All I want for Christmas is ...
Twenty-five years after its debut release, Mariah Carey's holiday hit "All I want for Christmas is You" has reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time this month (December 2019) . The Hot 100 is the U.S. music industry's standard for chart rankings based on sales, radio play and online streaming. "All I Want for Christmas is You" has completed the longest trip to the top of the charts thanks to dedicated marketing efforts and increased usage of music streaming services like Spotify, which report that the song regularly achieves a 2,000% increase in global streams from November 1 until the end of December. AIWFCIY has clearly earned its reputation as an international holiday hit, but in which country is it the most popular?
I don't want a Plot for Christmas
Check out this dataset that contains the number of Spotify streams of AIWFCIY by country on the 48 hours of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day as well as the song's country-specific mean rank among all songs over the holiday season (11/25 to 1/1).
So, where is AIWFCIY the most popular? Well as with a lot of scientific questions, it depends specifically on how we frame the question. Look at these data in a few different ways to answer the questions. First start by making a scatter plot with Country on the X-axis. From there try different variables on the Y-axis to help you answer the first two questions below.
THERE IS JUST ONE CHART I NEED
Data: Spotify Charts
With 558 streams per 10,000 people, that means approximately one out of every 17 people in Sweden listened to Mariah on December 24 and 25 in 2017.
Make my wish come true
Activity:
1)In which seven countries does AIWFCIY have the highest ranking during the Christmas season?
2)Which seven countries listens to AIWFCIY most intensely on Christmas Eve and Christmas day? Is this list of countries the exact same as the answer to question #1?
3) How do you best answer the question of where is AIWFCIY the most popular?
4) Try plotting Streams on Xmas Holiday on the Y-axis and Seasonal Rank of AIWFCIY on the X-axis. What does this tell you about the relationship between these two measures of listening?
5) Now try adding Region as a Z variable (color coding) on your plot. What does the third variable reveal to you. Do you see any patterns that are shared by countries in the same region?
See how many insights were gathered about Mariah Carey's AIWFCIY by framing the question slightly different? Data visualizations are powerful tools used to see and understand trends and patterns. It's always important to pay special attention to axis labels and variables in order to fully understand the data story!