Rise and fall of music genres

[raschuetz]

Story issue checklist

My pitch was (use the number): #18

• [x] My pitch has been approved (see PITCHING.md)
• [x] My story issue links to my pitch issue
• [ ] I have included an update of my visualization/story in a comment
• [ ] I have received two comments of peer feedback
• [ ] I have received editorial feedback

[jsoma]

You'll want to put your actual story content in here too, with the data source and all that - my fault, I'll add it to the checklist!

[raschuetz]

@jsoma still messing around with my data to see if this is possible... Billboard's unofficial API is fantastic, so I can pull all of the songs. But Spotify doesn't list the genres to very many albums—based off of the ones I've tested, it seems like maybe a little less than half. And Google made a map based off of Google Play data, but it doesn't seem like they're sharing that data anywhere.

[jsoma]

If you can't find other APIs with better info (which will probably be tough), how about pulling the genres for the artists? It won't be as accurate, but it's close-ish.

[kbennion]

This data is so interesting! I love your idea of breaking out the subgenres for something like Dance, and show the fall of swing and rise of EDM. I think a series of small graphs might work well for this to show the overall movement for each genre. Some definitions might also be helpful (what is included in each genre, what is "static"??, etc)

[skkandrach]

I really like this! I think it would be good to include the duration of time the data was analyzed over. I think also creating a small multiples visual or maybe (if not too concentrated over one another) you could graph them all on the same grid and use different colors so its more of a visual comparison. This is such a cool concept though!

[mercye]

It would be cool to see the data more aggregated, so instead of each week, maybe every month or even year? The rise in popularity of 'pop' and the decline of 'standard_jazz' are both really notable. could be interesting to think about because it raises questions like what is being included in pop today, why jazz disappeared, etc etc.

[raschuetz]

Thanks for the feedback! Here's what I have so far. I'm going to work on some break-outs and a few graphs to your points, @mercybenzaquen

[playfairbot]

Hi there, I'm the Playfair Bot! Thanks for posting your story issue, but would you mind adding editing the original issue to add the first draft of your image? You have my sincere apologies, but it's easier for dumb robots like me when the comments are only used for updates. Thanks! :pray:

[raschuetz]

Here are revised versions:

[barjacks]

It's amazing scrolling down these charts. They just get better and better. And I really like the last one. I spent quite a bit of time dwelling on that examining when the various genres started and how they developed. I liked that annotation on the top of the first one. It would be great, if you could also annotate 2 or 3 of the sub genre peaks as well? Otherwise I can't fault the graphs. Beautiful.

[jsoma]

I know you've abandoned us for the rest of the building, but could we get a pull request for these? They're fantastic!