Last.fm Heatmap Calendars

Slideshow

Make sure to view it in fullscreen mode. You can also browse the full Flickr set.

How to Read It

The "Heatmap Calendar" layout is a structured heatmap that is designed to reveal periodicities: years, months, day of week, hour of day.

The layout is comprised of two nested grids. Each year of data is arranged in a row and horizontally grouped into 12 blocks, one for each month. This is the outer grid. Months are organised by an inner grid, where data is arranged in seven columns for the days of week and 24 rows for the hours of day. Weekdays are aggregated so that e.g. all Mondays of a particular month end up in the same column.

Colour is a measure of relative intensity: grey → green → yellow → red. A subtle light grey strip highlights the most active hours of the day across the entire period.

Note that all times are in UTC – unfortunately Last.fm don't store a timezone for each scrobble.

Going back to the excerpt shown at the beginning:

We can clearly see twelve bright blocks of time, one for each month.
This person rarely listens to music before 10:00 UTC, or after 23:00 UTC.
There are two highlighted light grey strips, corresponding to the hours of day with the most activity: one during the day, and one in the late evening. (This is most visible in the early months to the left.)
In most months there is a clearly visible lunch break. In the summer months this is around 12:00 UTC, in the winter around 13:00 UTC. This change is most likely an artefact of daylight saving time.
The well-structured routine appears to break up in December, which may indicate a travel period.

Annotated Gallery

It is often most interesting to read either your own graph or that of someone you know well.

If you don't know the person portrayed you will find it hard to recognise the stories captured by this visualisation. While you may see changes in behaviour they will be meaningless without the necessary context.

To make up for this I asked a few people to share what they can read from their own graphs. (David Whittle tells me this is a variant of a Diary Study.)

Start browsing

Daniel1986

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Daniel1986 has been scrobbling since early 2007. He writes:

2007:
Jan-Mar: Dissertation time at University. Nearly all my time spent at a desk working. Scrobbler keeping track of all my excessive Blur iTunes plays without me realising. By end of March I realised Last.fm was more than just online radio- maybe they're hiring?
Apr-Jun: All uni work finished. Spend all my time outdoors, not much music listened to at all.
July-Sept: Apply for job at Last.fm. They ask what my username is. Shit! Start scrobbling more!
Oct-Dec: After a few weeks at working at Last.fm, I finally buy a pair of headphones like everyone else. Daytime scrobbling increases.

2008:
April: First month where I start working late more regularly. Moved house too.

2008-2011: Summer months tend to mean longer listening through the day.

E1i45

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E1i45 has been scrobbling since late 2006. He writes:

Of course it's much more interesting to observe your own behavioural patterns than those of others :-)

What you can see in my graph: I stopped working at Last.fm around October 2009. In Vienna we mostly listened to Ö1 [NB: a terrestrial radio station, which means music listening didn't get scrobbled.]

It is probably more interesting to note that I can only rarely work while listening to music. Most of my music listening takes place on weekends or in the evening.

You can also see that I'm frequently still awake until after midnight :-)

muz

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muz has been scrobbling since 2005. He was so kind to provide an annotated version of his graph.

The full version is here: muz-annotated.jpg.

nova77LF

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nova77LF has been scrobbling since early 2006. He writes:

I joined Last.fm in April 2006 and that's when my scrobbles become more consistent (I had another account in 2005 but forgot the password :p). A couple of months before that show how much of a night owl I was.

Sometimes I forget about the radio and let it run for the whole night, that's why you see 24h stripes every now and then.

In October 2010 I left Last.fm and spent a month in Seattle (and every now and then for 2 weeks), which is clearly visible as a shifted pattern.

Seattle is in the PDT/UTC-8 timezone, whereas the Last.fm office is in BST/UTC. His visits to Seattle, starting in late 2010, are marked by a 7 or 8 hour shift of his music listening (this varies according to local daylight saving time rules.)

Randomskk

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Randomskk started scrobbling in 2006. This is an excerpt from an IRC conversation where we discussed his observations.

<martind> so what do you see in that graph?
<martind> definitely interesting how strict you were in the beginning and got more flexible in the end
<Randomskk> so that's me being at school
<Randomskk> then being at university
<martind> "5pm. time to turn on the music" (in 2006)
<Randomskk> at school I'd get home about 5 and turn on my computer
<Randomskk> at uni, I get back from lectures more like lunch time
<martind> yeah :)
<Randomskk> then there's holidays where it goes on all day
<Randomskk> and indeed even in 06/07 the holidays are a lot more all day
<Randomskk> except sleep :P
<martind> :)
<Randomskk> so july/august/december are all quite loose
<Randomskk> weekends as well, on the school daa
<Randomskk> then there's like, august 2009 where I was abroad for the month
<Randomskk> and september where I started using my ipod for a bit and didn't scrobble
<Randomskk> not sure what may 2010 is... hmm
<Randomskk> looks like my going-to-bed times have got better since 06 too :P
<Randomskk> haha this is basically a map of "how much do I use my desktop computer in the last 5 years"
<martind> :)
<Randomskk> are the days monday..sunday or sunday..saturday?
<martind> mo-sun
<Randomskk> oooh. nov/dec 2010 was when I was at work doing stupid hours

roserpens

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roserpens has been scrobbling since 2005. He writes:

In June 2008 I started at Last.fm which is when my graph exploded into solid light. The shift from random hours to a regular work day is pretty striking.

You can see it ramp up for 3 months beforehand which is when I was applying for the internship and getting into lfm again.

The years before that I was a student so the times I used it were very variable and almost random.

You can very clearly see my month long holidays back to Australia in:

Feb 2009

Sep/Oct 2009

Mar 2011

I was on holiday from my habitual computer use.

After the Sep/Oct 2009 trip, you can see where I joined the data team instead of being in MIR. I was actually informed of that during the trip. That was a big turn around for me, I wasn't enjoying MIR at all. I stopped working so late.

There's a lot less all night long strips. Interestingly that's when I felt I started to actually learn the most and get good at things.

You can also clearly see the trip I made to the Hadoop Summit and then Seattle in June/July 2010.

Since I left Last.fm in Feb 2011, I've definitely been scrobbling less. I don't listen to music nearly as much (I almost always scrobble so this is very accurate).

I'm still in the habit of mostly doing it during work hours, but I've also been much less stable because of constant flat, job and city changes.

skr

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skr has been scrobbling since 2005. He writes:

Summer 2005: was working outdoors as seen on the reduced scrobbling activity.

End of 2009, beginning of 2010: my post Last.fm travels, hardly any music scrobbled.

October 2009: Moved to SF, times I listen to music shifted due to time zone change.

San Francisco is in the PDT/UTC-8 timezone, whereas the Last.fm office is in BST/UTC. His move to to San Francisco in October 2010 is marked by a 7 or 8 hour shift of his music listening (this varies according to local daylight saving time rules.)

underpangs

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underpangs has been scrobbling since 2005. He writes on his blog:

Despite the depth of information it’s stunningly readable and rather interesting. You can pick out real patterns quite easily.

From my graph I was able to spot these behaviours:

Mid-2005 to 2006 - Finished Uni, got a job and spent the first 6+ months commuting with iPod after moving to London was still missing a laptop for a long time.

Late 2007 - An increase in evening listening, a sign of joining the Last.fm team and getting stuck in to startup culture of late nights.

Early 2008 - Evening listening, but with more separation from daytime listening. I suspect this was nights spent playing albums with my flatmate Ben Ward.

2009 - Less evening music, which I think stems from different flat mates, a different flat and starting an (unscrobbled) vinyl collection.
February 2010 - A quiet month for scrobbling, most of which on holiday in New York, little time for digital music.

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