This week, I surveyed 113 Penn students all over campus, asking each one the same question: what song can you currently not stop listening to?
Responses were gathered using a combination of Google Forms and interview. Interviews were conducted in Huntsman Hall, David Rittenhouse Laboratory, Hill Dining Hall, and Locust Walk.
There was a lot of diversity in the songs that people listen to. Out of the 113 responses, 67 were unique. However, 10 were the Walmart yodeling boy EDM remix.
Here's the list of songs repeated more than twice:
With regards genre, Penn students' tastes were not very varied, with Rap/hip–hop dominating the pool with 50 responses.
I then pulled data from Spotify's API Audio Features site. I looked at five categories: duration, tempo, danceability, energy, and speechiness.
Duration (in seconds):
Mean: 219.08; Max: 928; Min: 63
Tempo (in BPM):
Mean: 122.53; Max: 214; Min: 75
Danceability (defined by Spotify as how suitable a track is for dancing, with 0.0 being the least danceable and 1.0 being the most):
Mean: 0.6990; Max: 0.9470 Min: 0.2810
Energy (defined by Spotify as how intense a track is, with 0.0 being the least intense and 1.0 being the most):
Mean: 0.6454; Max: 0.9750; Min: 0.2700
Speechiness (defined by Spotify as how much spoken word is in a song, with 0.0 being the lowest presence of speech and 1.0 being the highest)
Mean: 0.1375; Max: 0.4130; Min: 0.0250
Possible inaccuracies within the representation of what Penn students actually listen to:
- Not enough people were surveyed.
- When I would interview groups, sometimes people would ditto the song their friend just mentioned.
- People trying to be funny on the form (e.i. the Walmart remix and What Does the Fox Say)
- The one student celebrating his birthday who frankly said Happy Birthday (he wasn't wrong: that's all he was hearing).
You can listen to the playlist of all the songs below. It is ordered by descending popularity. If songs had the same number of mentions, they are ordered alphabetically within their ranking.
