Q-Music or Studio Brussel - the results
It has taken me some time to process all the data, but the results are finally there - now we'll finally know whether Studio Brussel really is better than Q-Music.
First of all, a little something about the how, when and what of the data this research is based on. From March 3rd until March 9th, I ran a little program which grabs the playlist from both radio stations, and stores it in a .csv file. Later on, I wrote several tools to process these .csv files to get a list of unique tracks, and a list of repeats per day. The final list was something that couldn't be done by software: matching the playlists. The reason for this is simple, both stations do not adhere to the same style of noting artist's names, so there could be several false positives and there would be a lot of missing links.
1. Completeness of the playlist
During the entire week, there hasn't been a single gap in the playlist of Q-Music. Studio Brussel on the other hand had several gaps, mostly during niche programs which focus on one particular genre (such as Baselab, Duyster, Whiplash etc.). Since Q-Music doesn't play any music from these niches, these missing tracks wouldn't have a made a difference in the comparison of both stations.
Q-Music vs Studio Brussel: 1-0.
2. List of tracks and repeats per day
Let's face it - whatever station you tune in to, they all tend to repeat recent hit songs. There is however a difference in frequency: some stations repeat tracks in such a way that everyone gets the chance to hear the current popular songs at least once a day, other stations seem to thrive on a short stack on singles, repeating a small set of tracks over and over again, day after day.
| Day | Once | Twice | Thrice | Four times |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Day 1: Q-Music | 17 | 20 | 7 | 5 |
| Day 2: Q-Music | 17 | 16 | 7 | 6 |
| Day 3: Q-Music | 16 | 14 | 11 | 6 |
| Day 4: Q-Music | 16 | 14 | 10 | 5 |
| Day 5: Q-Music | 22 | 13 | 17 | 7 |
| Day 6: Q-Music | 14 | 20 | 16 | 6 |
| Day 7: Q-Music | 17 | 21 | 6 | 6 |
| Average | 17 | 17 | 10 | 6 |
| Day | Once | Twice | Thrice | Four times |
| Day 1: Studio Brussel | 26 | 7 | 0 | 1 |
| Day 2: Studio Brussel | 31 | 5 | 0 | 0 |
| Day 3: Studio Brussel | 16 | 8 | 1 | 0 |
| Day 4: Studio Brussel | 17 | 6 | 0 | 0 |
| Day 5: Studio Brussel | 12 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Day 6: Studio Brussel | 12 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Day 7: Studio Brussel | 22 | 3 | 1 | 0 |
| Average | 19 | 4 | 0 | 0 |
As is shown clearly in these results, both radio stations repeat the same amount of tracks twice. When it comes to further replays per track, however, it is plain to see that Q-Music takes the lead, whereas Studio Brussel tends to select other tracks instead of rehashing already played songs. The amount of tracks repeated thrice or even four times per day is so low (it averages out to zero when rounded), that it's easy to conclude that Studio Brussel doesn't repeat tracks more than once or twice a day.
Q-Music vs Studio Brussel: 1-1.
3. List of duplicates per week
Ok, so Q-Music tends to play more repeats than Studio Brussel, anyone who has ever tuned in to both radio stations will have had that same impression. But how bad is it? To find out, I've accumulated these results per day into a list for the entire week. In other words, which were the most popular songs that week, and how many times did the listener get to listen to them?
| Station | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q-Music | 1 | - | - | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 |
| Station | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 |
| Studio Brussel | 5 | 7 | 6 | 3 | 3 | - | - | - | 1 |
It's obvious to conclude that Q-Music plays more repeats than Studio Brussel, by looking at the figures above. In fact, they do so many repeats that I've even had to separate the headers in the table above! While Studio Brussel has one single track, which is on average repeated almost twice a day, Q-Music approximates nearly four repeats per day for the single most popular track.
Personally, I think it's this kind of playlist behaviour that turns away people from a radio station, while providing enough fuel for non-fans to keep the debate on whether or not it's a good radio station going.
Repetitiveness an sich is not bad - techno for instance thrives on repetitiveness, but only to a certain extent. It's the same for radio stations: beyond this extent comes annoyance, and that is a bad thing, whichever way you want to look at it.
Q-Music vs Studio Brussel: 1-2.
4. List of all unique tracks
Given the fact that Q-Music has the most complete playlist of the two stations, it's only logical to assume it also has the most unique tracks, even despite the repeats. Let's take a look at these unique tracks:
| Station | Unique track count |
|---|---|
| Q-Music | 825 |
| Studio Brussel | 875 |
Despite the fully complete playlist of Q-Music, they still manage to play 6% less unique tracks than Studio Brussel, which is remarkable to say the least! The reason for this can probably be attributed to the fact that Q-Music specifically tends to the commercial genre only, whereas Studio Brussel (even outside of the boundaries of their niche programs) plays tracks outside their default genre(s) as well.
Q-Music vs Studio Brussel: 1-3.
5. List of common tracks
The final point of comparison is, of course, checking how similar these radio stations are despite their different image. Therefor, here is the list of common tracks between the two of them.
Since this is a common feature for both radio stations, there is no comparison possible, so no points were divided.
6. Sidenotes
Both stations presented their data in a slightly different fashion, mostly a difference in the spelling of artist names, therefor I had to observe the following rules during the processing of the data:
- Lowercase/uppercase is/was of no importance
- Remixes are counted as unique tracks, unless it is stated that it is an original version
- The Beatles and Beatles, The are of course the same, to give an example.
- Whether or not an additional artist was credited was not taken into account when it concerned the same track.
7. Final results
It's only fair to say that Studio Brussel is the clear winner of this little investigation - despite their playlist being less complete than the competition, the play a bigger variety of tracks and repeat a lot less than Q-Music. Looking at these repeats by the latter, I'm inclined to seriously doubt their much uttered slogan "Q is good for you".
Anyway, as per the deal I made with my colleague, I'll continue to listen to Studio Brussel and Q-Music on a daily basis - but now I'll have the statistic data to prove to him that Q-Music is indeed, the lesser station.