Half the catalog was played once
52.4%
of the 1,439,859 songs in the catalog appear in exactly one mix.
How play counts fall off
A song’s play count is the number of different mixes that list it. Across 1,439,859 songs there are 4,677,397 appearances in mixes, and they are spread very unevenly.
| 1 mix | 754,114 | 52.4% | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 mixes | 248,376 | 17.3% | |
| 3 to 4 mixes | 200,194 | 13.9% | |
| 5 to 9 mixes | 146,195 | 10.2% | |
| 10 to 24 mixes | 72,490 | 5.0% | |
| 25 to 99 mixes | 17,956 | 1.2% | |
| 100 or more | 534 | <0.1% |
- 69.6% of songs appear in at most two mixes.
- 90,980 songs (6.3%) appear in ten or more mixes, and between them they account for 38.7% of all appearances.
- Only 534 songs appear in 100 or more mixes. The most played appears in 462.
- The top 1% of songs (14,398) account for 14.2% of appearances.
What it means for digging
Most of the catalog is the long tail: records that one set played once. The heavily played records are few, and they connect to everything, which is why the map is grown outward along links rather than from the top of a chart (see how the map is built). If you want to find something other people have not, the tail is where most of it is.
How to read this
Counts reflect which mixes have a published tracklist, so they say how often a song was listed, not how often it was played in the world. A song counts once per mix. The figures cover the whole catalog, not only the 50,000 songs on the map.
More: what the sets are made of.