Boiler Room by the numbers

3,662 sets, 3,800 hours and 28,587 songs: what the music, the places and the song choices of Boiler Room look like next to everyone else

The short version

We hold 3,662 Boiler Room sets, 3,800 hours of music, and read the songs in 3,522 of them. We compared them with the 387,633 sets in our collection, from 34,182 stations. What stood out:

It is a one-hour format. 61% of sets run between 55 and 65 minutes. A typical set has 10 identified songs.
It is global, but mostly European. Titles name 120 different places. 53% of the sets we could place are in Europe, 21% in North America and 4% in Africa.
It sounds like bass, breaks and bangers. Songs tagged Bass Music, Pop Rap, Dancehall, Grime, UK Garage and Trap turn up about three times as often as in the rest of the collection. Progressive House, Minimal, Ambient and Downtempo turn up less than half as often.
It is not about the newest records. The age of the music is almost the same as everywhere else: a median release year of 2018 in both.
It plays the hits, and opens with them. 43% of its plays are songs that ten or more stations play, against 34% elsewhere. In the first tenth of a set it is 42% against 30%.
Its songs travel. Only 16% of the songs it plays are heard at no other station, against 55% for the average song.
It may set trends, but we cannot prove it. It ranks third out of 34 big stations for playing songs early. We explain below why that is a clue and not an answer.

New to this? Four words you will see.

A set is one recorded DJ set or live show.
A play is one song appearing in one set’s tracklist. A song counts once per set.
A hit is a song that ten or more different stations have played. A one-off is a song that appears in just one set anywhere in the collection.
A station is a radio station, a show, a club or an individual DJ’s channel that publishes sets.

What we looked at

Boiler Room films DJs and live acts in rooms around the world and publishes the sets as video. We hold 3,662 of them, which is 0.94% of all the sets in our collection. 3,522 have songs identified, and that is 37,356 plays of 28,587 different songs.

Three honest limits before the numbers. First, we only see the songs that were identified, so a set’s list is shorter than the set. Second, the sets we hold are not necessarily every Boiler Room set ever published. Third, genres, styles and release years come from Discogs, matched automatically, and not every song has them. Where a number depends on one of these, we say so.

This note names no songs, artists or labels. Everything is counted and compared, not listed. Boiler Room is named because it is the subject; it is a trademark of its owner, and ZERONOISE is an independent project with no connection to it.

1. How long is a Boiler Room set?

Almost exactly an hour. The median set runs 60 minutes, and 61% of them fall between 55 and 65 minutes. Only 9% are shorter than 45 minutes and 6% are longer than 90, with the longest at 5.7 hours.

Figure 1. Six in ten sets are one hour long. The number of Boiler Room sets by length, in five-minute steps. The orange bars are sets between 55 and 65 minutes.

The numbers behind this figure

Measure	Boiler Room
Median set length, minutes	59.6
Shortest 10% of sets are under, minutes	46
Longest 10% of sets are over, minutes	78
Sets between 55 and 65 minutes	60.6%
Sets under 45 minutes	9.3%
Sets over 90 minutes	5.8%
Longest set, hours	5.7
Identified songs in a typical set	10
Identified songs in a long set (top 10%)	18
Big stations: typical share of sets 55 to 65 minutes	58.3%

A typical set has 10 identified songs, and one in ten has 18 or more.

What this means. The hour is the unit. But it is not unique to Boiler Room: across the 34 stations in our collection with 1,000 or more sets, a median 58% of sets are an hour long, and the range runs from 15% to 90%. The one-hour set is the default format of recorded DJ culture, and Boiler Room sits right on it.

2. Where in the world?

Set titles usually say where the set was filmed. About 54% of Boiler Room titles name a place we could recognise, 1,989 sets in all, and they name 120 different ones. 85 places have five sets or more.

Figure 2. Where sets are filmed. Left: the share of the sets we could place by continent. Right: the fifteen places with the most sets.

The numbers behind this figure

Place	Continent	Sets
London	Europe	230
Berlin	Europe	182
Amsterdam	Europe	95
New York	North America	87
Los Angeles	North America	79
Barcelona	Europe	66
Paris	Europe	56
Melbourne	Oceania	44
São Paulo	South America	42
Toronto	North America	39
Sydney	Oceania	35
Chicago	North America	30
Ghent	Europe	30
Mumbai	Asia	30
Seoul	Asia	29

Continent	Sets	Share of the sets placed
Europe	1,063	53.4%
North America	423	21.3%
Asia	223	11.2%
South America	125	6.3%
Oceania	84	4.2%
Africa	71	3.6%

1,989 of 3,662 titles (54.3%) name a place from a hand-checked list; 120 different places, 85 of them with five sets or more.

London and Berlin together account for 21% of the sets we could place. Europe is 53% of them; North America is 21%; Asia 11%; South America 6%; Oceania 4%; Africa 4%.

What this means. Boiler Room is spread across the world: 85 places have a real run of sets, from Mumbai to Melbourne to São Paulo. But the weight is still in a handful of European cities, and six continents are not six equal slices. (Only 54% of titles name a place. A title like “Boiler Room x a festival” carries no city, so those sets are missing here, and festival sets may be placed differently from club sets.)

3. What does it sound like?

To describe a sound without naming songs, we use a simple ratio. Suppose 1% of all songs in the collection are tagged Grime, and 3% of Boiler Room’s songs are. Then Boiler Room is three times as likely to play Grime as the collection as a whole. We call that a lift. A lift of 1× means no difference; 0.5× means half as likely.

Figure 3. The sound: bass, breaks and bangers, not deep or ambient. How much more (to the right, orange) or less (to the left, purple) likely a Boiler Room song is to carry each style than the average song in the collection.

The numbers behind this figure

Style or genre	Boiler Room songs with it	Share of Boiler Room songs	Share of all songs	Lift
Bass Music	946	3.3%	0.9%	3.57×
Pop Rap	421	1.5%	0.5%	3.20×
Dancehall	520	1.8%	0.6%	3.07×
Grime	520	1.8%	0.6%	2.91×
UK Garage	765	2.7%	0.9%	2.89×
Trap	730	2.6%	0.9%	2.88×
Hard Trance	416	1.5%	0.5%	2.68×
Breakbeat	1,110	3.9%	1.7%	2.22×
Hard Techno	608	2.1%	1.0%	2.16×
Jungle	501	1.8%	0.8%	2.16×
Experimental	1,427	5.0%	6.0%	0.84×
Funk	342	1.2%	1.6%	0.77×
Synth-pop	487	1.7%	2.2%	0.76×
Abstract	329	1.2%	1.7%	0.69×
Deep House	1,944	6.8%	10.1%	0.67×
Tech House	1,602	5.6%	10.7%	0.53×
Ambient	690	2.4%	5.7%	0.42×
Downtempo	487	1.7%	4.1%	0.42×
Minimal	392	1.4%	3.4%	0.40×
Progressive House	432	1.5%	5.9%	0.26×

By broad genre:

Style or genre	Boiler Room songs with it	Share of Boiler Room songs	Share of all songs	Lift
Hip Hop	3,404	11.9%	6.2%	1.91×
Latin	1,376	4.8%	2.5%	1.89×
Reggae	776	2.7%	1.9%	1.42×
Pop	1,920	6.7%	6.3%	1.06×
Electronic	21,659	75.8%	72.7%	1.04×
Funk / Soul	1,633	5.7%	6.0%	0.95×
Folk, World, & Country	922	3.2%	3.7%	0.87×
Rock	882	3.1%	8.0%	0.39×
Jazz	390	1.4%	4.1%	0.33×

Only styles with at least 300 Boiler Room songs and 5,000 songs in the whole collection are counted. A song can carry several styles.

The pattern is consistent. The styles that Boiler Room over-represents are bass-heavy, rhythm-first and built for a crowd: Bass Music (3.6×), Pop Rap (3.2×), Dancehall (3.1×), Grime (2.9×), UK Garage (2.9×) and Trap (2.9×). The ones it under-represents are the slow-build, spacious and quiet ones: Progressive House (0.3×), Minimal (0.4×), Downtempo (0.4×), Ambient (0.4×).

At the level of broad genres, Boiler Room is about as electronic as everyone else (76% of its songs carry Electronic, with a lift of 1.0×) but far more likely to play Hip Hop (1.9×) and Latin (1.9×), and much less likely to play Rock (0.4×) or Jazz (0.3×).

What this means. The popular picture of Boiler Room as “underground dance music” is half right. It is dance-music-shaped, but the energy is up: more of what makes a room move, less of what suits a long evening. That fits a format built for a camera and a crowd.

4. Old records or new?

A common guess is that a showcase platform leans on new releases. The data says no. 42% of Boiler Room’s plays are of songs first released in the 2020s, against 43% elsewhere. The median release year is 2018 for both. If anything, Boiler Room reaches back less: 14% of plays are of records from before 2000, against 20%.

Figure 4. How old is the music? About the same as everywhere else. The share of plays by the decade the song was first released, for Boiler Room and for the rest of the collection (songs with a known release year).

The numbers behind this figure

Decade of first release	Boiler Room	Rest of the collection
Before 1990	4.6%	9.9%
1990s	9.8%	9.6%
2000s	11.5%	9.2%
2010s	32.6%	28.3%
2020s	41.6%	43.0%
Median release year	2018	2018
Plays with a known release year	64.5%	66.5%

What this means. In the age of its music, Boiler Room looks like everyone else. Whatever makes it distinctive, it is not an obsession with the new. (This uses songs with a known release year: 64% of Boiler Room’s plays.)

5. Hits or deep cuts?

This is where Boiler Room is different. Taking “hit” to mean a song that ten or more stations have played, 43% of Boiler Room’s plays are hits, against 34% in the rest of the collection. Only 11% of its plays are one-offs, against 16%.

Is that just because it is a big station? No, and this is the useful comparison: the biggest stations tend to play fewer hits. Among the 34 stations with 1,000 or more sets, the typical share of hits is 30%, ranging from 15% to 52%. Boiler Room ranks 6 out of 34.

Figure 5. Hits or deep cuts?. Each dot is a station with 1,000 or more sets. Across: the share of its plays that are hits (songs played by ten or more stations). Up: the share that are one-offs. Dashed lines mark the typical big station.

The numbers behind this figure

Share of plays	Boiler Room	Rest of the collection	Typical big station	Range across big stations
Plays that are hits (10+ stations)	43.2%	33.9%	30.0%	14.6% to 51.7%
Plays that are one-offs	11.4%	16.2%	18.4%	8.3% to 28.4%


Boiler Room rank among the big stations, most hits first	6 of 34

Its songs also travel. Of the 28,587 songs Boiler Room plays, only 16% are heard at no other station. For the average song in the collection that figure is 55%. And 36% of Boiler Room’s songs are played by ten or more stations, against 5% of all songs.

Figure 6. Where else are Boiler Room songs played?. Songs split by the number of different stations that play them, for Boiler Room and for every song in the collection.

The numbers behind this figure

How many stations play the song	Boiler Room songs	Every song
At one station only	16.1%	55.3%
2 to 4 stations	25.7%	30.3%
5 to 9	22.0%	9.2%
10 or more	36.1%	5.0%

Inside Boiler Room
Songs that appear in two or more Boiler Room sets	22.1%
Songs in five or more Boiler Room sets	241
Songs in ten or more Boiler Room sets	13
Most Boiler Room sets any one song appears in	16
Share of plays held by its top 1% of songs	4.5%

Inside Boiler Room, repetition is rare. Only 22% of its songs appear in more than one of its sets, and the most repeated song appears in just 16 sets. Its top 1% of songs account for only 4.5% of its plays. No song is a Boiler Room signature.

What this means. Boiler Room plays the songs the scene already knows, but it plays a huge variety of them. A plausible reason is the format: a recorded set in front of a camera and a crowd rewards records people recognise. That is a guess, and we have not tested it.

6. Does a set tell a story?

For sets over 45 minutes, we split each set into ten equal parts and looked at what is played in each one.

Figure 7. Boiler Room opens strong; most sets ease in. The share of plays that are hits (left) and one-offs (right) across ten equal parts of a set, for sets over 45 minutes.

The numbers behind this figure

Position in the set	Boiler Room plays	Hits at Boiler Room	Hits elsewhere	One-offs at Boiler Room	One-offs elsewhere
0-10%	4,155	41.9%	30.3%	11.1%	17.6%
10-20%	3,642	44.2%	32.7%	10.4%	16.3%
20-30%	3,503	44.3%	33.6%	10.1%	16.0%
30-40%	3,568	45.3%	34.2%	10.3%	15.9%
40-50%	3,545	44.2%	34.5%	9.9%	15.8%
50-60%	3,486	48.4%	34.9%	9.8%	15.6%
60-70%	3,544	44.8%	35.2%	10.4%	15.6%
70-80%	3,583	44.5%	35.3%	10.7%	15.6%
80-90%	3,507	43.3%	35.0%	10.7%	15.7%
90-100%	2,545	43.1%	34.4%	11.7%	16.5%

Across the rest of the collection, sets ease in: only 30% of the plays in the first tenth are hits, rising to about 35% by the end. Boiler Room does not do that. It opens strong: 42% hits in the first tenth, peaking at 48% about halfway through, and never dropping below 42%. One-offs sit at about 10% all the way through, where the rest of the collection starts at 17.6% and settles to about 16%.

What this means. A set for the camera has no warm-up. The first song is already one the room knows.

7. Does Boiler Room set the trend?

This is the question everyone asks, and the one where it is easiest to fool yourself. So we will go slowly.

To test it we ask, for every song that three or more stations have played: where does Boiler Room fall among those stations, by when each first played it? Score the earliest station 0 and the latest station 1, and a station that is neither early nor late averages 0.5. Boiler Room averages 0.39, across 20,911 songs. Among the 34 big stations, only two are earlier. The typical station scores 0.57.

Figure 8. Boiler Room tends to appear in the collection before other stations do. For each station with 1,000 or more sets, how early it plays songs that three or more stations play (0 is first, 1 is last). The dashed line is a station that is neither early nor late.

The numbers behind this figure

Measure	Value
Boiler Room: how early it plays songs (0 first, 1 last)	0.390
Songs used (played by 3+ stations, including Boiler Room)	20,911
Rank among the big stations, earliest first	3 of 34
Typical big station	0.570
Earliest and latest big station	0.279 and 0.837
Boiler Room sets that entered the collection in 2022 or later	67.6%
All sets that entered the collection in 2022 or later	69.2%

That looks like trend-setting. Here is why it is not proof:

The date is not the broadcast date. The only date we have is when a set entered our collection. A station whose sets are processed promptly will look early even if it plays songs no sooner than anyone else.
It is not simply late arrival. Boiler Room’s sets entered the collection at about the same pace as everyone’s: 68% of them in 2022 or later, against 69% overall. So it is not an artefact of Boiler Room being newly added.
Early is not the same as influential. Playing a song first does not mean others followed. It may only mean Boiler Room books artists who are already ahead of the curve.

What this means. Boiler Room is consistent with being a place where songs show up early. To say it sets trends, we would need broadcast dates and a way to tell who followed whom. We do not have either yet.

What anyone can take from this

You do not need to care about Boiler Room to use these four ideas.

Always compare with a baseline. “43% of plays are hits” means little. “43%, when the rest of the collection is 34% and the typical big station is 30%” tells you something.
Check the size effect. The biggest stations play fewer hits, so a big station with many hits is a surprise, and a small one is not. Compare like with like.
A ranking needs a field. “third earliest” is meaningless without “out of 34”. A position is only as good as the group it is in.
Ask what the date really means. A date can be when something happened, when it was published, or when it entered your data. They are not the same, and the third is the only one we have here.

How this was made

Every number on this page comes from one script run on one snapshot of the collection, and each figure has its numbers underneath it. Boiler Room’s sets are those whose channel is Boiler Room; “big stations” are the 34 stations with 1,000 or more sets. A place is read only from the part of a set’s title after “Boiler Room”, using a hand-checked list of cities, so an artist’s name is never mistaken for a place. Styles and release years are from Discogs (data dumps released under CC0). The test of early or late uses the date a set entered the collection, ties count half, and only songs played by at least three stations are used. The longer, more mathematical version of how we think about hits and one-offs is in A canon without kings.

Analysis, writing and figures by Jad Benyahia. Boiler Room is a trademark of its owner. ZERONOISE is an independent project and is not affiliated with, or endorsed by, Boiler Room.