Content-Free Friday Presents Another Edition of Top Ten

[featherynscale]

In 1998, some clever people got together and decided it would be really cool if there was a way for the music player on your computer to just pop out onto the Internets and get information about the album it was playing, so that you didn't have to type in the titles and artists on everything every time. So they put together a database, and lo, it was indeed really cool. And then, somebody over there thought, wouldn't it be cool if we tracked what album information was being called most, so we could put out a list of most popular music ever? That brings us to today's Top Ten.

This list is the Top Ten Albums Played By Internet-Enabled Music Players, in the history of ever. The count only includes full albums being played from CD, so if you downloaded an mp3 of Stairway To Heaven and played it 50 quadrillion times (you know who you are), it doesn't count. Please answer with title and artist, just in case ("that one by Blur" gets you nothing).

1. American Idiot - Green Day (2004, Alternative & Punk) - chronarchy, 1 point
2. Stadium Arcadium - Red Hot Chili Peppers (2006, Alternative & Punk) - leiandra, 1 point
3. Come Away With Me - Norah Jones (2002, Pop) - kenllama, 2 points
4. 1 - The Beatles (2000, Pop) - celtic_elk, 3 points
5. (2006, Folk)
6. Meteora - Linkin Park (2003, Alternative & Punk) - matchgirl42, 3 points
7. Hybrid Theory - Linkin Park (2000, Alternative & Punk) - matchgirl42, 3 points
8. X & Y - Coldplay (2005, Alternative & Punk) - leiandra, 2 points
9. The Wall - Pink Floyd (1979, Rock) - duriyah, 1 point
10. The Eminem Show - Eminem (2002, Hip-Hop & Rap) - rfunk, 2 points

Surprisingly, none of the albums that I personally play most often are on the list, though I do own three of the ten, and I recognized nine of the ten. (That makes it a better list than the last one, IMHO.)

EDIT: I've added the release years and approximate genres (as reported by the compilers), maybe that will help? The one marked "Folk" is, as one might guess, not really folk. FURTHER EDIT: #5 is really, really, really not folk. Amazingly not folk. Profoundly not folk. I had to look it up and play it, because I had not heard of it. I'd go probably "pop".

Comments

Re: Yes, these are all albums I've listened to, although I did use Wikipedia to make sure of the nam

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

While I'm uncertain about your methodology here, I must confess, both Meteora and Hybrid Theory hit the list. Do you know what that means? The only artist to win two places on this top-played-of-all-time-list is Linkin Park. Pretty lame, music-listening world. Pretty lame.

Re: Yes, these are all albums I've listened to, although I did use Wikipedia to make sure of the nam

[matchgirl42.livejournal.com]

But see, I *like* Linkin Park...hence it's first on the list of my guesses...and, evidently, so do a lot of other people. ;)

Also, from this list, it would point to me that these are the top 10 lists of songs downloaded (legally or illegally), and so you have to look at the generations that are downloading music; and while there are people of all ages downloading, it seems to me the highest percentage are those that are in their late teens/20s, and they like...Linkin Park, and Eminem.

And I didn't google, so...I just had all these in my head, I could remember song titles, but not album titles - who pays attention to album titles, anyways? Okay, well I knew Hybrid Theory, Drive and Lump, but...most of this I've heard on the radio (the songs of), not owned the album (although I have owned PoTUS's Lump, and No Doubt's Return of Saturn), so...is the methodology that flawed? Also, I had to start over again 2/3rds of the way through, because I accidentally closed the tab and lost my comment - faugh. Do you know how much times it takes to do a search on each and every artist? Twice? 30 minutes, that's how long...

Hrm. You know? The only compilation CD I don't see on that list is Queen's Greatest Hits, but then, I think that came out before 2006....

Re: Yes, these are all albums I've listened to, although I did use Wikipedia to make sure of the nam

[rfunk.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, I had forgotten that some music-tagging programs do CDDB lookups... it started as just CD plays, but expanded later.

But I dunno, I think doing a wikipedia search on every artist could constitute cheating. :-)

Queen's Greatest Hits came out long before 2006. I think Greatest Hits II was in the early 90s.

Re: Yes, these are all albums I've listened to, although I did use Wikipedia to make sure of the nam

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, I had forgotten that some music-tagging programs do CDDB lookups... it started as just CD plays, but expanded later.

I did not know that. How would that work?

Re: Yes, these are all albums I've listened to, although I did use Wikipedia to make sure of the nam

[rfunk.livejournal.com]

I'm not entirely sure, unless it relies on existing tags and extrapolates from there. But it's mentioned in their software development kit PDF. It's not part of the original version 1 interface that I'm familiar with.

Re: Yes, these are all albums I've listened to, although I did use Wikipedia to make sure of the nam

[matchgirl42.livejournal.com]

I didn't do a search on *every* artist - I did it artist by artist, off the ones I've listened to/remembered....

*shrug* It's just an internet game, my friend. I don't care either way, I'm just glad of the exercise for my brain (remembering artist and song names) and the chance to learn more about them while I was looking at the albums, by going to Wikipedia....(i.e. looking at their albums and seeing some I hadn't listened to yet, and going hey!!! I should get my hands/ears on that!!!)

And yeah, Queen's Greatest Hits *was* a long time ago but, IMHO, it *should* be on the top ten list. Le pout.

Re: Yes, these are all albums I've listened to, although I did use Wikipedia to make sure of the nam

[lexpendragon.livejournal.com]

I'll admit, I'm beginning to like Linkin Park, too. Every so often I catch myself enjoying some new song, despite the completely pop-music nature of it, and then go to download it and find out it's Linkin Park. I think most of those kinds of songs are on their latest album, though.

Re: Yes, these are all albums I've listened to, although I did use Wikipedia to make sure of the nam

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

The three albums that I own on this list were The Wall and the two Linkin Park albums (which I got from niveus_tigris). I'm not a hater of Linkin Park. I'm just saying that they're not a particularly good, unique, or important band, just solid, middle-of-the-road type stuff. Which is probably why so many people like them. LCD and all that.

Also, the list doesn't have anything to do with downloading. It's possible that a play might be generated if someone downloaded music and then burned it to a cd, but if it's just a file, the player doesn't call the database. It only does that if there's a physical CD with .cda or similar files being played, as I understand it.

The thing I felt was sketchy was the looking up all the albums that might fit the remaining parameters... :-P

Re: Yes, these are all albums I've listened to, although I did use Wikipedia to make sure of the nam

[matchgirl42.livejournal.com]

Well no, what I meant by downloading is that, IMO, the people that have downloaded songs are the ones more likely to get the info from/for the album off the internets....

And I didn't look up per the parameters, or lists, or anything like that. I looked up the artists/songs that I remembered(and boy howdy was doing it by artist easier), then looked at their albums and went, hey! That *was* done in 2000, 2003, 2006...aha!

Re: Yes, these are all albums I've listened to, although I did use Wikipedia to make sure of the nam

[matchgirl42.livejournal.com]

Also, *I* am of the opinion that Linkin Park has had a good bit of ground-breaking material. I also realize that my opinion does not necessarily match everyone else's, nor does it invalidate anyone else's opinion (or anyone else's opinion invalidate my own). ;P