Analysis of Asian influence on Spotify and compare streaming of Asian American artists (88rising) to all artists streamed in United States. We will look at Spotify data to analyze. Given the increased diversification in mainstream media, we were interested to see what impact Asian Americans and Asians have made in the music industry in recent times. We specifically wanted to analyze data from 88rising, an American based music company that exclusively represents Asian American and Asian music artists.
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Group Members: Jeremiah Eugenio, Emilio Guzman, Kristy Le, Samantha Seng, Evelyn Votran
- General Info
- Features
- Popularity Analysis
- Music Analysis
- Collaborations Analysis
- Conclusion
- Resources
- Acknowledgements
- How do top 88rising artists compare to top mainstream artists on Spotify?
- Do song elements play a role in the popularity of the artists or track?
- Do collaborations have an effect on track popularity?
List the ready features here:
- Apexcharts
- Javascript
For this section, we wanted to focus on the top 10 most listened to artists on Spotify, and the top 10 88rising artists based on monthly listeners.
At first glance, you can see that the 88rising artists are pulling in about 10% of the monthly listeners of the top mainstream artists. The Weeknd is leading in monthly listeners with 78,767,075 monthly listeners, and 10th place being Dua Lipa with 60,387,424. For 88rising, Joji is leading that group with 30,050,750 monthly listeners, and 10th place being Guapdad 4000 with 975,759.
When looking at the debut comparison chart, we can see that all of the 88rising artists debuted after all of the top mainstream artists. The mainstream artists all debuted between the late 90s to early 2010s, where all of 88 rising debuted officially from 2015 to 2020.
Within these artists lists, their music genre encompasses:
['R&B', 'Pop', 'Hip Hop', 'Dance Pop', 'Alternative', 'Folk', 'Rock', 'Trap', 'EDM', 'Kpop', 'Misc.']
Top 3 categories for the mainstream artists are: pop, r&b, hip hop
Top 3 categories for the 88rising artists are: hiphop, r&b, misc
Misc: includes lofi, thai-pop, trip-hop
We can see that hip hop and r&b overlaps both groups and most likely plays a role in what is marketable to the Spotify users and audience. However, 88rising having more uncommon genres incorporated within their artists sets them apart and are memorable for their listeners.
For the music analysis we wanted to see how song elements could affect track popularity.
So we created a radar chart for the top 3 most popular mainstream artists and top 3 most popular 88Rising artists so we could see if there’s a trend amongst their music style or songs.The three factors we looked at besides popularity are danceability, energy, and valence. Danceability refers to how suitable a track is for dancing. Energy refers to the overall intensity and activity of the song. Valence refers to how positive a song is where more positive themes (happy) have a higher valence score and more sad themes have a lower valence score.
We discovered that all 6 artists have above average energy and danceability for their songs while also having average to below average valence (besides Ed Sheeran). But a lot of his recent songs have been trending down on valence as seen in his most recent album called Divide. This trend can also be seen in how a lot of recent viral hits like “Slow Dancing in the Dark” by Joji and “Anti-Hero” by Taylor Swift have a prominent beat (contributing to having a higher danceability and energy score) but generally have sad overtones (contributing to an average to below average valence score). This can be extended to predicting future hits by conducting an audio analysis on the track and seeing how they stack up compared to more popular artists’ songs.
We decided to look into 88rising collaborations to explore the effect of collaboration quantity on listener popularity, and whether the type of artists in the collaboration have an effect on their popularity.
Through our findings, we found that Joji was the most popular among Spotify listeners for his collaborations. He had an average popularity rating of 58.28% while Higher Brothers was the most popular 88rising artist among other artists. They collaborated on the most tracks which was 38.
The artist, 88rising, represents track collaborations where 88rising artists are featured with one another. These collaborations have the most tracks and an average listener popularity rating of 51%. This showcases that 88rising listeners enjoy listening to songs where they are familiar with all artists present. It may indicate some type of niche towards 88rising. In addition, Joji produced tracks with the highest average popularity rating of 59% despite producing only 13 tracks with features.
It was interesting to see that those who were featured in more tracks such as Higher Brothers and Guapdad 4000 had lower popularity ratings. While Joji, still remains at the top with the highest average popularity rating of 56% for the 5 tracks he is featured in. This could showcase that it is the quality of songs that attract listeners rather than quantity. This may be due to Joji having high standards for the songs he produces or is featured in.
Overall, all tracks with collaborations have an average popularity rating of 43.68%. Nevertheless, they have high danceability at 71.25% and energy at 62.93%. The valence is also more neutral at 47.68% meaning that the average 88Rising songs are neither uplifting or depressing, producing music that is more neutral.
- How did the top 88rising artists compare to top mainstream artists on Spotify?
We saw 88rising has had a momentous upbringing in the last 7 years since its debut in 2015, reaching double million digit followings and reaching an audience through its unique culture branding.
- How did song elements play a role in the success of the artists or track?
88’s top artist such as Joji’s instrumental overtones in his top hits have seen a general lower valence trend, however, resulting in an increased popularity to their audience in relation to Taylor swifts top hits overtones. Danceability being a major component in their music composition, we saw the rise of its very own 88rising festival: Head in the clouds, established since 2018. Showcasing a lineup of genres from KPOP to hip-hop, and R&B music.
- Lastly, how did collaborations have an effect on track popularity?
We analyzed the effects of collaborated tracks amongst 88 rising artists having a popularity rating over 43%, with higher danceability and energy scores being above average. Nonetheless, 88Rising music pushes for more than a neutral, but attractive atmosphere that gives a unlike feel to their tracks.
Track feature and analysis:
https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/web-api/reference/#/operations/get-audio-features
https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/web-api/reference/#/operations/get-audio-analysis
https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/general/guides/authorization/
https://spotipy.readthedocs.io/en/2.21.0/
Thank you Bob.