iTunes has an XML file that it uses to track all sorts of neat things, like ratings, play counts, date added, last played, etc. Some of these stats are useful within iTunes, to sort by date added, or play count, or ratings. Or to make smart playlists, etc.

For example, I have a smart playlist called NeverPlayed, which lets me see all the music that I’ve never played since importing it to itunes. Since I spent a fair amount of time a couple years ago re-ripping all of my CD’s, I have quite a few songs that I’ve never played. In fact, it is over 3000, but I’ve been letting the NeverPlayed playlist play a couple hours every day, so I’ll get that down eventually. Though I have to admit there are some songs that I probably don’t ever want to play! 😉

(BTW, I re-ripped to standardize. I started ripping CD’s sometime in 2000, and over time ended up with various formats, like mp3, ogg-vorbis, aac, etc., and different encoding rates. I really wanted to standardize to 192K variable mp3, so that is what I did.)

But iTunes doens’t provide much more insight into all the stats then what I’ve just listed. I do use the last.fm plug in, so I’ve got stats from when I added that a few months ago, but even that is limited (and I wanted stats for all-time, not just when I added the last.fm plugin), so I searched around. I found one called SuperAnalyzer that runs on Mac and Windows. (It’s a java applet.) It provided a little information, but not much. Mainly that I have too many tracks that don’t have all the information filled out.

I also found iTunes Registry, which let’s you upload your XML file and then does an analysis on it. One thing that is neat about this site is that it combines all users’ data that is uploaded to it, so you can see some “global trends.”

I uploaded my XML file, and here’s a link to that page. I did find some interesting info — like I’ve listened to Dar Williams the most. And it gives some insight into how you rate artists, etc.

Anyway, there are probably a lot more cool things that could be done. I’d really like to know percentages like how much a given song, artist, or album, comprise my total listening, or total listening in the last year, or a given month, by song/artist/album/genre, or what percentage of songs are responsible for X percent play time (i.e. how long is my song tail?) Now not all of that would be availble, as the XML file doesn’t keep everything. But some of it would be possible and would be interesting.