Last week we discussed the web-wide dataset that Glue’s amassing. To highlight the richness of the data, we revealed that Netflix activity makes up less than 15% of all movie data on Glue.
In this post we’ll share some data from music activity on Glue. Based on the responses to the question we posed on Twitter, this data will be surprising.
Glue’s web-wide music coverage is fairly broad. Appearing on more than 50 popular music sites, Glue’s coverage ranges from A (5 different sites) to Z (Zune).
When Glue activity for each music site is plotted (left), the result is a power law curve.
The five most popular music sites on Glue dominate the others, accounting for 85% of the activity. The remaining 15% of music activity on Glue is spread across more than 50 sites.
The 5 Most Popular Music Sites
In order, the most popular music sites are Wikipedia, Myspace, Amazon, Last.fm and eMusic.
Accounting for 50 % of all music activity on Glue, it was surprising to us - and those who answered our question - that Wikipedia and Myspace are the prominent sites for music fans on the web.
In an informal poll, Glue-rs provided the following reasons for visiting these sites: (i) Wikipedia: completeness of information - info, albums, song lists; (ii) Myspace: access to media - songs, pictures, video.
While this may be true, we believe that the prominence of these two sites in Google search results contributes significantly to their high activity levels. For various artist searches, the artist’s homepage, Wikipedia, and Myspace are consistently the top three results (see: Rihanna, Counting Crows, Lady Gaga, Metallica).
Conclusions
Spread across more than 50 popular music sites, Glue’s music coverage is web-wide. The dataset is rich and growing daily, capturing popularity and trend information. While we turn to a small handful of sites for the majority of our music info, there’s a healthy distribution of activity across a long, flat tail.
