The following question was presented:
I've been patiently working my way through my vinyl records and I noticed that Windows Media Player tells you the total time by artist that you have to play (i.e. the total length of music by each artist). So that got me to wondering which artist I have the most playing time by. Now, a couple of things come into play here - groups that I've followed, how much material that group has put out and the average length of that group's songs. (One thing I've noted is that typically the punk songs are less than 3 minutes whereas some of the heavy groups can put out a 12 minuter. I'm quite a long way from completing this, but I have put a statistics link on the RagBox page if you want to take a look and start to do some analysis (Edit - RagBox removed from site). So - which artist do I have the most material for?
Results:
Iron Maiden was the clear winner with 57% of the votes selected from the following:
- AC/DC (14%)
- Black Sabbath (29%)
- G.B.H. (0%)
- Iron Maiden (57%)
- Metallica (0%)
- Motorhead (0%)
- Ozzy Osbourne (0%)
- W.A.S.P. (0%)
Graphic of Results:
Analysis:
I think I could have made this a trick question as the “band” that is currently winning the longest play time in my collection is “various artists.” That said, I haven't finished digitizing all my albums and there is a possibility that it will be overtaken by Iron Maiden. So, to those of you that voted for Iron Maiden, I would say that you are correct (I'll update if anything changes).
Few things to note - I have a lot more albums by AC/DC, but their albums are much shorter than Iron Maidens, sticking to a 40/45 minute format, whereas Maiden upped the length of their productions to over an hour with several breaking the hour and ten minute mark.
Good call also on Black Sabbath. We'll see their numbers jump up during the next few days as I start adding their vinyl, but there just isn't enough to take Maiden. One thing I do note is that if I add Ozzy to Black Sabbath then this would probably be the winner. (Although that would mean that I would need to add the Bruce Dickinson to Iron Maiden).
Another interesting fact is that I had more G.B.H. songs when I wrote the question last week. Trouble is, that as a punk band, they are masters of the two minute song which, again doesn't give them enough length to take the lead.
One dark horse is going to be Kiss as I didn't realize how many of their vinyl records I have, but there still isn't enough to take the title.
As it stands Iron Maiden has it and I'm pretty sure it won't change anytime soon. If it does, I'll let you know.