It suprised me a bit, so I wrote an article comparing it to progressive electronic music, trance in particular.
Most popular keys on SPotify
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- KVRAF
- 4589 posts since 7 Jun, 2012 from Warsaw
I found this chart showing most popular song keys on Spotify:
It suprised me a bit, so I wrote an article comparing it to progressive electronic music, trance in particular.
It suprised me a bit, so I wrote an article comparing it to progressive electronic music, trance in particular.
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Tricky-Loops wrote: (...)someone like Armin van Buuren who claims to make a track in half an hour and all his songs sound somewhat boring(...)
Tricky-Loops wrote: (...)someone like Armin van Buuren who claims to make a track in half an hour and all his songs sound somewhat boring(...)
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- KVRAF
- 8237 posts since 22 Sep, 2008 from Windsor. UK
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- KVRAF
- 26033 posts since 20 Oct, 2007 from gonesville
There is one thing I notice here that seems to escape yours: there is not one key using flats. So, what is it about "Spotify" that led to this result? I tend towards skepticism of the usefulness of such a sample. IE., our 8th most popular key "on Spotify" is G# major; as it happens this key will have 7 sharps and one double sharp, ->Fx<-. I would love to see the data for this somewhat surprising 'fact'. Evidently there is a problem and to make sense of this we have to assume that the entire world of Spotify or the researcher has never encountered say "Ab major" - having 4 flats in its sig - but G# major is a thing.DJ Warmonger wrote:I found this chart showing most popular song keys on Spotify:
It suprised me a bit,
What is reality?
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- KVRAF
- 26033 posts since 20 Oct, 2007 from gonesville
So what is our salient takeaway from this, that the A minorness of "Trance" signals "progressive" relative to the majorness of "Popular"? I see that 'the A minorness of Trance' is of some possible ideological interest but I don't think prevalence of key in the music charts is as reducable.
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Winstontaneous Winstontaneous https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=98336
- KVRAF
- 2592 posts since 15 Feb, 2006 from Another Green World
It's kind of sad that D minor, the saddest of all keys, placed so poorly.
Maybe that means 97.4% of songs on Spotify are happy - or at least not THE saddest?!?
Maybe that means 97.4% of songs on Spotify are happy - or at least not THE saddest?!?
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- KVRist
- 350 posts since 11 May, 2008
These results are expected and one should read and interpret with a grain of salt.
First, the graph is poorly presented as it only refers to pitch classes, so of course it is assuming C#/Db equivalence, as well as D#/Eb, F#/Gb, etc.. which, as pointed by Jancivil is not accurate. Most of the songs in "A# major" for sure are in fact in Bb major, etc...
Then, we don't really know what "Tonality" of a song means. Is it the initial tonality? The final tonality? What about songs with at least 2 or 3 tonalities? Or the ones transitioning from one tonality to the relative or the parallel? What about those without tonality? Probably, modal songs are also being wrongly classified as tonal in this case also. Again, we are missing some data. Perhaps the easiest assumption is that it is the "final" tonality, especially seeing the vast amount of Major over Minor.
Again, discouting all those things, I think we can assume that these results reflect the distribution of the corpus: if we assume a majority of pop/rock songs from the XX century in which the presence of guitars is massive, and in which most of the time the composition process is indeed shaped by a chord progression made in guitars, then they are easily explained by "those are the easiest and more predictable tonalities to creat chord progressions and play them on guitars with standard tuning". The high presence of a C# also suggests the use of frets, mistuned songs (I can recall a bunch of songs in Cmaj recorded 30 or 40 cents higher or accelerated, which an automatic software would round up to C#) or pentatonics played in all-black keys.
In trance and other EDM music genres the most used instrument shaping the composition is the keyboard. The same restriction does not apply, so it seems that Am or Cmaj should prevail and given the possibilities of using the "transposition button" much more odd tonalities can have a chance!...
In wind band music I should expect to see much more Bb, Cm, F, Eb because those are naturally easy tonalities shaping the repertoire, etc, etc...
So it seems pretty linear and obvious to me: these results reflect the distribution of genres in the corpus and the conventions that are shaping the repertoires.
Now, bring me some statistics on a website which 90% of the repertoire is shaped by Indonesian Gamelan!...
First, the graph is poorly presented as it only refers to pitch classes, so of course it is assuming C#/Db equivalence, as well as D#/Eb, F#/Gb, etc.. which, as pointed by Jancivil is not accurate. Most of the songs in "A# major" for sure are in fact in Bb major, etc...
Then, we don't really know what "Tonality" of a song means. Is it the initial tonality? The final tonality? What about songs with at least 2 or 3 tonalities? Or the ones transitioning from one tonality to the relative or the parallel? What about those without tonality? Probably, modal songs are also being wrongly classified as tonal in this case also. Again, we are missing some data. Perhaps the easiest assumption is that it is the "final" tonality, especially seeing the vast amount of Major over Minor.
Again, discouting all those things, I think we can assume that these results reflect the distribution of the corpus: if we assume a majority of pop/rock songs from the XX century in which the presence of guitars is massive, and in which most of the time the composition process is indeed shaped by a chord progression made in guitars, then they are easily explained by "those are the easiest and more predictable tonalities to creat chord progressions and play them on guitars with standard tuning". The high presence of a C# also suggests the use of frets, mistuned songs (I can recall a bunch of songs in Cmaj recorded 30 or 40 cents higher or accelerated, which an automatic software would round up to C#) or pentatonics played in all-black keys.
In trance and other EDM music genres the most used instrument shaping the composition is the keyboard. The same restriction does not apply, so it seems that Am or Cmaj should prevail and given the possibilities of using the "transposition button" much more odd tonalities can have a chance!...
In wind band music I should expect to see much more Bb, Cm, F, Eb because those are naturally easy tonalities shaping the repertoire, etc, etc...
So it seems pretty linear and obvious to me: these results reflect the distribution of genres in the corpus and the conventions that are shaping the repertoires.
Now, bring me some statistics on a website which 90% of the repertoire is shaped by Indonesian Gamelan!...
Play fair and square!
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- KVRAF
- 12190 posts since 7 Sep, 2006 from Roseville, CA
If these stats are based on the keys provided by the artists or labels, then you can toss this pie chart straight onto the compost pile.
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- KVRAF
- 2393 posts since 29 Jun, 2005 from La La Land
For once in your life can you please speak in layman's terms? I hate to keep missing out on stuff you say.jancivil wrote:So what is our salient takeaway from this, that the A minorness of "Trance" signals "progressive" relative to the majorness of "Popular"? I see that 'the A minorness of Trance' is of some possible ideological interest but I don't think prevalence of key in the music charts is as reducable.
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- KVRAF
- 26033 posts since 20 Oct, 2007 from gonesville
Ok, there is an idea, a principle, with a certain amount of sway that minor is a kinda more serious way to be as opposed to major, and out of this the easiest way found is "A minor" which we see should be the most popular for tarnce. That's a kind of ideology, I mean there's a 'first principle'. I don't think this particular survey of prevalent keys at Spotify is as convenient as that notion. I think finding G major is #1 indicates open strings on guitar as the preferred mode of operation for 'singer/songwriter' types enough to explain that, and it indicates somewhat a type, but C# major as more prevalent than F major seems off, so it could be explained as software rounding as was done. 
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- KVRian
- 804 posts since 18 Apr, 2011
Good ol' A# major
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- KVRian
- 804 posts since 18 Apr, 2011
Well Db is mostly black keys and really easy to do pentatonic riffs and stuff. A lot of r&b (all the ones I've played with) play in mostly black key keys.jancivil wrote:Ok, there is an idea, a principle, with a certain amount of sway that minor is a kinda more serious way to be as opposed to major, and out of this the easiest way found is "A minor" which we see should be the most popular for tarnce. That's a kind of ideology, I mean there's a 'first principle'. I don't think this particular survey of prevalent keys at Spotify is as convenient as that notion. I think finding G major is #1 indicates open strings on guitar as the preferred mode of operation for 'singer/songwriter' types enough to explain that, and it indicates somewhat a type, but C# major as more prevalent than F major seems off, so it could be explained as software rounding as was done.