Every once in awhile, you’ll hear an old song on TV or in a movie that was once a huge hit, but is now mostly forgotten. It’s fun to look back at old music and find hidden treasures.
Music is more than just entertaining. As time marches on, we lose track of the music that shaped our lives and cultures throughout history. Exploring musical history can deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
There has been so much great music that has quietly slipped away from us. Let’s go treasure hunting with Data.world.
Getting Started With Data.World
Data.world is a social platform for finding and sharing data sets. It allows you to create projects that use publicly available data. It also has a ton of integrations that allow it to work with many popular tools. On top of all that, it has a very generous free tier for personal use.
Start by creating an account. After you’ve signed in, get the music list by using the search box in the center of the page at the very top. Search for “Billboard hot weekly charts” and select the option that has thousands of bookmarks.
Start by bookmarking the dataset so you can easily find it again later.
If you scroll down, you’ll see that there are two files. There is a CSV (comma-separated values) file with detailed information on the music charts themselves.
The Excel file, on the other hand, has lots of interesting information about the music from Spotify. There are many different ways you can import this data into Spotify, but Soundiiz works best.
There are about 30,000 songs in those datasets. Chances are, you won’t like them all, so you’ll need to sort through the data.
Sifting Through the Musical Data
As mentioned, there are two great sets in the hot weekly chart project. One covers Billboard data, and the other covers Spotify data.
Looking at the Billboard Data
For data about the best music, you’ll need to open the HotStuff.csv file. This file includes actual data from the Billboard Hot 100 Charts dating all the way back to 1958.
You can sort the columns to help you find the most popular songs by date and chart position. The list has over 300,000 songs, so it may take some time to load.
You might find it easier to download the CSV and import it into Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel. Here are some instructions on how to import your data into Excel.
You can then sort the data however you want using the more advanced options available in spreadsheet programs.
It may still be a little bit slow to sort and navigate through the data. But once it fully loads, it’ll become easier to scroll through.
Exploring the Spotify Data
The Spotify dataset is located in the “Hot 100 Audio Features.xlsx” file, and has a lot of nifty information about the songs. The columns include information like danceability and popularity (according to Spotify).
This dataset is only about 30,000 records, so it should be much more responsive, and you won’t need to export it.
Geeking Out With the Data
If you know SQL, you’re in luck because that’s where Data.world really shines! There is a feature that lets you search any dataset with basic SQL commands.
Let’s say that you want to see every song by Adele that hit the top 10. First, you’d select query from the upper right-hand corner of the data view. Then, you’d type in your SQL query and click Run query, also in the upper right-hand corner.
This is what the top 10 Adele query would look like:
More Lists and Features To Check Out
Data.world is a great resource for finding all kinds of information. You can search for data about music, movies, WWII stats, and much more.
You can also use it to create projects and cross-reference data. And you can provide data for other tools like Google Data Studio and Slack. It makes advanced data access available for all.