History of a Chart 4. “This Is The New Flesh”
See also:
- History of a Chart 1. “Good Times, Bad Times”
- History of a Chart 2. “Rock V The World”
- History of a Chart 3. “Where Did All the Rockstars Go?”
- History of a Chart 5. “Guess What?”
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Inspiration: The Virtual Water Project
We saw from “Where Did All the Rockstars Go?” that todays bands are being outperformed by their heroes from the 70s and 80s. Yet rock still has a significant presence in the charts, so where are these albums coming from.
I decided to have a look at the numbers of different artists in the charts over time.
Whether it’s the advent of the internet and sites like Myspace giving every small wannabe band a chance at success, or the
labels are switching the investment capabilities they have left from a few big artists to many smaller ones, but there are significantly more rock bands in the charts now than there was in the 70’s.
However, this could be explained by the fact that those 70’s bands still have a presence in the charts today. We need to find out how many unique bands there are in each decade – bands that are appearing in the charts for the first time.
Method
- Filter the Data: In order to focus JUST on new bands, and not have figures that incorporated long running bands I performed a filter on the data using Tableau. Grouping the years into decades and listing the artists that appeared, I was able to filter out the bands that had appeared in the decade before, leaving just unique artists.
- Group the data: I also opted to group the years into decades which went someway to dictate the chart style. I took this decision in order to create a simple, hard hitting chart (the impact of the data sometimes gets lots in a busy chart and was not necessary in this case). Had I decided to use full yearly data I would have been better using a line or narrow bar chart without animation or use of a symbol.
- Decide on Chart Design: After some variations I settled on a simplified bar chart (so self sufficient that it did not have axes), with stacked symbols, each representing a set number value and distinguished by colour (explained by a very simple key). I decided a simple stack clearly showed the respective values. I kept within the colour themes of the project by showing rock as black, pop as pink and other as grey.
- Search for Symbol: I instinctively went for the MAN logo first, as this is an option within Tableau and seemed to sum up the story. However, I also tried the chart with guitar symbol, simple squares, circles and stars. However, I settled on the MAN logo.
- Animate: I decided to animate the chart within Flash – with a gradual reveal of each column building – “pop” first, then “other” then finally “rock”. I felt this gradual “reveal” of the rock category actually increased the impact when it became apparent that rock produced more bands than the other groups. I created the completed chart, and in the same way as History of a Chart 3. “Where Did All the Rockstars Go?”, I imported the chart into Flash and – over a series of keyframes – removed one “man” at a time. I then reversed the frames to the columns appeared to build.
Evolution
Inspiration: n/a
Idea: To show the numbers of artists in the charts over time.
Method: I initially drew up a chart simply showing the numbers of bands in the charts, grouped into 1 of 3 categories, “rock”, “pop” and “other” categories. This was to free up the chart from the clutter of the smaller genres that did not significantly impact upon rock and pop.
Why Ditched: The chart clearly shows a gradual increase in the number of artists over time, explained by artists from earlier years still being active in later years.
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