AlexH

I’ve been playing with Python and PHP to track radio station playlists, and noticed something interesting. Let’s compare the popular songs for the Beat (CFBT) vs the Zone (CJZN).

• April 29 - May 5 on the Beat
• April 29 - May 5 on the Zone

The Beat’s Results:

1. Rihanna Feat. Jay-Z Umbrella 84
2. Timbaland Feat. Nelly Furtado & Justin Timberlake Give It To Me 76
3. Nelly Furtado Loose All Good Things (Come To An End) 71
4. Carrie Underwood Some Hearts Before He Cheats 64
5. Gym Class Heroes Cupid’s Chokehold 62
6. Diddy Feat. Keyshia Cole Last Night 58
7. Maroon5 Makes Me Wonder 58
8. Justin Timberlake Futuresex/Lovesound Summer Love 56
9. Avril Lavigne Girlfriend Girlfriend 54
10. Justin Timberlake FutureSex/LoveSounds What Goes Around…Comes Around 51

The Zone’s Results.

1. Rise Against The Sufferer & The Witness Prayer Of The Refugee 32
2. Silversun Pickups Silversun Pickups Lazy Eye 31
3. Linkin Park What I’ve Done 31
4. Queens Of The Stone Age Sick Sick Sick 27
5. Finger Eleven Tip Paralyzer 26
6. Plain White T’s All That We Needed Hey There Delilah 24
7. White Stripes Icky Thump 24
8. Priestess Hello Master Talk To Her 22
9. Kaiser Chiefs Ruby 22
10. Ten Second Epic Count Yourself In Count Yourself In 22

The Zone has 611 songs played in that period. A good mix of music. Compare it to the Beat’s 358, that’s just pitiful. The most popular song was played 84 times on the Beat, that’s 12 times per day.

I’m not saying that the Beat’s music sucks, they’re a good station to jump to when my favourites are running ads or playing a song that I don’t like.  The problem is that they play the same stuff, over and over again.  There are a lot of good independant Canadian hip-hop artists out there, so why doesn’t the Beat try to promote them, instead of filling their Can-con requirements with Nelly Furtado ten times a day?

CBC Radio 3: Breaking New Sound is a great music streaming service featuring Canadian artists.  I’ve been listening to them at work after finding them in the iTunes Radio section.  Now I find they have a blog.  Subscribed.

powered by performancing firefox

iTunes 7.0 was a piece of junk.  The streaming code was totally broken, when it rebuffered or switched to a new song, it would continue playing the old song, so I would have weird overlapping music playing.
I finally upgraded to 7.01 and everything is all right in the music world again.

Boing Boing: Harvey Danger’s new album: DRM-free torrent!

I’ve already downloaded the album and am now seeding it. So far I’ve uploaded 19Mb, so it seems like it hasn’t become too popular. We’ll see how much I transfer once Slashdot notices.

You can’t make these headlines up: Yahoo! News - Korn Guitarist Finds God, Leaves Band

Pantera lead singer, “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott, was murdered last night at an Ohio nightclub.

Same day as John Lennon, 24 years later.

Their music was definitely not in the same genre, but it is tragic nonetheless.

Kleptones - The Next DJ Danger Mouse

When are the labels going to realize that the fastest way to get an album distributed is to send a cease and desist?

Looking forward to checking out this album once it’s done downloading.

Went to see my friend’s dad’s band, Malpractice, at the Yale on Friday. $7.50 parking, $10 cover, now I remember why I hate going to clubs downtown.

Malpractice (no web page… bah) is an R&B cover band made up of doctors, nurses, and some freelance people. Good trumpet player.

I was surprised to hear them do ‘Take Me to the River’ since I always thought that it was originally done by the Talking Heads. Turns out the original is done by Al Green and Teenie Hodges, but I can’t find when it came out.

They also did ‘Hard To Handle’ by Otis Reading, which was very cool.