Title: Headphones on the wire,
Abstract: We analyze a dataset providing the complete information on the effective
plays of thousands of music listeners during several months. Our analysis
confirms a number of properties previously highlighted by research based on
interviews and questionnaires, but also uncover new statistical patterns, both
at the individual and collective levels. In particular, we show that
individuals follow common listening rhythms characterized by the same
fluctuations, alternating heavy and light listening periods, and can be
classified in four groups of similar sizes according to their temporal habits
--- 'early birds', 'working hours listeners', 'evening listeners' and 'night
owls'. We provide a detailed radioscopy of the listeners' interplay between
repeated listening and discovery of new content. We show that different genres
encourage different listening habits, from Classical or Jazz music with a more
balanced listening among different songs, to Hip Hop and Dance with a more
heterogeneous distribution of plays. Finally, we provide measures of how
distant people are from each other in terms of common songs. In particular, we
show that the number of songs $S$ a DJ should play to a random audience of size
$N$ such that everyone hears at least one song he/she currently listens to, is
of the form $S\sim N^\alpha$ where the exponent depends on the music genre and
is in the range $[0.5,0.8]$. More generally, our results show that the recent
access to virtually infinite catalogs of songs does not promote exploration for
novelty, but that most users favor repetition of the same songs.