Probably been to more gigs than you

Aw man, I'm exhausted, I'm snotty, and I'm gazing at numbers.

It wasn't supposed to be this way, the whole point of me going to gigs was mostly to pass the time, love of music, with maybe a little smidgin of loyalty to friends in bands, and the hope that one day I'll again be at a gig like Ash and China Drum playing Manchester University Student's Union in 1995 or the Boo Radleys at Manchester Academy that same year.

It hasn't happened, I've never been to gigs like that since. I've been to some good shows, but never found what I've been seeking. I'll continue to look, but right now I can't even afford the bus fare to get to a free gig, anywhere.

Anyhoo, I've clocked up an inordinate number of gigs in my life. More than most people. And its only been in the last few months with the invention of Songkick that I've a) been able to catalogue all the gigs I've been to and b) compare this with other people.

The comparing's not so easy, the site tell you how many past concerts you've been to and you can see how many past concerts other people on the site have been to, but in terms of your rank, I've tried to find that myself, the hard way. Regular blog readers here will already know this. I reckon with SongKick the size it is now, I'm in the Top 50 gig goers.

The top chappie is RayGigs (gig security) with 3,000 or so shows under his belt. There may be other people in the world with more, they just haven't signed up or spent weeks checking off all their shows. SoapCompany is second with around 1066 gigs, but KittenPainting is catching up really quickly with 930 or so shows, when she finds her lost gig diary of doom... So, bear in mind only two people out of the thousands who've signed up have more than a thousand gigs.

But to find how this compares to the rest of SongKick users, I've indulged in some random sampling. I search for common names and go through the results for users, noting down how many shows each has been to.

So out of a sample of a few hundred people, if you ignore the folk who signed up and didn't check off any gigs, I can churn out a normal distributiony graph thing.

(The y-axis has a logarithmic scale to make it all work)

So, from this graph you can say if you've checked off eighty gigs on SongKick, then 80% of SongKick users have been to fewer gigs. If you've only checked off ten gigs, that's still better than 40% of Songkick users. Over 200 gigs and you tower over 94%, and over 500 gigs puts you in the top percentile of users.

Capiche?