This chart shows the extent to which the listed online music services have the tunes that Nick Hornby wrote about in his delightful book Songbook (or as it's known outside the US, 31 Songs.
This represents a somewhat arbitrary method of comparing the coverage of these services using the taste of an admittedly non-objective, somewhat quirky but committed listener. The list covers a good mixture of older and newer songs by both popular and obscure artists.
I will gladly admit that the list does not cover all of the types of music that I might want to see included in this type of comparison - it's devoid of jazz or classical, and barely touches on blues or music from outside the US or Great Britian. But it's at least one way of looking at things, so take it for what it's worth
It's important to keep in mind that this is a single snapshot at a given point in time. All of the music services are adding new content on a daily basis. I may check this again later.
I only have checked the iTunes Music Store and Napster - there are lots of other music services, and if you want to check any of them using the same classification, send me the results and I'll add them in - I've even left a couple of empty columns in the table for that purpose. It might also be interesting to compare these results with some of the popular p2p sites as an example.
Code to the listing:
There are 93 total possible points.
| Artist/Song | iTunes (11 July 2005) | Napster (11 July 2005) | ||
| The Avalanches / Frontier psychiatrist (2000) | No | No | ||
| Badly Drawn Boy / A minor incident (2002) | Yes | No (but) | ||
| Beatles / Rain | No | No | ||
| The Bible / Glorybound | No | No | ||
| Jackson Browne / Late for the sky (1974) | Yes | Yes | ||
| Ani DiFranco / You had time (1994) | Yes | No | ||
| Ian Dury & the Blockheads / Reasons to be cheerful, part 3 (1979) | No | No | ||
| Bob Dylan / Can you please crawl out of your window? | Yes | Yes | ||
| Ben Folds five / Smoke (1997) | Yes | Yes | ||
| Nelly Furtado / I'm like a bird (2000) | Yes | Yes | ||
| Butch Hancock & Marce LaCouture / So I'll run (1985) | No | No | ||
| Gregory Isaacs / Puff the magic dragon (1992) | No (but) | No (but) | ||
| J. Geils band / First I look at the purse (1972) | Yes | Yes | ||
| Led zeppelin / Heartbreaker (1969) | No | No | ||
| Aimee Mann / I've had it (1993) | Yes | Yes | ||
| Van Morrison / Caravan (1974) | No (but) | Yes | ||
| Mark Mulcahy / Hey self-defeater (1997) | No | No | ||
| Royksopp / Royksopp's Night Out (2001) | Yes | Yes | ||
| Santana / Samba pa ti (1970) | Yes | Yes | ||
| Patti Smith Group / Pissing in a river (1976) | No (but) | Yes | ||
| Soulwax / No fun/push it (2002) | No (but) | No (but) | ||
| Bruce Springsteen / Thunder road (1975) | Yes | Yes | ||
| Rod Stewart / Mama you been on my mind (1972) | Yes | Yes | ||
| Suicide / Frankie teardrop (197?) | No (but different version) | No (but different version) | ||
| Teenage fanclub / Ain't that enough (1997) | Yes | Yes | ||
| Teenage fanclub / Your love is the place where I come from (1997) | Yes | Yes | ||
| Richard and Linda Thompson / The calvary cross (1972) | Yes | No (but) | ||
| The Velvelettes / Needle in a haystack (1968) | No | No | ||
| Rufus Wainwright / One man guy (2001) | Yes | Yes | ||
| Paul Westerberg / Born for me (1999) | No (but) | No (but) | ||
| O.V. Wright / Let's straighten it out | No (but) | No (but) | ||
| Total: | 56 | 53 |