Tumblr: Have You Heard This Band

Author

Jesse Brandt

Published

September 15, 2024

Data

Data for this post comes from Tumblr blog Have You Heard This Band (@charlott2n n.d.). I combined the blog’s survey results with artist data from Spotify’s Web Api.

@charlott2n. n.d. “Have You Heard?” Tumblr. Have You Heard This Band. Accessed August 23, 2024. https://haveyouheardthisband.tumblr.com/.

Tumblr Popularity vs. Spotify Popularity

I compared artists’ popularity on Tumblr with their popularity on Spotify. I used Spotify’s 0-100 popularity score to measure Spotify popularity and total number of Yes Votes to measure Tumblr popularity. Since Tumblr polls are not random samples, total number of Yes Votes is a more meaningful measure of popularity than Yes Vote Shares - each vote represents an active Tumblr user who saw the poll and voted that they had heard the artist.

Plots

Figure 1: A scatterplot comparing Spotify Popularity Scores with Tumblr Yes Votes.

Figure 2: A scatterplot comparing Spotify Popularity Scores with Tumblr Yes Votes, as well as a trend line using local polynomial regression fitting.

Standout Artists

Which artists stand out? The following table contains the top 20 artists whose Tumblr popularity is higher than predicted by their Spotify popularity.

Artist Yes Votes Spotify Popularity Score loessResidual
Rick Astley 7319 64 6202.387
Huey Lewis and The News 6508 64 5391.387
Janelle Monae 5840 66 4604.941
Smash Mouth 5435 68 4077.518
Gerard Way 4418 50 3954.220
Ludwig van Beethoven 5395 71 3846.272
My Chemical Romance 5803 78 3771.266
Louis Armstrong 5142 70 3658.047
Hatsune Miku 4948 67 3652.231
MARINA / Marina and the Diamonds 4998 73 3316.596
Owl City 4637 68 3279.518
Evanescence 4953 73 3271.596
Lemon Demon 4093 61 3146.526
Bill Wurtz 3302 37 3093.654
Alvin and The Chipmunks 3432 50 2968.220
Neil Cicierega 2982 11 2926.929
Chris Fleming 2946 12 2889.191
Carly Rae Jepsen 4478 72 2863.458
Glass Animals 4849 78 2817.266
Green Day 5014 81 2758.931

The following table contains the bottom 20 artists whose Tumblr popularity is lower than predicted by their Spotify popularity.

Artist Yes Votes Spotify Popularity Score loessResidual
Rauw Alejandro 99 89 -2801.879
Chappell Roan 412 89 -2488.879
Brent Faiyaz 207 83 -2202.580
Jul 89 81 -2166.069
Gracie Abrams 364 83 -2045.580
Sebastian Yatra 117 79 -1988.066
Tainy 65 78 -1966.734
💲uicideboy💲 692 86 -1957.958
Ty Dolla 💲ign 781 86 -1868.958
Sevdaliza 231 78 -1800.734
Playboi Carti 885 86 -1764.958
Hotel Ugly 56 75 -1762.305
Vicente Fernandez 222 77 -1737.502
SEVENTEEN 445 80 -1734.508
Wave to Earth 37 74 -1712.322
NewJeans 631 82 -1700.757
RAYE 267 77 -1692.502
LiSA 565 81 -1690.069
Chris Stapleton 657 82 -1674.757
TOMORROW X TOGETHER 382 78 -1649.734

Some of these artists may be on this list because they became popular after their Tumblr polls closed (e.g. Chappell Roan).

Tumblr’s favorite genres

Artists in these genres received the most Yes Votes. I used the genres that Spotify listed first for each artist.

Genre Yes Votes
alternative metal 185400
album rock 149297
alternative rock 147329
dance pop 93506
art pop 64912
new romantic 41194
alternative dance 34220
adult standards 32613
pov: indie 32506
alt z 31632

Figure 3: A boxplot of the Yes Vote distributions of the top 10 genres.

Jesse Brandt: Data