History of a Chart 3. “Where Did All the Rockstars Go?”
See also:
- History of a Chart 1. “Good Times, Bad Times”
- History of a Chart 2. “Rock V The World”
- History of a Chart 4. “This is the New Flesh”
- History of a Chart 5. “Guess What?”
(click to see full interactive chart)
Inspiration: McCandless Vintage Years Red/White Wine
When your dad/uncle/big brother bemoans the state of rock today, saying it’s not what it used to be, have you ever thought they MAY have a point?
Chart data shows that most of the top performing rock bands of the past 40 years were active in the 70s’s, with 2 having major success in the 80s (Queen and Meatloaf) and just one in the 90s (Oasis).
This chart shows that artists were not relying on ONE album to give them chart success, but several – all of which were dominating the charts for months at a time. Simon and Garfunkel had FIVE albums in the charts in 1970. You’d be hard pushed to find a band matching that nowadays.
If musical success is built on a steady career and a large body of work, you have to wonder who will be the Pink Floyd, Dire Straits and Beatles of the future.
Idea
I wanted to look at the distribution of the top rock bands over time and clearly show when they were active and how successful they were.
Method
- Tableau: Starting in Tableau, I placed genre on the Y axis and Year on the X axis, with the entries turned to circles, coloured by scale of Weeks in Chart, we were able to make a clearly shaded chart which immediately shows the highs points. It took a while to get the colour scheme and other settings right – (as you can see below).
- Export to Illustrator: Using the Print to PDF option I exported the chart to Illustrator, there I recoloured the circles (the original setting had the middle values as grey and low as black (obviously a fiancial setting) but this was unsuitable for this chart so I switched the black and grey over. I also resized the chart and split the circles into separare items so they could be manipulated and removed in Flash.
- Animate: To create the animation, I imported the chart into Flash and inserted keyframes at regular intervals and removed a few of the points each keyframe until the chart was blank. I then reversed the order of the frames to they seemed to appear, not disappear, during the movie clip. I then turned the red points into rollover buttons to show more information. (In retrospect, I wonder if these are entirely necessary, and in fact detract from the finished form)
Evolution
Inspiration: n/a
Idea: To show when the most successful bands of the past 40 years were active using a bar chart.
Method: I created a bar chart showing the numbers of weeks spent in the charts per year, by the top 10 rock artists of the past 40 years. Marking these by colour, I hoped it would clearly show the peaks over time, and when the majority of artists were successful. I knew that the colours would overlap, but I hoped that using a cyclical colour scheme would allow the user to get a general idea of timescale.
Why Ditched: Whilst the chart gave a good general overview of the shape of success over time (the majority of the artists having success in the 70s) it was hard to see the individual artists amounts. The cyclical colour scheme was not enough to give an idea of timescale.
Inspiration: catalogtree 4.0
Idea: I still wanted to show prominence over time, but switched from artist to album – focussing on the top 20 rock albums over the 40 year period.
I hoped this would be a more engaging chart for the user, who would look for their favourite album and connect with the chart. By placing them on the Xaxis, in release order, I hoped it would be easier to navigate.
Method: By listing the albums on the Y axis and time on the X, I wanted to use differently sized circles to signify chart prominence. As the albums were sorted into release date we get a clear pattern of impact, and i some cases, the “tail”, (i.e. how long the album remained in the charts after release date).
Why Ditched: I felt the “album” idea, although engaging and in a way more emotional for the reader than “artist”, there was no overall message. Yes, it showed the top albums, but would not show artist presence, for example, if an artist appeared twice, etc. This would work as a supplementary chart to one dealing with artist, but not alone. I was also concerned that relying on size of circle, not colour, did not immediately show when the albums were prominent.
Inspiration: N/A
Method: Returning to the idea of artist, I decided to look at all artists, not just rock bands. Finding the top 10 artists and placing them in “overall success” order as opposed to release date, we immediately lose the pleasing pattern, but we can see when the larger bands were successful.I decided to introduce colour to the circles to represent value alongside circle size. We can immediately see where the larger values are found, and which artists they belonged to.
Why Ditched: There was no distinction between POP and ROCK artists, which was the point of the project. With colour representing Value, it would have been difficult to use this distinguish between the different genres. Also, sorting them into overall value was of little interest to the chart, and made it appear cluttered. I also doubted the need for size to represent value, when colour was the more effective indicator.
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