I've been using Spotify to create playlists for quite some time now. Just like Pandora, you can start a radio station and listen to streaming music. The extra punch comes from the ability to view the individual artist profile. Once there you can view the "similar artist" tab, which allows you to seek similar artists/songs when creating a playlist.
Spotify also gives you a playcount for the top 10 songs each artist has. I believe at the time of this writing, Spotify has 75 million active users.
Recently, I spent about two days going through my entire active music library and started labeling each one with the playcount in the millions. So if a song has 237 million plays, I write 237, and if it has 23 million I write 23, etc.
A typical modern day hit has between 70 and 300 million views depending on genre. If you go more genre specific the play counts will be smaller but you'll be able to compare and contrast nevertheless.
About two weeks after this, I went and re-calculated the play count for the newer music. It allowed me to specifically see what was getting hotter, and what was cooling off in the moment it was actually happening. So now I have another column with a number representing the songs growth in the past two weeks. Some songs had 40 million plus new listens and some only had 1 or even less than a million.
This feedback is bad ass. I've been able to tighten my sets down significantly by removing and replacing certain key songs that were weak and yet I couldn't quite see. Most of the feedback has confirmed my gut feelings but it's been amazingly helpful in removing some definite duds or finding stronger replacements.
Imagine using serato or traktor or whatever with a plugin that simply kept the play count and the play rate calculated for you on the side so that you could filter for popular songs that are being played . . . right . . . . now.
If you're down say: CLOUD DJS
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