Famous in China
OK, not really famous. Better to say "bootlegged in China," but I think this is kind of cool. Every now and then, I look at log files on the server where my mp3s reside to see if anyone is listening to the songs. Mind you, these aren't pretty charts or graphs; just raw server records that might look something like this:
xx.xx.xxx.xxx - - [17/Mar/2008:12:51:13 -0400] "GET /player/dep_noauto.xml
HTTP/1.1" 200 1336 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.12) Gecko/20080201 Firefox/2.0.0.12"
Using my mad h4x0r skillz, I can write little scripts to parse these and look for things like "how many visitors downloaded an mp3 in the month of March"; or "what's the most commonly downloaded song on my site."
While doing just such an analysis recently, I noticed that one song was rather more popular than any other. And I don't mean five percent more popular; I'm talking about five times more popular. Hmm, that's strange. I mean, I like that song just fine, but it's not like "Stairway to Freebird" or something. This would require some investigation.
I scanned the logs manually, looking for any pattern that might provide a clue. I didn't need Velma and a box of Scooby Snacks to discover the regular repetition of a single URL where the referring server should be: http://music.soso.com.
I typed the URL into a browser and it brought up a Chinese site that seems to be some kind of music clearing house. I saw what looked like a search box (I couldn't be sure since all the text was Chinese) so I typed in my name and hit enter. Sure enough, there was a link to my song Shudder, along with the helpful (if totally inexplicable) title "Anniversary."
Of course, if my song were an actual Chinese hit, it would generate as many downloads in a few minutes as I'm seeing in a month. But it's still pretty interesting to see what a little bit of bootlegging can do for your stats. So here's what my friends in Kunming are raving about:
6 comments:
I keep thinking the Tom Waits song, "Big in Japan." It's amazing where stuff ends up on the internet. Glad you're big in China. ;^)
Heh. I happen to have Tom Waits on my mind right now, as I just finished reading a great long interview with Bones Howe, one of his early producers.
Now I just need to figure out how to get bootlegged in a few other countries!
Well, it's no mystery to me why they love that song! I'll have to check and see how many of my tunes have been bootlegged but I lack the time and the skill to do so.
Bud - thanks for the nice comment!
It's just a coincidence I know how to parse raw log files: I used to do that kind of thing for a living. The kind of reporting you can do depends on how your media is hosted, I guess. I just dump mine on a server I manage, but it might be easier if I had some hosting service that included a nifty reporting tool of some sort.
I'll bootleg you here in Scotland if you like, although I'm not sure how! Have had a chance to listen to some of your music now - lovely stuff!
Thanks, lyg!
I'm not too proud to pimp my tunes! I'd be happy give you code to embed a widget or just send you links to mp3s or something. Email me anytime at patrick@mediumloud.com if you're interested.
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