Exploring Spotify Play History

Collecting the data

I’d setup a IFTTT (“If This Then That”) applet that keep a log of my recently played Spotify tracks and saved that to a Google Drive sheet. Retrieving the data can either by down using the googledrive, googlesheets or gogglesheets4 libraries, but one can simple download the sheet down as a .csv manually.

# load libraries
library(tidyverse)
library(genius)
library(stringr)

# download file and merge
spotify_plays <- read_csv("spotify_plays.csv", 
                          col_names = FALSE)

Part 1: Lyrics Extraction

Firstly we need to get a distinct list of artist-song pairs based on the entire listening history of >3000 plays.

One can then decide which artists can be pre-filtered out based on language - as these results are unlikely to be held in the Genius website.

# remove foreign language tracks
non_en <-c("Songhoy Blues")

spotify_plays %>% distinct(X2,X3) %>% 
  filter(!X2 %in% non_en) %>% 
  mutate(artist=X2,song=X3) %>% 
  select(-X2,-X3) -> spotify_distinct_en

head(spotify_distinct_en)

## # A tibble: 6 x 2
##   artist     song                                       
##   <chr>      <chr>                                      
## 1 Bosse      Schönste Zeit - Leise Landung Live         
## 2 Bosse      Dein Hurra                                 
## 3 Bombino    Iyat Ninhay / Jaguar (A Great Desert I Saw)
## 4 Pink Floyd Shine On You Crazy Diamond - Live          
## 5 Pink Floyd Astronomy Domine - Live                    
## 6 Pink Floyd What Do You Want From Me - Live

Quite a few of the songs are from compilation albums, or remastered releases, and thus these extra tags may impede the lyric search so they are replaced with blank strings to hopefully return the original song titles.

# clean to reflect original releases
spotify_distinct_en %>% 
  mutate(title=str_remove(spotify_distinct_en$song," - Live")) %>%
  select(-song) -> spotify_distinct_org

spotify_distinct_org %>% 
  mutate(song=str_remove(spotify_distinct_org$title," - 2011 Remaster")) %>%
  select(-title) -> spotify_distinct_alb

In total we are going to search through just over 500 tracks.

spotify_distinct_alb %>% count()

## # A tibble: 1 x 1
##       n
##   <int>
## 1   574

The filtered list of songs from the original albums is then passed to the add_genius() function which proceeds to build up the url’s which are then parsed to return a dataframe of rows containing artist, song, and lyrics (per line) for each record.

# retrieve all lyrics
spotify_distinct_alb %>%
  add_genius(artist, song, type = "lyrics")-> lyrics_all

We successfully retrieved lyrics for about half of our tracks.

lyrics_all %>% 
  distinct(song,artist) %>% 
  count()

## # A tibble: 1 x 1
##       n
##   <int>
## 1   232

We can use the grepl function to filter out lyrics which contain the following words.

# filter by the desired search words
lyrics_all %>% filter(grepl('blue|blues|Blue|Blues|blau|Blau', lyric)) -> plays_blue

# return artist and title
plays_blue %>% distinct(.,song,artist) -> tracks_blue

Exactly 48 lines match the above conditions…

formattable:: format_table(plays_blue[,2:6])

artist	song	track_title	line	lyric
Bosse	Sophie	Sophie	15	Du lgst mir das Blaue vom Himmel
Bosse	Sophie	Sophie	32	Du lgst mir das Blaue vom Himmel
Bosse	Overkill	Overkill	7	Die Tage blau, so schn leer
Angus & Julia Stone	Cellar Door	Cellar Door	30	I wanna look up, so I can see the blue sky
Angus & Julia Stone	Cellar Door	Cellar Door	31	See the blue in your eyes
PeterLicht	Marketing	Marketing	4	Die noch blau sind
Element Of Crime	Delmenhorst	Delmenhorst	10	Und die sind immer grn und blau
Stephen Stills	Sit Yourself Down	Sit Yourself Down	9	Never gonna get rid of these blues
Stephen Stills	Sit Yourself Down	Sit Yourself Down	29	I’m never gettin rid of these blues
Taj Mahal	Leaving Trunk	Leaving Trunk	2	I ain’t see no blues, whiskey made me sloppy drunk
Taj Mahal	Leaving Trunk	Leaving Trunk	3	I ain’t never seen no whiskey, the blues made me sloppy drunk
Taj Mahal	Leaving Trunk	Leaving Trunk	9	The blues are mushed up into three different ways
Taj Mahal	Leaving Trunk	Leaving Trunk	11	I woke up this mornin’ with the blues three different ways
Taj Mahal	Leaving Trunk	Leaving Trunk	14	You know I’m a man who love to sing the blues
Taj Mahal	Leaving Trunk	Leaving Trunk	16	Well you know I’m the man, I’m the man oh yes and I love to sing the blues
Taj Mahal	Leaving Trunk	Leaving Trunk	19	I ain’t see no blues or whiskey made me sloppy drunk
Taj Mahal	Leaving Trunk	Leaving Trunk	20	I ain’t never seen no whiskey, the blues made me sloppy drunk
Robert Johnson	Walkin’ Blues	Walkin<U+0092> Blues	2	Know ’bout ’at I got these, old walking blues
Robert Johnson	Walkin’ Blues	Walkin<U+0092> Blues	4	But you know ’bout ’at I, got these old walking blues
Robert Johnson	Walkin’ Blues	Walkin<U+0092> Blues	13	Well, some people tell me that the worried blues ain’t bad
Robert Johnson	Walkin’ Blues	Walkin<U+0092> Blues	15	People tell me that these old worried old blues ain’t bad
Dave Matthews Band	Big Eyed Fish	Big Eyed Fish	10	He turned red and blue, purple, colorful indeed
Stephen Stills	Nothin’ to Do but Today	Nothin<U+0092> to Do But Today	16	I am a blues man, I know when to leave
Little Feat	A Apolitical Blues	A Apolitical Blues	7	I’ve got the apolitical blues
Little Feat	A Apolitical Blues	A Apolitical Blues	8	And that’s the meanest blues of all
Little Feat	A Apolitical Blues	A Apolitical Blues	9	Apolitical blues
Little Feat	A Apolitical Blues	A Apolitical Blues	10	And that’s the meanest blues of all
Gerry Cinnamon	Fickle McSelfish	Fickle McSelfish	12	Won’t you come and take my blues away
Gerry Cinnamon	Fickle McSelfish	Fickle McSelfish	25	Won’t you come and take my blues away
Bosse	Insel	Insel	4	Skorbut und blaue Zehen
Buddy Guy	DJ Play My Blues	DJ Play My Blues	2	I wonder why you don’t play much blues anymore
Buddy Guy	DJ Play My Blues	DJ Play My Blues	4	I keep wondering why you don’t play much blues anymore
Buddy Guy	DJ Play My Blues	DJ Play My Blues	8	Even though I know that bluesman now he’s gone
Taj Mahal	Lonely Avenue	Lonely Avenue	7	Now I feel so sad and blue
Taj Mahal	Lonely Avenue	Lonely Avenue	18	And I feel so sad and blue
Neil Young	Walk Like a Giant	Walk Like a Giant	37	When I’m seeing your blue eyes shining
Peter Frampton	Baby, I Love Your Way	Baby, I Love Your Way	22	Brown and gray, blue besides
Keb’ Mo’	Love In Vain	Love in Vain	19	You know the blue light it was my blue
Angus & Julia Stone	Yellow Brick Road	Yellow Brick Road	14	That skinny dipping girl made the blue bird sing
Keb’ Mo’	Muddy Water	Muddy Water	6	They got the blues in Mississippi
Keb’ Mo’	Muddy Water	Muddy Water	16	Ready for the blues tonight
Keb’ Mo’	Muddy Water	Muddy Water	34	I’m ready for the blues tonight
Keb’ Mo’	Muddy Water	Muddy Water	42	I’m ready for the blues tonight
Keb’ Mo’	Muddy Water	Muddy Water	47	Ready for the blues tonight
Keb’ Mo’	Muddy Water	Muddy Water	52	Ready for the blues tonight
Keb’ Mo’	Muddy Water	Muddy Water	57	Ready for the blues tonight
Keb’ Mo’	Your Love	Your love	19	You know the blue light it was my blue
Keb’ Mo’	I See Love	I See Love	29	But all I ever got was the blues

Consisting of the following artist-track pairs.

formattable:: format_table(tracks_blue[,2:3])

artist	song
Bosse	Sophie
Bosse	Overkill
Angus & Julia Stone	Cellar Door
PeterLicht	Marketing
Element Of Crime	Delmenhorst
Stephen Stills	Sit Yourself Down
Taj Mahal	Leaving Trunk
Robert Johnson	Walkin’ Blues
Dave Matthews Band	Big Eyed Fish
Stephen Stills	Nothin’ to Do but Today
Little Feat	A Apolitical Blues
Gerry Cinnamon	Fickle McSelfish
Bosse	Insel
Buddy Guy	DJ Play My Blues
Taj Mahal	Lonely Avenue
Neil Young	Walk Like a Giant
Peter Frampton	Baby, I Love Your Way
Keb’ Mo’	Love In Vain
Angus & Julia Stone	Yellow Brick Road
Keb’ Mo’	Muddy Water
Keb’ Mo’	Your Love
Keb’ Mo’	I See Love

Part 2: Play History and Artist, Genre and Song Analysis

Coming soon……