How Basic Are You?

Inspiration

We were inspired to work on this project by attending the data visualization and API integration workshop hosted by SLO Hacks members.

What it does

Our project takes a Spotify playlist URL as an input and essentially returns the proportion of how much of the playlist can be considered "basic." It determines this by checking if each song in the playlist was added while it was in the Billboard Top 100. This corrects for what we call the nostalgia effect, meaning that if you add a song that was in the Top 100 in the past, it can no longer be considered "basic."

How we built it

We built this project by utilizing Spotipy, which is a Python wrapper for the Spotify JS API. From there we scraped the necessary data + login and utilized flask to locally host the website along with the post processing in the background. We also utilized a Billboard Top 100 Charts Python API to pull the top 100 songs at a given date, which we use for determining whether or not a song was "basic." Lastly, we utilized Figma to design and build the website.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into many challenges along the way, stemming from creative blocks as well as from technical issues. We only had one developer familiar with most of the tools we were learning, so most of our technical issues arose from having to learn/re-learn languages and tools. Creatively, we also struggled the first couple of days with finding a project that we could realistically complete within the allotted time limit, given API limitations and client ID verification issues.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Throughout this whole weekend, we ran into a lot of issues. Whether these issues were creative or technical, we never gave up and attempted to find a way around everything.

What we learned

We learned how to effectively use APIs as well as flask, Python, Figma, and html in conjunction with each other to reach a final product. Additionally, we learned how to communicate effectively between designers and developers to combine our individual strengths and reach a common goal.