Visualizing Data from the Spotify API

How to quickly visualize stats about Spotify artists with Infogr.am

This post will go over how to connect with the Spotify API to collect information about artists using Python 3 and then create an infographic from the data Spotify returned. Below is a preview of what we will be creating before we dive into the details.

Installing Requests

In order to play around with Spotify’s API in Python to gather data about artists, I installed Requests: HTTP for Humans via the terminal using: $ pip install requests . Note: Requests is a library that can be used to make API calls and is not limited to use only with the Spotify API.

spotify.py

Note: You can explore documentation for the Spotify web API here

# importing Requests: HTTP for Humans - installed in previous step.
import requests
# making a search request to the Spotify API to return
# any artist with 'lil' in their name. This request is 
# limited to 50 artists in the US market.
response = requests.get('https://api.spotify.com/v1/search?query=lil&type=artist&limit=50&market=US')
# converts the response from a string to a json object that can be parsed in Python.
data = response.json()

#visit this url: in order to see what the json object that is returned looks like:
# https://api.spotify.com/v1/search?query=lil&type=artist&limit=50&market=US
#looking at the 'items' returned for 'artists' in this request.

The Spotify API describes items returned from search as:

lil_artists = data['artists']['items'] 
# iterating through each artist and their items
# items contains the information we would like to recieve for each artist.

artist object (full) (from Spotify API)

# I use two separate for loops because I want to return ALL of the artist names before returning popularity rankings. 
for artist in lil_artists:
 # return the name of each artist found with 'search?query=lil&type=artist&limit=50&market=US'
print(artist['name'])

Note: Spotify’s API will also return artists that had names that formerly matched query. For example: Boosie Badazz, G Herbo and Bow Wow no longer user ‘lil’ in their stage name however, they are included in this dataset.

returns:

Lil Wayne
Lil Yachty
Lil Uzi Vert
Lil Dicky
Boosie Badazz
Lil Jon
King Lil G
Lil Durk
Lil Jon & The East Side Boyz
Lil Bibby
G Herbo
Lil Rob
Lil Reese
Lil Keke
Bow Wow
Lil Scrappy
Lil Wyte
Lil Blood
Lil Snupe
Lil Mama
Lil B
Lil' Kim
Lil Cuete
Lil Phat
Lil Debbie
Lil Twist
Lil Trill
Lil Twon
Lil AJ
Lil Lonnie
Lil Goofy
Mr. Lil One
Lil Flash
Lil Kesh
Lil Haiti
Lil Silva
Lil Rue
Lil Cray
Lil Eddie
Lil Wayne, DJ Drama
Lil Yase
Lil Suzy
Lil Mouse
Lil C
Lil Rick
Lil Boom
Lil June
Lil E
Lil Fate
Lil' Flip
# returns the popularity ranking associated with each of these artists
 # view popularity definition above
for artist in lil_artists:
 print(artist['popularity'])

returns:

86
72
72
68
67
72
61
60
60
54
53
50
50
48
57
49
50
45
45
45
44
62
40
39
43
39
37
38
37
36
35
36
38
39
35
43
34
35
41
35
33
34
34
33
38
33
32
34
34
49

Visualize Data

1. Create a free Infogr.am account.
2. Select ‘Chart or Graph’

3. Select the type of chart or graph you would like to create

4. The chart will be created with dummy data. Double click on the chart to pull up an black bar with an ‘edit’ button. Clicking edit will allow you to manipulate the data.

5. Here’s the dummy data that infogr.am automatically includes:

6. Copy and paste the output of:print(artist['name']) and
print(artist['popularity'])

7. The result is a beautiful graphic will all of the data that you pasted into infogr.am. Now you can play around with the visual aesthetic of the graphic.

Example of Infogr.ams I created from this data

(fyi: set limit to 10 for this one — the other two examples have 50 datapoints)