2024
2023: In Review
Composition “Self Portrait in September” Sep. 2024
INTRODUCTION
Hello, my name is Isaiah. Welcome to my passion project, Year In Review. Year In Review (YIR) is a project that I created during the pandemic that allowed me to listen to a ton of music and research my listening habits. It has since progressed to include more scientific methods of research while also incorporating newfound skills acquired throughout the year. Coding, harmonic analysis, and music have become integral elements in creating this year’s iteration. This platform serves as a canvas to showcase the fusion of these skills and connections, a creative tapestry to share with discerning individuals like yourself.
Two aspects of this project serve as the backbone of YIR: Review and Analysis. The analysis is the brain of the project that delves into the inner workings of the data collected from listening to the previous year’s albums. This year, we are utilizing Spotify’s API database to analyze further trends that happen in the titan streaming service throughout the year. The review is the heart of the project, answering questions about what I like, why I like it, and how to share my preferences with others. Really, this portion of the project is all about self-discovery.
My goal for YIR is to be as curious as I can be with data and utilize music to answer questions we have about trends in music, composition, creation, content, and much, much more.
Before we start, please make sure to check out the work that I’ve done on this website, but also on the buttons above, which showcase all of the albums I reviewed and some of my musical achievements in the past year, including performances and compositions.
Scroll down to read chronologically or read individual pages by clicking on the table of contents to your right.
So, I pose you the question:
INTRODUCTION
Welcome! What is YIR?
INSPIRATION
Background information about how YIR 2023 came to be.
METHODS
How YIR was executed.
SPOTIFY API ANALYSIS
Technical walkthrough of code that accesses Spotify’s API.
REVIEW AND DATA
What did I listen to? What did I like?
ALBUMS OF THE YEAR
Five of my favorite albums of the year.
HARMONIC ANALYSIS
Five of my favorite songs of the year deconstructed.
MP3 ANALYSIS
Technical walkthrough of code that analyzes MP3 files.
CONCLUSIONS
Summarization of findings.
PROFILES AND EXTRA
A little about me and what I’ve been doing.
Where the h**k did Ice Spice come from?
Being chronically offline (or at least giving off the illusion of doing so), I’m not as connected to the world as some of my online friends. Yet, it’s been difficult to ignore the meteoric rise of one of the most standout personalities of 2023, Ice Spice. I remember the first time I heard the catchy “Boy’s a Liar Pt.2”, on a cold February day in my room. Weeks had passed by, and I continued to hear her rhythmic triplet flow incessantly bouncing within the fabric of the internet. It was around the time that she began to headline and co-headline huge music festivals with enormous talent that I realized I’d hardly ever heard of this person before this year. It was also around this time that I learned that Spotify makes its data available for developers through its API system. This newfound knowledge sparked an idea - a realization that I could delve into Spotify’s data and tell a story about how Ice Spice took over the music industry.
Many factors influence fame, and the idea that the internet serves as a modern stage is far from new. However, determining the extent to which the internet contributed to Ice Spice’s meteoric rise requires further examination. The graphs below illustrate her popularity metrics over time, showing a steady base of nearly 5 million monthly followers—a noteworthy achievement in itself. But her trajectory shifted dramatically with the release of her hit single, Boy’s a Liar Pt. 2. Following its debut, Ice Spice saw a staggering 581% increase in monthly listeners, reaching a peak Spotify Popularity score of 85/100 on March 9, 2023. In just one month, her monthly listeners skyrocketed by 30 million.
This type of rapid ascent is rare but not unheard of. Artists like Chappell Roan and Laufey also experienced significant surges in popularity in 2023. Yet, Ice Spice’s success was more than a viral moment—it was a calculated collaboration. Her partnership with the rising artist PinkPanthress played a pivotal role, as highlighted in a Variety article. Jesse Gassongo-Alexander catalyzed the collaboration, reaching out to Ice after Boy’s a Liar Pt. 1 went viral, aiming to expand its audience. Ice returned her verse within three days, and focus groups of influencers ensured her lyrics resonated with listeners.
300 Entertainment, deeply invested in both artists’ success, deployed strategic marketing efforts to amplify their reach. This included partnerships with popular streamers and ensuring their music played “wherever there was a DJ.” These efforts bolstered PinkPanthress’s U.S. presence while solidifying Ice Spice’s rise.
Ice Spice’s ascent is a testament to the synergy of talent and strategy. Her producer and college friend, RiotUSA, began putting out her music early on, laying the groundwork for her success. By 2023, she was performing at festivals across Europe and Australia, and in 2024, she launched her own world tour.
Below, find a graph illustrating Ice Spice’s monthly listeners and Spotify Popularity rating over time.
NOTE: There is an unknown discrepancy between Tableau and this website's host that blocks communication between the following graphs. I’ve tried to solve this issue countless times, and I’ve surrendered to screenshots of this work. Apologies!
In this graph, notice the frequency of change of concerts over time. Starting off with 5 festival appearances in 2022, she grew more popular in 2023 and embarked on a world tour in 2024. (Data pulled August 2024).
2024
Methods
Breakdown
API Analysis
Inquire
Code
Display
API Analysis
Inquire
Code
Display
Breakdown
Music Review
Listen
Rate
Display
Music Review
Listen
Rate
Display
We will go into greater detail with this step later on in the site but for now, getting into Spotify's data through their developer platform involves a few steps that create a connection between your computer and Spotify. You sign up on Spotify's developer website and create what they call an "app." Then, you authenticate your computer with their database. Once Spotify gives the green light, your computer gets access to talk to Spotify and ask for information, such as popular songs or playlists.
Because The API system gives me solid music data, it is used to cross-reference and support data included in my database such as genre names, trends in popularity over time, and follower count to make this a scientifically sound approach to music data, rather than being only a subjective approach.
This is simple. I listen to albums that were released in the recent year, I rate them utilizing a self-constructed scale which contains ten categories, and they are given a percentage score deduced from the rating scale. I then display the data and discover my listening habits throughout the year.
2024
Spotify API Analysis
Please find the code on the left hand and the explanation on the right.
All resources are available at my github https://github.com/isaiahrodang/YIR
SPOTIFY API ANALYSIS
Note: This was initially done with Ice Spice and replicated in the code below to search for Taylor Swift. This is a mistake on my part; all names should be consistent. When you decide to use this code, please make sure that all of your names are consistent to avoid any errors in the output.)
2024
Review
This portion of the project highlights key insights and discoveries drawn from the data I’ve collected throughout the year. It’s first inputted into an Excel sheet and then visualized in Tableau.
Location, location, location...
First, take a look at the countries of origin of the artists I listened to in 2023. A vast majority originating in North America. Below, you’ll find the country view and the city view of the heatmap.
Genre
Take a look at the artists that I listened to, their follower count, and the genre attributes thanks to Spotify’s API.
And a treemap that categorizes all genres and allows you to see the subgenres that are attributed to them...
This list that categorizes the artists by their umbrella genre and their subgenres. This also allows you to see their Spotify following.
Artists with a higher following will have a darker shade of green in their follower column.
A graph that draws the correlation between follower count and average rating.
Find all score related data in this section beginning with YOY ratings
Histogram containing the average scoring distribution in 2023.
All individual album scores can be found here.
Click around on the Artist filter and find something new. Compare and contrast ratings using the filter option to your right.
Click around on the Artist filter and find something new. Compare and contrast ratings using the filter option to your right.
All albums reviewed ever ranked from highest to lowest rating. Hover over a bar to view the album
2024
Albums of the Year
Water From Your Eyes. Everyone’s Crushed. [Album cover], Matador Records, 2023.
Laurel Halo. Belleville. [Album cover], Awe, 2023.
Pulgas. (2023). The Book of Pulgas [Album cover]. Oscorp
Ryuichi Sakamoto. 12. [Album cover], Milan Records, 2023.
The artist, formerly known as Elysia Crampton, delivers an album that introduces sounds and experiences rarely heard or felt in music. Blending traditional Peruvian folk music with modern electronic composition, Chuquimamani-Condori creates a work that I interpret as a commentary on the raw and beautiful nature of life. It is a tapestry of singular moments stitched together to reflect the complexity of our minds.
This album scores perfect 10’s in Cool Factor, Innovation, Originality, Produciton/Composition and Recommendation Ratings.
I encourage you to experience this album with headphones.
DJ E. (2023). Chiquimamani Condori [Album cover]. Independently released.
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Harmonic Analysis
I constructed a code that would read an mp3 file, analyze the file’s data, and output a spectrogram and a chromagram, whose definitions follow.
Spectrogram analyzes the amplitude (represented by the color --white = loud, black = soft) of a frequency (represented by the y axis) at any given time (represented by the x axis). These are useful for a variety of reasons including audio analysis, speech analysis, and machine learning.
A chromagram analyzes the pitches used in an audio signal by aggregating them all into one octave, and displaying how frequently they occur within a piece of music.
I’ve chosen a few of my favorite songs of 2023 to analyze, two of which will feature an analysis conducted by yours truly.
Spectrogram
Y: frequency
X: time
Color: indicates amplitude of a frequency at a given time.
white = loud black = quiet
Chromagram
Y: pitch
X: time
Color: red, intensity/occurring, blue = not occurring
Indicates a strong sub bass/bass presence
Interesting that the use of C# points to D but the G# Also points to A
Boy’s a Liar Pt. 2
CHORDS USED
F: IV∆7 → ii-7 → V7
(Bb∆) (G-7) (C7)MODALITY
FULL TRANSCRIPTION AVAILABLE AT:
ANALYSIS
Synopsis:
Boy’s a Liar Pt. 2 is a collaboration between Ice Spice and Pink Pantheress that arguably brought the already rising star into superstardom.
This song is heavily electronic, giving it a bubblegum pop feel with its fleeting melodic runs and supporting lines.
What makes this song special:
Interestingly, this song utilizes the Bb major to make us feel “home” but the extensive use of the E natural indicates a Lydian tonality from the F major parent key. The listener perceives Bb as the tonic chord, but a proper cadence isn't provided until bar 32, where a D-7 (vi-7) is introduced. This D-7 doesn't feel like the tonic chord to me, as it's played briefly and functions more as a deceptive cadence, shifting from V7 to vi-7. Additionally, an F is repeated in the final notes of the song, giving the listener a sense of closure.
To further elaborate on this point, the chromagram to your left shows the frequency of the pitches contained in a song, reduced to one octave. We can see that the most consistent pitch used is the F from start to finish, and D is sparingly used.
Notes
There’s a notable detection of the Ab in the choruses of the song according to the chromagram. I personally disagree with this assessment because after several testing procedures, I do not hear an Ab in this song. I am assuming that there is a hidden frequency, perhaps produced by the percussive or electronic elements of the song, that produce this pitch.
It’s worth mentioning that sending this song through stem splitters and BasicPitch will confuse the program. This is most likely due to the noisey nature of the song that has an extremely wide range of frequencies (as seen on the spectrogram). This frequency range confuses the program into thinking that pitches are occurring, even though they are not. This also happens with MIDI readers in ProTools and Ableton, as displayed.
CHORDS USED
This song’s tonal center lies around A...
ANALYSIS
Synopsis:
Unmerited suffering is not your average song. With heaviness right off the bat, the listener is launched into a fury of noise sourced by a screaming man, a crunchy downtuned guitar, crashy crashes and low tuned toms. This song features several breakdowns and gives the listener a lot to chew on.
What makes this song special:
The breakdowns (listed and played to your left) are interesting.
Breakdown A (34 sec to 45 sec)
This portion of the song is the main riff that introduces us to the theme of the song. Right off the bat, I can tell that the guitar is down-tuned to an open A string in the bass – this gives the guitar a much wider range and allows for a heavier sound. We hear a heavy grunt and a lead guitar strumming an open A string and its octave with a hammer onto the B. Tonality has not been established yet, but an emphasis has been placed on the A. This breakdown occurs 14 times before completing its course and moving on to Breakdown
Breakdown B (46- 1:04)
This breakdown exhibits the use of the following pitches: B, Eb. E , D, and F. The major second, minor third, and minor 6th are used frequently throughout this breakdown. Because the intervals are close together, in distance and do not form a conventional triad, dissonance and tension are this breakdown’s greatest strength.
Breakdown C (46- 1:04)
While this breakdown seems simple and sounds simple in its recreation, it deceives the reader. It’s extremely difficult to deciper the exact pitches that Simon plays. I reached out to ask about this breakdown in particular and he explained that he doesn’t remember what he played because he tuned a guitar to a random tuning and just played. While this is the best I could do with this section, it still doesn’t feel accurate.
Breakdown A’ (1:52 - 2:17)
It has a similar movement as breakdown A but includes some new harmonic material that leads. In the second bar of this breakdown, Simon plays a lick that alludes to an E Phrygian modality (using notes E, F, and A). His utilization of the half step between E and F secures this for me. These notes also point back to A, highlighting two out of four of the most important notes in an E7b9 chord.
In the second measure of tune in the fourth bar, Simon uses chromaticism to induce the feeling of insanity and to lead us back using a chromatic walk down from Db. The breakdown is repeated until the song comes to an end.
2024
MP3 Extraction Code Analysis
All resources are available at my github: https://github.com/isaiahrodang/YIR
→ Output of previous code
2024
Conclusions + next steps
CONCLUSIONS
Ice Spice’s meteoric success in 2023 and 2024 came through hard work and the support of executives and marketing teams. This is not a criticism—most pop stars today rise to fame through a combination of talent and strategic backing.
An overwhelming majority of artists featured in this project hail from North America. Is this a result of accessibility, language or industry dominance? Consider this an open invitation to share music from artists outside of North America!
All five of my top albums this year fall under the experimental umbrella, reflecting my strong preference for genre-bending music. I’ve noticed that I tend to rate albums higher when they score well on the innovation scale.
Utilizing music information retrieval tools such as chromagrams and spectrograms offers analysts a unique perspective that complements traditional methods of music analysis. Ideally, both approaches—modern and traditional—should be used in tandem. Information such as key signatures, motivic movement, and accurate chord naming cannot yet be reliably detected by algorithms. These nuanced details, often evident to the ear and on paper, risk being overlooked by modern methods alone.
Boy’s a liar pt.2 is in Bb Lydian!
The noisy nature of unmerited suffering, with its extremely wide range of frequencies (as shown on the spectrogram), presents challenges for stem splitters and pitch-detection tools like BasicPitch. These programs often misinterpret the frequency data, detecting pitches where none exist. This issue is similarly observed with MIDI readers in ProTools and Ableton, highlighting the limitations of these tools when analyzing complex audio signals.
NEXT STEPS
Automation, Automation, Automation... I love this project, but I need to learn how to automate the process that currently takes me the better part of a year. The most time-consuming parts are the listening and analysis stages, and I know I can find a better use of my time. My goal is to create an algorithm that automatically inputs the data points I track in Excel using Spotify’s API. This would eliminate the need to open a database and manually track all the data points myself.
Additionally, it would be exciting to develop an algorithm that predicts my album ratings (with quality control, of course). I imagine this could function similarly to Spotify’s Discover Weekly, which recommends songs you’re likely to enjoy based on your listening habits.
I’m still uncertain about Tableau’s role in this project. While I appreciate its ability to create dynamic dashboards, Tableau has been a thorn in my side when it comes to embedding data into my website. This is especially frustrating when graphs must be uploaded as static PDFs instead of retaining the interactive features Tableau offers.
I think that with the addition of an automation algorithm, it would be interesting to continue to uncover applications for spectrogram and chromagrams outside of data visualizations. Are there any applications for these that can help the general population?
2024
Profile
Before studying music, I studied psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and had a keen interest in the effects that schizophrenia and memory degenerative disorders had on the brain and how medicine and music therapy are used to alleviate symptoms. During my time in Santa Barbara, I founded the Santa Barbara chapter of Music Mends Minds, volunteered at schools teaching Social Emotional Learning, and listened to a ton of music through it all. Soon after graduating, I was given the opportunity to work at a nonprofit examining the effectiveness of mental health programs. It was here that my interest in data and ultimately YIR was born. I worked for this nonprofit for almost two years, learned a lot, and took the opportunity to move back to LA and return to school to study music.
After years of music gnawing, I’ve returned to school to fully embrace it. At 25, I took the leap and started my first private lesson, diving deep into classical and jazz music theory, jazz performance, composition, music technology, and the exciting intersections of music and data. I’m on track to graduate with an Associate of Science in Music Entrepreneurship in the Summer of 2025, and I couldn’t be more thrilled about what lies ahead.
I aspire to uncover new and innovative ways to explore music’s relationship with data, bridging creativity and analysis to push the boundaries of what’s possible. With influences including guitarists Flanafi and Mike Haldeman, who use Ableton to create unique soundscapes for improvisational music, I aim to create a space where data and the guitar come together to inspire creativity and to push the boundaries of guitar.
-IRA
Thank you for reading