A while back, John Scalzi suggested taking your entire MP3 collection, loading it up in your jukebox software, hitting shuffle – then telling the world the first ten songs it lists. Vodkapundit recently upped it by asking for the 10-20 most played.
OK...
Random Shuffle: Top 20
Unfdortunately Windows Media Player 10, which has access to my complete collection of 8,000 or so (iTunes has a problem with skipping and not recovering properly if the CPU/disk redlines), doesn't have this feature. So the iTunes shuffle with access to only 3,5000 songs will be incomplete. Nevertheless, the shuffle produces:
1. Smoke on the Water - Live (Deep Purple)
2. Somewhere Over the Rainbow - Live (Guns N' Roses)
3. Brighton Rock (Queen)
4. Always Somewhere (Scorpions)
5. I Don't Remember (Peter Gabriel)
6. On Every Street (Dire Straits)
7. I'm An Addult Now (Pursuit of Happiness)
8. One Gun (54-40)
9. Midnight Rider (Joe Cocker covers it)
10. Stardust (John Coltrane)
11. Message In A Bottle (Police)
12. Marrakesh Night Market (Loreena McKennitt)
13. Fat Bottomed Girls (Queen)
14. The Long And Winding Road (Beatles)
15. Couldn't Get It Right (Climax Blues Band)
16. Switching to Glide (The Kings)
17. Need You Right Now (Trumpet Thing in Buddha Bar II)
18. Love Is Dangerous (Fleetwood Mac)
19. Peg (Steely Dan)
20. Drum Major Instinct Sermon (Martin Luther King)
Would have expected more current stuff to make it in, but it's a random selection and that's what we got.
Most-Played: Top 20
That second bit is skewed heavily by a playlist I used to work to (alas, my 700MHz laptop has trouble with horsepower now when I have multiple apps open), and even more so by an "MP3 a day" thing I did with my sweetie once, and which turned into another pair of playlists. Otherwise, songs like Metallica's "Fuel" and some stuff by The Trews ("Every Inambition" is excellent) would be a lot higher on the list.
1. He Mele No Lilo (Kamehameha Schools, Lilo & Stitch) Lyrics, streaming & translation. Note translation caveat.
2. Angel of Montgomery (Susan Tedeschi)
3. Water of Love (Dire Straits)
4. On Every Street (Dire Straits)
5. Daydream (Robin Trower). Highly recommended.
6. I'm Burning for You (Blue Oyster Cult)
7. Hello, Hooray (Alice Cooper)
8. Lay Lady Lay (Bob Dylan)
9. Down to the Waterline (Dire Straits)
10. Industrial Disease (Dire Straits)
11. Hawaiian Roller Coaster Ride (Kamenhameha Schools, Lilo & Stitch)
12. Whatever's Written in Your Heart (Gerry Rafferty)
13. Everybody Needs Somebody to Love (Blues Brothers)
14. Fare Thee Well, Love (Rankin Family)
15. Reach Out (Cheap Trick) "Sterrrrrnnnnnnnnnn!"
16. Get it Right Next Time (Gerry Rafferty)
17. Free (Phish)
18. Somewhere Over The Rainbow (Ray Charles). Find out why he was nicknamed "Genius" by Frank Sinatra.
19. Burning Love (Wynonna, not Elvis. Sorry, hers is better.)
20. Moonchild (Chris Cornell)
And finally, going all the way, we have Professor Bainbridge who asks: "What's the most embarassing song the iTunes Music Store's "Just for You" function suggests you'll like?"
Actually, I don't have access to that feature on iTunes 4.7. I've declined to update because a friend did so - he said it damn near destroyed his system because he then had to go to Win XP Service Pack 2 - which I've firmly declined to install. Then again, perhaps that feature requires an iTunes store account, which I also don't have.
But you can click here and find out what his song was. The horror, indeed.
Hey, there is nothing wrong with 99 Luff Balloons! That song rocks.
I don't use iTunes, so WinAmp will substitute. This sample from the 4K mp3s on my computer won't necessarily be representative of my tastes since 1) WinAmp's randomizer is not all that random, 2) half of my music and most of my favourite stuff is on CD, not ripped, and 3) the complete discographies of Brian Eno and Tom Waits are on this machine, which will somewhat bias the list. With those caveats... drumroll
1. Blur - Moroccan Peoples Revolutionary Bowls Club
2. Tom Waits - Whistle Down the Wind
3. The Avalanches - Extra Kings
4. Spiritualized - Electric Mainline (Part 1)
5. Brian Eno - 1/1 (from Music for Airports)
6. Colleen - One Nights and it's Gone
7. Brian Eno - Lizard Point
8. South San Gabriel - I Feel Too Young to Die
9. Miles Davis - Portia
10. Spiritualized - Come Together (Live)
11. Cluster & Eno - Foreign Affairs
12. Tom Waits - The Piano Has Been Drinking
13. Colleen - Everyone Alive Wants Answers
14. Brian Eno - Thursday Afternoon
15. Gomez - Rex Kramer
16. Brian Eno - Two Rapid Formations
17. The Jesus and Mary Chain - I Love Rock 'n' Roll
18. Mogwai - Secret Pint
19. John Southworth - Pumpkins
20. Calexico - Pepito
How do you find "most played" in iTunes?
My random shuffle of several months ago.
3 Mustaphas 3 - Mamo, Snezhets Navalyalo
Annie Hayden - Start a little late
Kehilat Hadar - KeVakarat Ro'eh Edro
The Roches - Hammond Song
Frank Sinatra - Young at Heart
French Frith Kaiser Thompson - Hunting Sunsets
French Frith Kaiser Thompson - The Same Thing
Elysian Fields - Black Acres
Michael Callen - Dicky D
Bruce Springsteen - Jersey Girl (live)
Frank Sinatra - Dancing in the Dark
Robin Holcomb - Mah L'kha Ha-Yam Variation
Michael Hall - When September Comes
Joe Jackson - One More Time
Frank Sinatra - Oh Look at Me Now
Tom Petty - Here Comes My Girl
Waterson Carthy - a set of hornpipes, not going to list them
3 Mustaphas 3 - Cabra
Alejandro Escovedo - Rhapsody
James McMurtry - See the Elephant
Pixies - Debaser
Tara Jane O'Neill - Bullhorn Moon
Christine Lavin - The Vacation of Their Lives
Flirtations - Whole Lotta Shaking Going On
Kath Bloom - Swing Low Sweet Chariot
Peter Bellamy - Ward the Pirate
Pat MacDonald - Personal Jesus
Joe Jackson - Fools in Love/For Your Love (live)
Leonard Cohen - Who By Fire? (live)
Death Cab for Cutie - Wait
Breeders - Do You Love Me Now?
Uncle Tupelo - Moonshiner (live)
. . . . and then I stopped keeping track.
"Most Played" in iTunes is a column. You need to pick which columns to display, and check it. Then you can sort by that fact just like any other column.
Windows Media Player can group by "Most Played in the Morning."
1. Sharkey's Day - Laurie Anderson
2. The Israelites - Desmond Dekker
3. In a Big Country - Big Country
4. Oro Se Bheatha Bhaile - Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem
5. Busload of Faith - Lou Reed
6. Lili Marlene - Marlene Dietrich
7. Clampdown - The Clash
8. To Live and Die in LA - Wang Chung
9. Sweet Jane - Cowboy Junkies
10. Mercy Street - Peter Gabriel
11. As Long as I Live - Johnny Cash
12. In My Hour of Darkness - Gram Parsons
13. I Never Picked Cotton - Johnny Cash
14. Canoe Song - Paul Robeson
15. Streets of Bakersfield - Dwight Yoakam & Buck Owens
16. As I Roved Out (Irish Traditional) - The Dublin Ramblers
17. Road to Nowhere - Talking Heads
18. Casey Jones - Grateful Dead
19. Novelty - Joy Division
20. Rudie Can't Fail - The Clash
I went to the link and these lists are just WAY BIG LIES. Showoff ipodders with nuthin better to do. Where's the f**kin' ENYA man!!!
Billy, Enya is in my collection - the entire albums of The Celts and Shepherd Moons, plus a few more. Just didn't get selected for the shuffle. 20/8,000 = 1/4%.
I'll add that Glen Wishard's #9 ("Sweet Jane", Cowboy Junkies) is one of the great covers of all time. Significantly better than the Lou Reed version, just perfectly done, and one of those gems you'd have to know of the band to even be aware of. It was probably this cover with lead singer Margo Timmins ' haunting vocals that landed her on People's "50 Most Beautiful" list one year.
You can do a random playlist from your collection in Windows Media Player, too.
They just make it needlessly difficult (sounds familiar with things Microsoft?).
Make a New Auto Playlist and edit the options.
In the 'includes the following' field choose 'Randomize Playback Order' (hidden behind the 'more' tab in the pull down menu)
Then in the apply the following restrictions field choose however many songs you want for your playlist.
On the one hand you get the flexibility of a great many options, on the other, not very user friendly.
After jumping through those Microsoft mandated hoops I came up with these twenty:
1. Blasters - Bootsy Collins
2. Robert Montgomery - Love
3. Thin Ice - Lenny Kravitz
4. Demons - Fatboy Slim (featuring Macy Gray)
5. Back N' The Day - Bootsy Collins
6. Ready to Go (Original Mix) - Republica
7. Phopus Opus #15 - The Broun Fellinis
8. Flatman and Bobin - PFunk All Stars
9. I Just Don't Know What to Do With Myself - The White Stripes
10. Otra Vez - Los Amigos Invisibles
11. Medley: Going Home/Sentimental Journey/In Monument/Lover [Live] - Rahsaan Roland Kirk
12. Life Can Be So Nice - Prince
13. Breeze - Sean Lennon
14. Please Send Me Someon to Love - Sade
15. Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology) - Marvin Gaye
16. Straight, No Chaser - Thelonious Monk
17. Spazz - The Elastik Band
18. Hook in Her Head - Throwing Muses
19. Dirty Water - The Standells
20. Screen Kiss - Thomas Dolby
Doh, that's what I get for not paying attention, getting a top playcount list is possible in WMP9 also, it's one of the columns you can choose, and then just sort the list of songs by that to get your most played.
And yes, I suspect many people 'game' the statistics, or outright lie so as to avoid embarrassment.
(I just built a new computer and am in the process of ripping all my CD's, so I have no history to speak of, but if I did, there'd be lots of Prince, plenty of New Wave (especially Thomas Dolby, Adam Ant, and Culture Club) so I'd easily be subjected to ridicule)
XWL -
I've got Prince, Adam Ant, and Thomas Dolby on mine. For Culture Club, though, I'm just going to pretend you didn't say that. In my selectively edited reality, Culture Club was a kind of hoax, like the swine flu panic.
I'm not sure my WMP10 "most played" lists are accurate, though. I think WMP10 leaves out the songs that it hates playing. I'm pretty sure that I once listened to Kris Kristofferson's "Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I'll Ever Do Again)" twenty times in a row, and I may have done so more than once, but it doesn't show up on any list.
I also have hours of Vera Lynn (of Pink Floyd's "does anyone here remember Vera Lynn" fame) that don't show up on any list. Jimmy Cotton, Sonny Terry, Skip James, and Bill Withers don't show up anywhere, possibly because Microsoft is racist.