Paul Lamere asked these tough questions and more. “Imagine if there was an objective measure for coolness - a number that could be attached to each artist that indicated how 'cool' the artist was," he postulated. “We'd be able to do all sorts of interesting things with such a 'coolness index'. We could make a 'music makeover' playlist that would take you from Miley to Miles in 12 songs (consider it a 12-step taste recovery program) or we could create a music rehab playlist that takes you from Amy Winehouse to Kate Nash.
But of course, the concept of cool is too hard to nail down." Or is it?
Last.fm has published a list of tracks that were most frequently deleted users scrobbles (public playlists). Tn other words, these are tracks that Last.fm listeners didn't want other people to know they had listened to.
But Lamere did not stop there in his coolness quest.
He mined Last.fm data for artists marked “guilt pleasures and came up with the top 100 which included:
- Katy Perry
- Ashlee Simpson
- Spice Girls
- Lindsay Lohan
- Mandy Moore
- Jessica Simpson
- Backstreet Boys
- Hilary Duff
- Metro Station
- Britney Spears
- Justin Timberlake
- Taylor Swift
- Rihanna
- The Pussycat Dolls
- Kelly Clarkson
You may notice a bias for (or is it against?) woman on this list.As Lamere said, “It is hard to be cool and female".
Of course the next step is to figure out what is cool; so he can build the true “coolness index" and be able to tell how cool an artist is. “I think that is going to be a harder problem" he admitted, “but I have some ideas". You can ioin him Paul Lamere on his journey via his Music Machinery blog.
