troubadours Rilo Kiley has been totally rocking my house since its August 2007 release. While not all the songs rank among the band’s greatest, Under the Blacklight is probably their most well-rounded record. I made note in my review that it’s the band’s most rock-focused release to date. That suits me just fine, considering my current regard for rock music.
Initially my favorite track was the disc’s opener, Silver Lining. Having had more time to listen to Under the Blacklight, I’ve since discovered that I’m partial to Dreamworld, which is unusual because it’s one of Blake’s songs, and I’ve been less disposed toward his writings.
3.84 / 5 Stars
9 Air [french band]: Pocket Symphony
The first Air album in three years arrived to eagerly waiting ears in March 2007. Though not much groundbreaking this time around, Pocket Symphony is a strong album nonetheless. If anything, the record is more sullen in character than anything the duo has produced in the past. Still, it is exquisitely lush in composition and well worth attention. Left Bank and Mer du Japon are particularly lovely.
3.84 / 5 Stars
[audio:080102LeftBank.mp3]
10 The Smashing Pumpkins: Zeitgeist
The Pumpkins came back in 2007, after breaking up in 2000, and there was much trepidation around these parts as to whether this new era of smashingness would be substantial or meaningless hype. Turns out that the trepidation was ill-founded, because Zeitgeist freakin rocks. Taut songs presented straightforwardly equals rock heaven. Tarantula was a hit from the first radio-capped bootleg I snagged off the Internet and Doomsday Clock freakin blows my doors off. that’s right, I said ‘freakin’ twice. that’s how good this is.
3.81 / 5 Stars
I found all these albums to be well worth my attention this past year. Give them a listen and you find that they are well worth yours as well.
