Statistics: Genre Popularity

[thef1podcast]

I was doing some browsing & thinking - which is a dangerous combination in the wrong hands, and I got to wondering about how popular the various genres are in general.

My less-than-scientific method for measuring this is to take the overall top 100 shows and divide these by genre, then total all the votes for each show in those genres. This then gives a rough idea of genre popularity, which I have graphed below.

http://media21a.libsyn.com/podcasts/thef1podcast/Genre_Popularity_copy_1.jpg

In case it's not too clear, the file is here (http://media21a.libsyn.com/podcasts/thef1podcast/Genre_Popularity_copy_1.jpg).

The genre abbreviations are:

BUS=Business
COM=Comedy
CUL=Cultral/Political
EDU=Education
ENV=Environment
FIL=Movies/Films
FIT=Health/Fitness
FOO=Food & Drink
GEN= General
MUS=Music/Radio
NEW=News
REL=Religion/Inspiration
SPO=Sports
TEC=Technology
TRA=Travel
VID=Video Podcasts

I'm a sports podcaster, and I knew that "my" genre was not particularly popular, but I was surprised how few votes went to music podcasts and happy to see that the most popular genre is not Technology - I see this as a sign that podcasting has moved out of the geek arena and into mainstream entertainment. Obviously, the general category could easily be subdivided (podcast novels and adult shows would be two obvious sub-genres), but I think you get the picture.

[docsnavely]

not bad! you must be a statistician.....

[thef1podcast]

No - just a geek who's bored at work.

[Hittman]

I don’t know that the top 100 is a represenetive sample. I find it strange that business is tops. The position of comedy seems reasonable, but music being that far down doesn’t seem to make sense either.

Which list did you take this from? I’ve seen quite a bit of variance in different directories.

There’s also the issue of weighting the position. Do you weight it by votes, or by downloads (a very hard number to pin down) or iTunes subscriptions? For instance, if the Business Show is number 1, with 100 votes, and the “HA HA Comedy” cast and the “Nothing But Farts Comedy Show” are in the 2 & 3 positions, with 75 votes each, shouldn’t that weigh comedy higher than business?

I know you just did this quickly and for fun, but to do it accurately would take a lot more work, and whatever approach you took could be legitimately critized by someone who thought a different approach would work better.