Facebook visually maps 40 billion music plays

Facebook has mapped over 40 billion plays of music through it's Open Graph technology, and produced a video to represent the data.

Kyle Fisher
  • By Kyle Fisher
  • 31 May 2013
  • min read
Over 110 million songs, albums and radio stations have been played 40 billion times through apps that use Facebook's Open Graph.

Open Graph is the technology that allows apps or desktop applications to login into your Facebook account and post content to your feed. For example, plays of songs from Spotify and Soundcloud can be posted to your Facebook profile, so all of your friends can see what you have been listening to, much in the same way you can scrobble plays of tracks to Last.fm.

As part of the Facebook Stories campaign, in which Facebook has been showcasing all of the different types of content that utilises Open Graph, it has created a visual representation of music played on apps over a period of 90 days.

Facebook said it had been 'inspired by old-school graphic equalizers', and partnered with design studio Stamen to produce the video below. See if you can spot the moment music fans go wild for British artists Calvin Harris and Florence Welch with their song Sweet Nothing.