What is the Hipster Rating?
You might have seen these little hipster man icons on each artist page. Each band is given a score to objectively show how popular (or not) it is. The higher the score, the less popular on Spotify and the more ‘hipster’ the artist is.
To see how scores are calculated, read below.
Not
Hipster
Kinda
Hipster
Medium
Hipster
Super
Hipster
Raging
Hipster
Top Five Pick Analysis
An ongoing count of averaged popularity ratings for each of our Top Five song picks
Finding #1
81% of Brad’s song picks lie in the three middle columns, His favorite songs are very often neither an artist’s most popular, nor the most obscure.
Finding #2
Tonya and John pick songs with a similar hipster average. 77% and 78% of their picks rank as Medium Hipster or less, respectively.
Finding #3
Brad has the most normal distribution, suggesting that the songs he picks have the most consistent popularity range.
Insight #1
This graph is obviously not about any specific artist. Instead, it’s focused on the varying popularity within an artist’s song list. Brad’s high tally on Medium Hipster and highly normal distribution suggests that he consistently likes an artist’s songs that aren’t top ten, but aren’t obscure either.
Conclusion:
Brad doesn’t consider the massively popular radio hits and singles to be an artist’s best, but perhaps those other songs that still rank respectfully well in popularity within the discography.
Insight #2
Despite not sharing similar artist popularity ratings (see next graph), Tonya and John consistently pick songs with similar popularity ratings within an artist’s discography.
Conclusion:
Tonya and John are often likely to enjoy the same songs within a discography, or perhaps any playlist.
Artist Pick Analysis
An ongoing count of artist popularity ratings sorted by who picked to cover the artist
Finding #1
51% of the artists Tonya chooses to cover rank as Medium Hipster – its the largest and most obvious outlier among all data gathered at MusicalChairs.
Finding #2
61% of John’s artists are Kinda Hipster or less. 87% are Medium Hipster or less. He has yet to pick an artist that ranks as Raging Hipster. He is statistically the least hipster.
Finding #3
Absolute difference totals by pair –
Tonya/Brad: 24
Brad/John: 11
John/Tonya: 23
Insight #1
Because this graph focuses on one person’s chosen artists, as opposed to the Top Five song picks that that same person only chooses to listen to one third of the time, this graph serves as a better representation of each person’s taste within the music landscape. Tonya sticks out as someone who very consistently picks artists of Medium Hipster popularity on Spotify.
Conclusion:
Tonya’s music taste can be firmly defined as Medium Hipster.
Insight #2
By counting the variance in each column’s totals, the question that the absolute difference totals addresses is “Which two people pick artists with the most similar popularity?”
Conclusion:
The most similar pair are Brad and John. Tonya/Brad and John/Tonya are similarly dissimilar.
Hipster Rating – All Artists
Ranked hipster status of all artists we have covered, from Not Hipster to Raging.
Not Hipster
Popularity Rating: >70
Total, 18
0%
Tonya, 5
0%
Brad, 4
0%
John, 9
0%
Coldplay
Childish Gambino
Kanye West
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Kendrick Lamar
The Beatles
Linkin Park
Tame Impala
Guns N’ Roses
Daft Punk
Gorillaz
Sade
U2
Nirvana
David Bowie
Creedence Clearwater Revival
Fleetwood Mac
System of a Down
Kinda Hipster
Popularity Rating: 56.67-70
Total, 37
0%
Tonya, 7
0%
Brad, 16
0%
John, 14
0%
Radiohead
The Notorious B.I.G.
Led Zeppelin
Pink Floyd
The Strokes
Muse
The Doors
Mac DeMarco
Rage Against the Machine
Metallica
MGMT
Jimi Hendrix
Alice in Chains
TOOL
The Smashing Pumpkins
The Black Keys
Duran Duran
Incubus
Deftones
The Velvet Underground
Stone Temple Pilots
Jimmy Eat World
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Arcade Fire
The xx / Jamie xx
Iron & Wine
Sufjan Stevens
Beach House
Queens of the Stone Age
The Cure
Black Sabbath
A Perfect Circle
311
Massive Attack
Interpol
Fleet Foxes
Modest Mouse
Medium Hipster
Popularity Rating: 43.33-56.67
Total, 39
0%
Tonya, 20
0%
Brad, 9
0%
John, 10
0%
Vampire Weekend
Stevie Ray Vaughan
Chevelle
Death Cab for Cutie
Portishead
The National
The Chemical Brothers
M83
Nine Inch Nails
Whitney
Silverchair
INXS
Local Natives
Beirut
STRFKR
Wilco
Band of Horses
Elliott Smith
Thom Yorke
My Morning Jacket
The War on Drugs
St. Vincent
Toro y Moi
Washed Out
Grizzly Bear
The Decemberists
Bright Eyes
Real Estate
Silversun Pickups
José González / Junip
Doves
Broken Social Scene
DIIV
Caribou
The Mars Volta
Stereolab
Hank Williams
Built to Spill
Circa Survive
Super Hipster
Popularity Rating: 30-43.33
Total, 19
0%
Tonya, 6
0%
Brad, 8
0%
John, 5
0%
Rilo Kiley
Belle and Sebastian
Yeasayer
Deerhunter
Wild Nothing
Blonde Redhead
Cinnamon Chasers
S. Carey
Black Moth Super Rainbow
The Album Leaf
Pinback
Small Black
Minus the Bear
Neon Indian
Panda Bear
STS9
Midlake
Horse Feathers
Autolux
Raging Hipster
Popularity Rating: <30
Total, 4
0%
Tonya, 2
0%
Brad, 2
0%
John, 0
0%
Cotton Jones
The Appleseed Cast
Violents
Mice Parade
How is the Hipster Rating Calculated?
Top Five Picks
Using Spotify’s popularity index at the time of our picks, we take the average popularity of an artist’s top ten songs on Spotify, then subtract the average popularity of our Top Five Picks. The remainder is graded on a scale of Not Hipster to Raging Hipster, giving each of us a Hipster Rating for that artist.
Grading Scale:
<5
Not
Hipster
5-10
Kinda
Hipster
10-15
Medium
Hipster
15-20
Super
Hipster
>20
Raging
Hipster
Artist Picks
This rating grades the average popularity of each covered artist’s top ten songs. However, because even the most popular artist’s top ten songs only average out to 80 on Spotify’s 0-100 popularity index, these are graded on quintiles within a 30-70 scale and accumulated by who picked the artist.
Grading Scale:
>70
Not
Hipster
56.67-70
Kinda
Hipster
43.33-56.67
Medium
Hipster
30-43.33
Super
Hipster
<30
Raging
Hipster
