Inspiration
We noticed significant differences between the music that we grew up with and the music that seems to trend today -- we aimed to determine whether the changes that we perceived were purely anecdotal or whether they had an empirical basis.
What it does
Our python extracts spotify's data about various tracks that we provide -- these characteristics include valence (a measure of how happy the dong is), danceability, speechiness (a measure of how close to spoken word the song is), and duration. We then processed the data that we extracted through R.
How we built it
We started by determining client information using the spotify API -- from here, we were able to use python to write scripts that would return our desired characteristics when provided with a song name and its ID. We compiled billboard's data from the past 20 years, and then ran that data -- we then built code in R to visualize the data in the resulting CSV.
Challenges we ran into
Our primary issue was with Spotify's Rate Limit -- the system becomes overloaded when more that 100 track IDs are provided at once. Since we were pulling so much data from the API, this ended up being a regular issue that broke our code. However, we worked through it by splitting our data into smaller CSV files.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
This was our team's first major coding project, and our first time working with an API, so we're very happy we were able to come up with a solid result. Obtaining Spotify authorization in the first place proved to be challenging, as well as the issues that we ran into while pulling data, so we are very proud of ourselves for getting this far.
What we learned
While in the past, we have worked on smaller-scale projects, we have never completed a project from end to end. We learned how to complete an entire project, from its conception and storyboarding to finalizing the results.
What's next for Identifying Trends in Music Using Spotify API
We hope to continue to use the skills we gained today in our future classes and career aspirations -- as for this specific code, we may continue to modify it on the side to see if we can glean any more insight from it as a side project.
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