Listening to music and working with data tend to go hand in hand, so we thought it might be fun to bring the two together and see if we could build a dynamic segmentation of musical taste.

ARTRAQ uses weekly feeds from Last FM to track the listening habits of Last FM groups and allocate artists into one of five segments based on their popularity over the last couple of weeks. The five segments are:

1. SUPREMES
Artists who were in the top half of the chart last week and have retained their position this week.

2. DRIFTERS
Artists that were in the top half of the chart last week but have slipped in popularity this week.

3. SEEKERS
Artists that have moved up from the bottom half of last weeks chart to the top half of this weeks chart.

4. ROLLING STONES
Artists that have remained in the bottom half of the chart for the last two weeks.

5. NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK
Artists that weren't in last weeks chart but make an appearance this week.

To start off we've picked 5 groups representing various Australian locations and also added our own group so you can see what's in vogue in the Torque offices at the moment... apparently we have pretty diverse tastes!

Resting your mouse over the bubbles will show the name of the artist and if you want to know more try clicking on a bubble to see an image of the artist and a short biography (All courtesy of Last FM). Resting your mouse over the segment names will also highlight the artists in that segment and provide a brief description.

You should be able to see interesting shifts in popularity around national tours and album releases. And whilst many of the artists in the Supremes segments are similar across states, you can also see some diversity in the other segments, and at times regional bias.

If you're a member of a Last FM group and you would like to see it represented in ARTRAQ then let us know and we'll add it to the list of groups. The charts are automatically updated on Monday/Tuesday each week.

DP