Managing my Music Moods: Tracking and Recording How and What I Listen To
Dear Data by Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec is a fascinating data visualization project. Data was tracked and recorded each week and then beautifully illustrated with different visual encodings. When I was first assigned this project, I was confronted with the overwhelming decision to choose what to track.
So many ideas. So many things to choose from. But what could I measure?
I wanted to make sure what I measured was valuable to me. So I chose music. Music has been a tool I rely on quite a lot. Whether it be to calm down, get excited, or focus, it’s always been special to me. From docu-series, lyric explanations, to behind-the scenes, everything music has produced a “woahhhhhh” along with wide eyes and an open mouth… like a little kid getting their Christmas presents. Being a music lover, maybe even addict, I listen to music 24/7. Wherever I go, music comes with me. At this point, my AirPod is a limb of mine. I quickly realized this would work against me.
Gathering data was probably the easiest part, but the most tedious. To constantly be remembering to jot down everything was genuinely annoying. However, the feeling of finishing it up and seeing the results was pulling me through!
I decided to record the genre, speed (upbeat, slow, or in between), how it made me feel, and the time of day I listened to it… phew it was a lot. I even made a spread sheet to organize everything and manually calculated percentages.
Throughout the project, I thought about the amount of music I listened to in 4 days. 245 songs! Keeping track of the music I listened to, I realized I usually listen to soft and slow, worship music at the start of the day. Surprisingly, I’d much rather wake myself up with calm music than have fast, hardcore rap playing as my ears wake up. I thought I would’ve wanted the opposite since I am a morning person, but statistics proved me wrong.
I was quite surprised when my top genre was worship. Throughout the day, I usually try to play more upbeat music to stay awake so you’ll see more pop and hip hop among other genres like reggaeton, rock, folk, or Latin urbano. But I guess I spoke too soon.
I also tracked my mood and how I reacted to each song I played. In the past, I realized I listened to a lot of depressing music and would ignorantly listen to it ALL DAY! I know… not smart. So recently, I’ve reshaped my playlists to have most if not all the songs with a beautiful message of hope or motivation. It turns out it worked! Throughout the 4 days, I barely felt blue or sad!
I also shifted the music I listened to from secular to mostly Christian music awhile back because I realized secular music had a lot more of a negative hold or influence over me rather than a faith-based song. Secular music makes up less than 30% of my listening habits whereas Christian music makes up around 70%. I often found myself starting the day off with Christian worship to bless my day and ending the day as well to give thanks.
Overall, this project was awesome to conduct and learn about my own music listening habits. I was definitely more conscious of what I was listening to and more receptive to what the song said.
