Spotify provides a public API with detailed information on millions of songs, including both musical characteristics—such as tempo, energy, danceability, and mood—and metadata like artist, genre, release year, and popularity. This makes it a valuable resource for exploring patterns in music across different styles and time periods.
In this class, we use a simplified subset of Spotify data that includes the top 1,000 most popular songs from each of 114 different genres. This curated sample allows students to explore how musical features vary across genres and gain experience working with real-world music data.
| Measurements Within Data | |
|---|---|
| Feature | Description |
track_id |
The Spotify ID for the track |
artists |
The artists’ names who performed the track. If there is more than one artist, they are separated by a ; |
album_name |
The album name in which the track appears |
track_name |
Name of the track |
popularity |
The popularity of a track is a value between 0 and 100, with 100 being the most popular. It’s based on the total number of plays and recency. Duplicate versions of a track are rated independently. |
duration_ms |
The track length in milliseconds |
explicit |
Whether or not the track has explicit lyrics (true = yes; false = no or unknown) |
danceability |
How suitable a track is for dancing, based on tempo, rhythm stability, beat strength, and overall regularity. 0.0 = least danceable, 1.0 = most danceable |
energy |
A measure from 0.0 to 1.0 representing intensity and activity. Energetic tracks feel fast, loud, and noisy |
key |
The key the track is in (0 = C, 1 = C♯/D♭, …, 11 = B). If no key is detected, the value is -1 |
loudness |
The overall loudness of a track in decibels (dB) |
mode |
Modality of the track: major (1) or minor (0) |
speechiness |
Presence of spoken words in a track. Values near 1.0 represent speech-like tracks, while values below 0.33 likely represent music |
acousticness |
A confidence measure from 0.0 to 1.0 of whether the track is acoustic |
instrumentalness |
Predicts whether a track contains no vocals. The closer to 1.0, the more likely the track is instrumental |
liveness |
Detects the presence of an audience. Values above 0.8 strongly suggest the track was recorded live |
valence |
A measure from 0.0 to 1.0 describing the musical positiveness of a track. High = happy/cheerful; Low = sad/angry |
tempo |
The estimated tempo of a track in beats per minute (BPM) |
time_signature |
The estimated number of beats per bar. Ranges from 3 to 7, representing time signatures like 3/4 to 7/4 |
track_genre |
The genre in which the track belongs |
https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/maharshipandya/-spotify-tracks-dataset