Spotify Names ASU In Top 40 Musical Universities

By Sarah Ventre
Published: Friday, September 19, 2014 - 5:36pm
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(Photo courtesy of Spotify Press)

The music streaming service Spotify created a list of the “Top 40 Most Musical Universities in America” and ASU came in No. 7.

The data are based on people who have special student subscriptions to Spotify and came from the last three months or so of the spring semester. According to Spotify, ASU students really love singer and songwriter Lana Del Rey.

"This is an artist that Arizona State University students listen to proportionately more than all the other schools we’ve looked at," said Eliot Buskirk, data Storyteller for Spotify Insights. "So it’s not just that there’s a lot of listening, it’s like, significantly more than the other schools on average."

Buskirk said in addition to loving Lana, there are a few other musicians ASU students like more than other schools, like Chris Brown and dubstep artist Skrillex.

But the data show some other qualities unique to ASU too. Spotify puts the typical bedtime for an ASU student at 2:00 AM, an hour later than other schools. That’s based on what time they start and stop listening to music.

The data also break down in terms of song attributes, that is to say what qualities listeners are looking for in music. It might not seem like it, but ASU students listen to music with a lot of acousticness, meaning a more stripped down, less electronic sound. But not music with something referred to simply as "hotttnesss." For the record…that’s spelled with three Ts and three Ss.

"Hotttnesss is buzziness essentially, so it’s possible that Arizona State University students are cutting-edge listeners and are ahead of the other students, you know, in terms of listening to what’s gonna be hot and hasn’t been picked up by the blogs yet," Buskirk said.

Another thing ASU students like more than usual is a genre called “Tropical,” featuring Latin music styles like Cumbia and Bachata, songs like “El malo” by Aventura.

Okay, so what do they not like? Spotify said Miles Davis and Nickelback.

But we did stop by ASU to see if the data stacked up. With just a random sampling of a few students.

We want to know what you listen to, and where it ranks on the hotttnesss scale! Tell us what you love by tweeting us @kjzzphoenix.

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