Beats 1 radio has been arguably the best feature to come out of Apple’s foray into the streaming music world. With its fabulous lineup of rotating DJs and artist radio shows, Beats 1 has become a great place to discover new music, but many users have complained the station focuses too much on hip-hop and plays the same songs too often.
To identify Beats 1’s true taste in music, a new study analyzed data on more than 12,000 songs played on the station from early July to early August. After crunching the numbers, they found Beats 1 has something other radio stations lack: scarcity.
More than 3,300 tracks have been played on Beats 1, with the average song getting repeated 3.7 times, but some artists are getting a lot more love than others.
Here are the top 20 artists on Beats 1, according to the study by Quartz:
According to Quartz, the Weeknd has been the station’s favorite artist, thanks to his hit song Can’t Feel My Face, which has been played 107 times since the station launched. Halsey’s New Americana was the second most played with 77 spins, while Selena Gomez came in a close third, with 75 spins on her song Good For You.
As far as genres go, Beats 1 definitely prefers hip-hop, with 1,726 plays. Alternative was the second most popular genre with 1,506 plays, while electronic got 802.
Apple has insisted that Beats 1 is a global music station but the data crunchers found that nearly every song is in English and produced by artists from the United States, United Kingdom or Canada.
Apple Music has already gotten off to a strong start, with more than 11 million people signing up for the free service since launch.
Source: Quartz
