Are you ready for a long post? ‘CAUSE YOU’RE GONNA GET ONE!

Ahem.

Well here we are, ladies and gents. 365 days later, I now have 365 new songs, one for each day of 2010.
Snazzy? YES I’D CERTAINLY SAY SO.
So this was a super fun New Year’s resolution. If you have the time and money, I highly recommend you try this out. Anyway. Because I’m a stats whore, you know this year has to end with a bunch of analyses. Otherwise, what’s the point?

Total songs: 365 (duh)
Total time: 24 hours, 14 minutes and 48 seconds
Total size: 2.59 GB
Mean song length: 4 minutes (okay, 3 minutes, 59.412 seconds)
First song: United State of Pop 2009 (Blame It on the Pop) by DJ Earworm
Last song: United State of Pop 2010 (Don’t Stop the Pop) by DJ Earworm
Total number of Sleepyhead remixes/covers: 6 (shut up, that song is like heroin)
Estimated cost: ~$350. The vast majority of songs were either $0.99 or $1.29 (yes, I made it a point to acquire songs legally), but I also use justmusicstore.com for the songs I couldn’t find on iTunes; their songs are $0.15 each.

The bests are as follows. I’m not going to embed the vids because that would make this post even longer, but they’re all linked. Go forth!

Top 10 Favorite Music Videos/Regular Videos Featuring the Artist(s)
Some aren’t official, but they SHOULD be!
1.      The Music Scene – Blockhead
2.      White Winter Hymnal – Fleet Foxes
3.      Happy Up Here – Royksopp
4.      Hey There Mr. – Leisure Alaska
5.      Bad Romance – Lady Gaga
6.      Resistance – Muse
7.      This Too Shall Pass – OK Go
8.      Viva La Love Story – Jon Schmidt
9.      Flightless Bird, American Mouth – Iron & Wine
10.  Disorganized Fun – Ronald Jenkees

Top 5 Most Touching Songs
These made me bawl. Very powerful.
1.      The Last Day on Earth – Kate Miller-Heidke
2.      10,000 Miles – Mary Chapin Carpenter
3.      Eet – Regina Spektor
4.      Happy Ending – Mika
5.      Flightless Bird, American Mouth – Iron & Wine

The Five Stars
The final list for the year, listed from January to December acquisition
Disorganized Fun – Ronald Jenkees
Bad Romance – Lady Gaga
Happy Up Here – Royksopp
White Winter Hymnal – Fleet Foxes
Blow Up – Gooseflesh
Viva La Love Story – Jon Schmidt
Sleepyhead (Run Toto Run Cover) – Passion Pit
Monster – Lady Gaga
Sleepyhead (Cillo Remix) – Passion Pit
Hey There Mr. – Leisure Alaska
Yours To Keep – Teddybears featuring Paola
Cobrastyle – Robyn
The Music Scene – Blockhead
Alejandro – Lady Gaga
Mediational Field – Susumu Hirasawa
I Want You To Want Me – Cheap Trick
I’m The Man Who Murdered Love – XTC

So what are the best of the best? Like the top 5? Well here they are:

Sleepyhead (Cillo Remix) – Passion Pit
Oh my god. Ohmygodohmygodohmygod. This is SUCH a chill remix of the coolest song on the planet. 5 minutes and 16 seconds of “you can’t worry about anything because if you try to break the chill trance of this song, your head will explode.”
Hey There Mr. – Leisure Alaska
There’s just something about this song, man. The singer’s voice is like Chris Martin (Coldplay) mixed with peanut butter—very smooth, very lingering, with an ease of singing that is very apparent in the chorus. Fantastic.
Happy Up Here – Royksopp
The future is here, and it’s got a great beat. This is what electronic music should sound like. Very catchy.
Viva La Love Story – Jon Schmidt
The way this song crescendos to Viva La Vida is AMAZING. A very nice blend of Taylor Swift’s Love Story and Coldplay’s Viva La Vida using a cello and a piano.
I’m The Man Who Murdered Love – XTC
I actually just downloaded this song yesterday, but holy freaking crap it’s like crack. I danced to it on repeat for about an hour this afternoon. The tempo is perfect.

And I just have to give an honorable mention to Dildo by Interactive, solely because of the fact that this song consists of only 4 words—with 95% of the lyrics being “dildo”—and yet is so undeniably catchy that it begs to be played in the car at maximum volume when you’re driving around with your friends.

Now I’m sure you’re all looking for some plots, am I right? Just say yes, it’ll make things go more smoothly.

Here is the year in review: music style. Pie chart has been used due to the fact a bar graph would have sucked owing to the large range. As you can see, I am an electronic whore.

Here’s an aesthetically pleasing donut plot done of the top 4 genres plotted by month. January is the innermost circle, December is the outermost.

Here is a pie chart of the playcounts for the year (clicky for full size). I listened to songs purchased in 2010 a total of 15,045 times. The mean length of song is almost exactly 4:00, so that means I listened to a total of 3,610,800 seconds of music (60,180 minutes, 1,003 hours, or 41 days and 19 hours). Wow. And that’s just the music from this year, that doesn’t even count all the older stuff I listened to.

Oh, and the correlation between number of songs in a genre purchased and the number of plays for a particular genre? .98. For anyone who cares.

I was going to do a bunch of stuff with the genre plots, but they’re a lot messier than I was anticipating and therefore look like crap, so I’ll just leave you with a pdf list of the music I downloaded this year: 2010 Song List

I totally recommend doing this. Totally.

Today’s song: United State of Pop 2010 (Don’t Stop the Pop) by DJ Earworm