find / sort music by popularity?

Question

Level 1

9 points

find / sort music by popularity?

is it possible to find or sort music by popularity?

I want to look through a list of all the most popular songs in a specific genre.

The Apple power search doesn't seem that powerful to me, as it is completely missing the popularity category.

Can anyone help?

Posted on Feb 21, 2007 4:36 PM

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Answer 1

ed2345

Level 9

63,548 points

Feb 24, 2007 3:49 PM in response to davulia

davulia,

The meaning of the "Popularity" measure is not disclosed, but I'd guess it more applies to sales history in the ITMS as opposed to radio play. I don't think it will help much with what you are trying to do.

If you like some unidentified song on the radio, try to remember a bit of the lyrics, and then run them thru google. Often it takes you to lyrics web sites that identify the song. Then in the ITMS, play the 30 second clip to make sure it's the one, and then you can buy it.

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Answer 2

camoracer

Level 5

4,274 points

Feb 21, 2007 7:26 PM in response to davulia

Popularity is determined by you the user when you rate the songs. After you have rated the songs you can sort by rating.

No other way to determine popularity since everyone has different idea of popular.

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Answer 3

ed2345

Level 9

63,548 points

Feb 21, 2007 7:45 PM in response to davulia

I assume you are talking about the iTunes Music Store (and not your own library)? Each song that displays indicates its popularity as a horizontal bar in a column called "Popularity." If not already in order, click at the top of the column and all the displayed songs will be ordered in terms of popularity.

To do what you want, go into Power Search and leave each field blank except genre. Then do as above.

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Answer 4

davulia Author

Level 1

9 points

Feb 24, 2007 11:40 AM in response to ed2345

yea Ed, that's weird. Last time I did that the popularity column wasn't visible.

So now that I've tried that, I'm confused by the results. I selected power search, chose Rock genre, and left everything else empty. The search results show one song with very high popularity, a couple more with around 50% popularity, and the rest hardly register on the scale. And if I hit search again with the same criteria specified, different songs appear in the results. Although there are still only a few that have any amount of popularity.

Am I missing something here?

I don't have time to stay current on all the latest band and album names. I hear lots of new songs played on the radio all the time and I like some of them. I'd like to use the popularity search as a way to find some of that music.

Is there any way to get a non-filtered result for a search like this?

Thanks for your help!

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Answer 5

davulia Author

Level 1

9 points

Feb 24, 2007 6:28 PM in response to ed2345

I figured the popularity rating was probably based on sales. That is fine with me and is actually good.

I guess what I'm trying to do has less to do with specific songs on the radio and more to do with browsing the inventory. I know there are thousands of very popular (i.e. often purchased) songs out there that I don't know the names of. But if I could see a list and preview them I'm sure I would buy a whole bunch. I'm also sure that many of them will be the same songs I've heard on the radio.

So, can you think of any way to do it?

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Answer 6

ed2345

Level 9

63,548 points

Feb 24, 2007 8:54 PM in response to davulia

davulia,

Go to the home page of the iTunes music store. On the right you will see a list of the top 10 songs. It has a little arrow in a circle; click on that and it takes you to the top 100 best selling songs. There you can browse the list, and/or double-click on any song to hear the 30 minute preview.

You can also go to billboard.com and click on "Charts" to see listings of the most popular for the week in each category, such as Rock.

Happy hunting.
Ed

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