2019 – The Numbers

Once again I’m posting this end of year wrap up/top list/sign of being perhaps too into spreadsheets. Whichever you think is more correct. Or -more importantly- the one that gets you to give it a read. It is after all completely for nothing if not read.

To summarize – this is a project now in it’s 4th year. I saw other people posting their end of year top 10’s and thought to myself “what is this crap, like they remember what they liked throughout the full year”.  Usually once something is stuck in my craw I need to do something about it. Since I can’t scoff at every list made due to scale (there are a lot of DJs these days) I figured I’d ‘simply’ do better.

I began by curating tracklists from all the mixes I posted publicly that first year and merged them all into one great list which I then massaged into something more accurate than hopefully every other list shared that year. That wasn’t enough though. Each year since I’ve created a spreadsheet where I write down everything played that year. One year was abut 95% accurate (a few live shows got missed) and the other two years were 100% accurate. As in I am pretty darn certain I captured every song mixed. Live-streams, Gigs, Home sessions, whatever –  every one of them I fully tracklisted. It was a right pain sometimes, but I’ve been doing it for so many years now it’s just what I do. At home I simply write it as I play it. When playing outside of home I make sure the records I play go back in my bag in the order I play them so that writing it up the next day is made simpler. And it works! I’m always able to remember what song on a record it was I played. I guess it helps I don’t drink or otherwise imbibe. The worse I get is tired.

So that’s what this is, and where it came from. Now onto the numbers…

I’ve broken the information down into the following categories:

• By Year of Release,
• By Artist,
• By Record Label,
• By Tracks, and
• By Release

The numbers cover the period Jan 1, 2019 12:00AM through Dec 31, 2019 11:59PM and yes both years I had sets that cross that line and had to be split at the right marker – something I was conscious of and made note of it while playing. Refer to the slashies above 😉

The other piece of information to consider is the names and pieces of information shared below aren’t ALL of the artists, labels, etc played. It’s a top list after all, not just a list of everything. So the cut-off point I once again have selected is 5 plays. If something got 5 or more plays it made this list. The one exception is when I discuss overall stats (like how many lines there were in the tracklist – that is referring to all, and the years of release. That too refers to all).

Year of Release

I once again collected the year of release this year. Each track played was released in a given time period and like in previous years I saw trends develop. Further to the ‘bumps’ seen in previous years in the ’96 and ’06 which still exist I’m beginning to see how many years has to pass before the largest bump that represents current releases begins to taper off. It looks as if there may be another bump that exists in the ’16 period and immediately after that it looks like the new release bump lasts about 2 years and then the background average kicks in.

I wonder if the roughly 10 year spacing between what I find to be the most favourable Techno etc. releases holds up for others. I don’t imagine we’d have a way to figure that out for others with actual data since trusting confirmation bias isn’t my style and is the reason why I started collecting this information to begin with.

Average Year of Release: 2010
Min: 1987
Max: 2019
Spread: 32 Years!

2019 Most Played Artists

Once again I’ve merged artists who release or have released under various names. For example Neil Landstrumm is also Polaris, and a part of Sugar Experiment Station with Tobias Schmidt. So for Neil would have 1 added to his name for any old Polaris records I played, plus 1 for each S.E.S. record I played, but as S.E.S. is also Tobias Schmidt, then Toby gets a +1 in his column too. I have always felt this is the best way to handle aliases/groups.

The full artist count: 665

Of the 665 artists played 75 of them had the required 5 or more plays to make the following list.

Beside each Artist there will be both the 2019 play count and the 2018 play count if it exists so a change from year to year can be seen. This year saw lots of new faces! As a result some of my traditionally oft played folks had the numbers go down a bit, but I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. Variety is the spice of life.

2019 Most Played Record Labels

I played music from a total of 519 record labels in 2019. There were also a small handful of “Not on Label” releases both purchased and personally created. In addition to the current and previous year’s play count I’ve also included how many releases went into the total plays for that label. The top label “Don’t” for example had a total of 40 plays in 2019, those 40 plays came from a total of 12 of the label’s releases. There are many ways to think of this and I don’t think any of them are “correct” as not all labels have the same number of releases or even tend to release things I would buy every time. So where it may be tempting to say a label with a higher ratio of it’s back catalog played is better than a label with only 1 release played I don’t think that holds much water (I did last year, but upon reflection I’ve changed my mind). I don’t think those scenarios can be compared to each other properly so I’ve not.

2019 Most Played Tracks

The tracks listed here, just like the artists and labels above were all the ones that got 5 or more plays throughout 2019. These 27 songs I guess were the ones I was most likely to play at any given time through the year. It’s mostly harder Techno, but some Acid, House, and Breaks sneaked in as well. In particular I think the JoeFarr track on SLAM digital (Hanger 1) is most impressive. I had it pressed to a 1-sided picture disc (and sent Joe a copy too of course) and now 2 years in a row it’s been in my top 5 tracks played. For good reason too. Despite it being a pretty balls-to-the-wall sort of banger it also goes over really well with those not into that sort of thing.

2019 Most Played Releases

And finally we get to the releases I played the most this year. They’re not all new, they’re not all old. They are all fun on the dance-floor though. Those who have been to an event I played at know I don’t screw around. I aim to make people dance, but to also keep things interesting. I think the variety with the House, Techno, and Electro genres here show that. The House and Electro do get overshadowed in this end of year wrap-up as I primarily play Techno, but there was enough this year to make the list. That doesn’t usually happen.

To wrap it all up with a bow, here’s one final set of numbers:

# of Mixes/Sets: 85
Total Length of all Mixes/Sets: 113 hours
Average Mix/Set Length: 1 hour 20 minutes
Tracks in year Long Tracklist: 1615
Average # of Tracks per Mix/Set: 19
Artists Played: 772
Labels Played: 519
Average Release Year: 2010
In 2019 I played a mix/set on average every 4.26 days

So what do you think? Is this information useful? I enjoy it, that’s all I know for sure. See you next year for the 2020 breakdown. I hope this all points you in the direction of people making good music. I hope you then grab some of that good music for yourself to play and share. And as always, don’t be afraid to reach out.

Trevor Wilkes, bleep@isoprax.com