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Where It All Started - Printable Version

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Where It All Started - admin - 11-06-2022

It was December 26, 2008 and Christmas was over. It was a wonderful holiday with my wife, young kids, and family. I had been thoroughly enjoying my iTouch (which I bought earlier that year) and it slowly dawned on me that I could use iTunes for Windows to organize my growing music CD collection.

iTunes was an excellent piece of software then. It not only imported music CDs with high quality bitrates but also allowed you to organize your CDs in the manager. I could then transfer music between iTunes and my iTouch and listen to music with my earphones. Portable music was not new to me but combining music listening with the iTouch's other features was amazing.

Then I discovered how listening to music with my iTouch and then refreshing my music with more songs updated my iTunes database with statistics like number of plays and the date the song was last played. Wow! I am a sport stats nut so seeing iTunes doing something along those lines was very exciting.

So I decided to create a music listening process where I would:

1) import my growing CD collection into iTunes
2) add the new imported songs to a unplayed playlist
3) transfer that playlist to my iTouch
4) listen to that playlist on my iTouch at least twice
5) rate each individual song that I listened to
6) refresh my playlist by connected back to iTunes
7) rinse and repeat the steps above

I became a iTunes/iTouch music listening fanatic. I was systematically listening to music in my collection, starting to sort out my favorite songs from various albums, and slowly began to understand what I loved about music.

Next, I'll post my first year of iTunes listening statistics from 2008 to 2009. I am not sure how interesting this will be, but I'm wanting to experiment to see if this has some utility.


RE: Where It All Started - admin - 11-06-2022

A year later on December 26, 2009 I managed to find software that would run statistical analysis on my iTunes database.

The software was called "The Super Analyzer by Nosleep Software" and what it did was create some very cool charts that summarized your listening habits including how many plays, your favorite artists/albums, and much more.

I saved that report and am now including it as part of my iTunes stats history which I have attached to this post. 
[attachment=1]

The Super Analyzer is very cool but then it stopped working a few years later and I had to find other software to do the job. I always thought it would be cool to create a website that could do the same thing as The Super Analyzer and this is what inspired me to create YerTunes.com.

I also used another program that is now lost and forgotten to run a statistical summary. Unlike Super Analyzer, the output was a text file with tables and some calculations.
[attachment=2]

I'll be posting my next few years of iTunes statistics thanks to The Super Analyzer.


RE: Where It All Started - admin - 04-09-2023

A year later on December 26, 2010 I used the two software scripts to run statistical analysis on my iTunes database. This would be the second year of running the stats.

Here is the Super Analysis report:
[attachment=3]

Then here is the text summary:
[attachment=4]


RE: Where It All Started - admin - 04-09-2023

A year later on December 26, 2011 I used the two software scripts to run statistical analysis on my iTunes database. This would be the third year of running the stats.

Here is the Super Analysis report:
[attachment=5]

Then here is the text summary:
[attachment=6]


RE: Where It All Started - admin - 04-09-2023

A year later on December 26, 2012 I used the two software scripts to run statistical analysis on my iTunes database. This would be the fourth year of running the stats.

Here is the Super Analysis report:
[attachment=7]

Then here is the text summary:
[attachment=8]

It was during this year that I got the raw idea of Yertunes, thinking it should not be that hard to do some basic analysis of the database. I registered the domain name with the plan to create a website to share your iTunes play stats.


RE: Where It All Started - admin - 04-09-2023

A year later on December 26, 2013 I used the two software scripts to run statistical analysis on my iTunes database. This would be the fifth year of running the stats.

Here is the Super Analysis report:
[attachment=9]

Then here is the text summary:
[attachment=10]

This would be the final year that this name-forgotten analyzer would work with iTunes. I deleted the script and forgot about it. It's a shame as it was elegant and created a nice summary.


RE: Where It All Started - admin - 04-09-2023

A year later on December 26, 2014 I used the remaining software script to run statistical analysis on my iTunes database. This would be the sixth year of running the stats.

Here is the Super Analysis report:
[attachment=11]

After this year, Super Analyzer stopped working with iTunes. I could not find any scripts that would analyze the iTunes database and show your most played songs, etc.

What I had to do is think about what to do next. I then started to make zipped archives of my iTunes Music Library.xml every year until I could either find a script or find the time to make my own.


RE: Where It All Started - admin - 04-09-2023

Between 2014 and 2022 I archived my iTunes Music Library.xml each December 27. Then in 2021 I launched the Open Beta version of Yertunes.com. You can see the details of that here.

I will show the 2015 stats of the top songs using Yertunes. With top Artists by total number of plays. 

Yertunes.com is very raw. It does rudimentary analysis and tables but does not do any graphical pie charts, etc.