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“Stats Entertainment”

Attention music geeks!

I thought I was pretty anal about my music collection.  I have an 80 gig harddrive filled to the brim with all my music; all 600+ of my CDs are ripped as MP3s.  I have made sure every file has proper MP3 tags, custom genres, etc.  Every song in my 12,000+ song collection has a rating from 1 to 5 stars.  Like I said, pretty anal.

Then along comes The Internet iTunes Registry.  I can’t decide if I am benefitting from this website because of how obsessive compulsive I am about my music, or if this site in fact only serves to fuel my obsessions.

It’s simple.  You create an account, upload your iTunes library’s XML file, and presto—instant statistics on your listening habits.  iTunes itself offers simple stats like “playcount” or “last played”, but only on a per song basis.  The iTunes Registry takes it one step further and let’s you see stats based on artist, album, song title, genre, etc.  (Plus the ability to see the same stats in relation to the collective libraries of every registered user).

For example, the site tells me the following things:

At 12,785 tracks, I am the 20th highest collector on the site.

The artist I have the most songs of (and that has the most playcounts) is Elvis Costello, with 715 tracks, followed by R.E.M., Rheostatics, Elvis Presley, They Might Be Giants, and Pavement.

For some reason, the artist with the highest overall rating (probably because I only have 3 songs by them) is Air.

My top rated albums are “Introducing Happiness” by the Rheostatics, “Automatic for the People” by R.E.M., and “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” by Wilco.

My overall highest rated genre is Soul, followed by Alt Country, and then Britpop.

The song I have the most versions of: “Almost Blue” (12)

It’s pretty damned addictive.