600 Hottest Albums in 2015 in the US
MAT 259, 2016
Woohun Joo
Concept
I am personally enjoying managing my music playlist with iTunes library and some other online digital music services based on the released year. From this idea, I was curious about what music albums were released on the same date. Since most music API providers does not offer an appropriate info that I was looking for, instead I decided to focus on the same release year in a particular music style.
API Query
API data for this project come from Discog. Below query is an example of 100 rock albums in 2015 in the US market, in order of popularity (Discog limits 100 data per page). In addition to this, for the whole data set, I have also looked into below lists.
1. 600 hottest rock albums in 2015
2. 600 hottest jazz albums in 2015
3. 600 hottest electronic albums in 2015
The result includes artists, titles, release year, genre, label, and album covers.
https://api.discogs.com/database/search?year=2015&genre=electronic&format=album&country=us&per_page=100&page=1&key="YOURKEY".
1. 600 hottest rock albums in 2015
2. 600 hottest jazz albums in 2015
3. 600 hottest electronic albums in 2015
The result includes artists, titles, release year, genre, label, and album covers.
https://api.discogs.com/database/search?year=2015&genre=electronic&format=album&country=us&per_page=100&page=1&key="YOURKEY".
Final result
I adopted 2D matrix type mapping by using 600(30X20) pixel units, inspired by iTunes’s screensaver mode. For a visualization process, I retrieved 3 elements which are album cover, released year, and genre(1D linear type). In terms of the popularity order, album covers are arranged from top to bottom and left to right.
As a default, all pixels are blinking with random colors. This means just pretend it is waiting data. I mimicked TV screen with no signal. By using the menu on the right part of the screen, you can get 600 albums which were released in 2015, ordered by popularity.
Menu : Rock, Jazz, Electronic, Refresh
Menu on the right side of screen functions to search data according to music style, and button X allows you to go back to the first screen and refresh the data.
An example of 600 Rock albums with a blurred color arrangement.
I tried to express this 2D matrix more abstract, so I extracted only 6X6 pixels from the center of the album covers instead of displaying the whole images. But you can see the original album cover and get the info by moving the mouse pointer over each pixel and clicking it.
An example of 600 Rock albums with mouse over
All original covers will be upsizing with an animation effect.
An example of 600 Rock albums without an image distortion.
An example of 600 Jazz albums with mouse over.
As a default, all pixels are blinking with random colors. This means just pretend it is waiting data. I mimicked TV screen with no signal. By using the menu on the right part of the screen, you can get 600 albums which were released in 2015, ordered by popularity.
Menu : Rock, Jazz, Electronic, Refresh
Menu on the right side of screen functions to search data according to music style, and button X allows you to go back to the first screen and refresh the data.
An example of 600 Rock albums with a blurred color arrangement.
I tried to express this 2D matrix more abstract, so I extracted only 6X6 pixels from the center of the album covers instead of displaying the whole images. But you can see the original album cover and get the info by moving the mouse pointer over each pixel and clicking it.
An example of 600 Rock albums with mouse over
All original covers will be upsizing with an animation effect.
An example of 600 Rock albums without an image distortion.
An example of 600 Jazz albums with mouse over.
Code