Today, I'm launching Scatter.FM, a new visualisation that shows Last.fm users how their listening habits change over time.
If you've been a Last.fm user for any length of time, you can use Scatter.FM to visualise your entire listening history.
Oh yeah... I remember that time when we were listening to that!
I associate memories with the music I was listening to at the time. It's possible to go the other way: unlocking 'forgotten' memories of good times with friends by seeing what music you were listening to.
I remember the first time I heard that song...
This is my favourite thing about Scatter.FM, remembering good times from the past. Using Scatter.FM, I can see parties where my iPod DJ'd, study sessions leading up to exams, late night hacking sessions, roadtrips, holidays (sparse areas on the graph), and times overseas (the graph is time-shifted).
I remember when I had that album on repeat for three days straight...
Big life changes often precipitate changes in listening habits - you can see these changes in the graph, reflecting your story.
What does it do?
Scatter.FM extracts the list of songs you've listened to from Last.fm's servers, and plots every song on a scatterplot, so you can see how your listening habits evolve over time.
Scatter.FM plots every song in a Last.fm user's account as a dot in a graph, plotted by days (x-axis) and time of day (y-axis).
You can hover over any point to see information about the song, the exact time you listened to it, and album art. The graph will show you other times you played the same song by flashing the other dots of the same song.
Your top artists are assigned distict colors so they stand out, and you can filter the displayed data by artist, album, and track using the 'Filter Songs' box at the top.
If you have an extra-long listening history, you can zoom and pan in on specific days by double-clicking.
Conclusion
I hope you enjoy! This has been a fun project, and helped bring back memories of a lot of good times. Hopefully it can do the same for other people.
