Goodbye 2021. Let’s a take look back at our feed from this past year. Spotify unwrapped already gave us a high level preview of our listening habit however I wanted to break it down into more granular metrics with monthly breakdowns.
I goofed and forgot to store the feed for all of June ๐ so the following breakdown is a missing some data but the sadboi vibes are still ever present.
db
For divz, 2021 was the year of doja. She listened to doja at least 132 times. However her most listened to song was a binaural relaxation track, “Alpha Alpha”. This was a common trend among other boolers as well. That brown noise really drowns out the humdrum of quarantine.
Apart from doja, db was really vibing with Maluma and Priya Ragu. Both of them really have insanely catchy rhythms. Mamula more reggaeton and although Priya is a little hard to define, I would say more afrobeat influenced. In total, db listened to 1600 unique artists and 1961 unique songs throughout this year.
Lastly, db’s listening patterns showed peaks in apr and sep. I bet she was laser focused during these months ๐.
jgb
I don’t know where to begin with this mans other than how he has opened my eyes to some of the most genre-bending and unique artists out there (shout out Gio) througout the years. Hands down the most eclectic music taste among the group.
What I truly respect about jgb is that he’s fearless about exploring any given genre. He comes in with no assumptions and lets the artists lead the course. Not to say that he vibes with everything out there—I’ll get him to appreciate JPEG’s genius one of these days.
While this man is going down a new rabbit hole, reggae and free jazz are never far behind. Still this year looks like jgb was going through an ambient music phase with the likes of Max Richter and Steve Halpern.
The top songs here are but one source of jgb’s listening activity because of course he’s the biggest record head that I know. I’d be willing to bet that his true top tracks probably includes some Dance Hall Style from Horace Andy but obviously in wax.
Curious what happened here but looks like jgb increased his spotify intake as the year progressed. Maybe his record supply started dwindling as the pandemic resurfaced ๐. He listened to a total of 598 songs and 2210 songs on spotify this year.
oc
oc hunkered down this year with loads of lofi bumps with eevee mixed with more ethereal soundscapes like huma; perfect for hanging out with nigel. Also who would have thought that Calming Cat Music was just smooth jazz. I say we blow nigel’s mind with some Alice Coltrane ๐.
oc probably had the most evenly distributed top songs among the crew. A lot of the songs were sleep tracks that were probably played in the background. I’m not sure if going by frequency is the best way to determine interesting artists that someone listened to as I’m sure spotify is filtering out most “background music” somehow although that seems like a hard problem. We can compare against next year’s data to potentially gauge new artists.
oc listened to a total of 4071 new artists and 6187 new songs this year. That’s an incredible volume of music. I’ll need to ask her for any artists that caught her eye as she always has the sickest recs. I will be forever grateful to oc for introducting me to Jessie Ware last year (disco is definitely not dead).
Her spotify intake was also pretty consistent with the track distribution as there was mostly consistent use throughout the year peaking around Q3. I guess fall really is the time to go hard.
pb
pb is probably the most committed to artist among the crew. When he takes a liking, man goes all in quickly ramping up the listening counts. Our resident sadboi was fully devoted to Lana this year, listening to her a whopping 895 times. Even beating out the background noise runner up High Altitude Samples.
Quick aside: pb and I have a running joke that Lana looks like a different person in every picture. The one continuity is that she always has a forlorned look waiting for a conceptual husband-like figure who’s out on a business trip, never to return; all the while chain smoking an inordinate amount of cigs. Far out I know, but really feels like the vibe her music evokes ๐ญ.
Rosalia was not far behind. Not surprising considering pb was among 1% of her top listeners in 2020. This mans was definitely fiending some El Mal Querer on repeat.
Lately, pb has really been into the new french wave coming out of Belgium with the likes of Angรจle and Swing. “Up” really hooked pb this year, understandably so, considering he listened to Cardi for a little over 9 hours. I guess if it’s up, then it’s really up.
pb’s spotify really peaked around apr but I assume this was in the throes of his GRE preparation. Well it paid off so here’s to never having to take another standardized test again. Our mans is moving to the west coast soon so from everyone here at gb, we’re wishing him the best of luck. Groupbool is finally bi-coastal.
xv
The most prolific spotify user within the group, xv broke the record again this year with a whopping 213,241 minutes spent listening to spotify. That’s 148 days spent listening to music; more than a third of a year. She listened to a total of 4432 artists and 9476 songs.
As a permanent resident of cole world, J. Cole was unsurprisingly her number one. One of my favorite memories with xv is driving back from college, binging 2014 Forest Hills Drive while hyper analyzing every song. It was a study in Cole and probably a very early iteration of groupbool. She was definitely bumping a lot of The Off-Season this year.
I was debating if I should mention it but the drake dilemma makes a seeming return ๐. Honestly same tho because Drake majorly bumps. One of my co-workers finally explained that cryptic Certified Lover Boy cover, the whole album is baby making music and Drake really wanted to make sure that it came across lol.
Our boy Isaiah Rashad finally made a glorious return this year. Honestly, worth the wait but still wish we got to see him with the TDE crew couple years back ๐. Throwback to when I blasted “4 Da Squaw” at full volume at work not realizing my headphones were not plugged inโno ragrets.
Similar to oc, xv had a fairly uniform distribution of frequent songs and her counts for the top songs were not as high as one might expect. I think xv listens to a constant rotation of tracks from varying artists and albums, thus the insane intake, and does localize to particular songs. Although pretty sure, the Peng Black Girls remix has been up there since last year. Check out the colors episode if you haven’t already, definitely a whole vibe.
No surprises with xv’s spotify intake. Pretty high consistently throughout the year. I think the dip around Q3 is due to data loss rather than lack of activity. If you’re not already impressed with xv’s listening habits, consider that she told me she does not leave spotify playing through the night ๐ค.