The songs people play twice

I spent an evening this week actually reading my own numbers instead of glancing at the top one, and it rearranged how I think about the catalogue.

Here's the thing nobody tells you. The number everyone looks at — total plays — answers a question you don't really care about. It tells you how many times a song started. It doesn't tell you whether anybody wanted it to.

The number that matters is plays divided by listeners. How many times did the average person who found this song play it? One means they heard it once and moved on. Three means they came back.

By that measure the picture is not what the leaderboard says.

"Stomp" is the standout. People who find it play it about three times each. That isn't a big audience doing a small thing, it's a small audience doing a loud thing, and it's the most encouraging number I've got.

"Feels Like a Coastline" is second, and it snuck up on me entirely. It came out in April and it has just quietly kept going — no moment, no spike, just a line that doesn't stop. When I sorted by all-time instead of the last month it turned out to be one of the biggest things I've done. I'd been looking at a 28-day window and drawing conclusions from it, which is a bit like judging the tide from one photograph.

"Whoa-Oh Weekend" is third and I'd have guessed that one. It's built to be played again. That's the whole design.

The flip side is that some songs with respectable totals have a repeat rate of almost exactly one. Everybody who heard it, heard it once. That isn't a failure — getting heard at all is hard — but it's a different result, and pretending otherwise would have me writing the wrong songs next.

So here's what I'm taking from it. Reach is a moment. Repeat is a relationship. I'd rather have a hundred people who play something three times than a thousand who play it once, because the hundred are still there next year.

If you're one of the people replaying "Stomp" — I can see it, and it means more than the big number does.