I was just checking out Last.FM (if you don’t know what it is, check it out) and I noticed that The Beatles have a total of over 222 million plays. This got me to wondering: “Does anyone have more than that? What would a Last.FM all time top plays list look like?” So I did a little research and what follows are all of the bands (I would say /artists but no solo artists have reached this point) that over 100 million plays to date:

Bands With More Than 100 Million Plays

#1 The Beatles – 222 Million
#2 Radiohead – 208 Million
#3 Muse – 146 Million
#4 Coldplay – 143 Million
#5 Red Hot Chili Peppers – 125 Million
#6 Metallica – 120 Million
#7 Pink Floyd – 112 Million
#8 Linkin Park – 108 Million
#9 System of a Down – 103 Million

For the most part this looks a lot like their current top charts The Beatles, Radiohead, & Muse are currently the top three (in the same order) on the most played charts for last week.

Of course this is an inexact way of looking at things. For one, The Beatles songs were mostly shorter (especially when compared with Pink Floyd) so for example listening to Abbey Road means 16 plays (Last.FM doesn’t count “Her Majesty” because it’s too short) and listening to Wish You Were Here means just five plays.

Last.FM’s regular chart corrects for this problem by using “reach” (how many different people who listened instead of total plays) although this approach leads to a heavier weighting for “one hit wonder” type bands who may get a lot of people who listen to one particular song, but whose overall plays aren’t that impressive.

Bands That Should Have More Plays

The above numbers should put the numbers below in context. What follows are bands that should have more plays than they do, in my opinion (this is just another way of saying they’re “underrated” I guess. It’s just an excuse for me to pimp some of my favorite bands.)

The Flaming Lips – 25 Million
Frank Zappa – 15 Million
Primal Scream – 6 Million
Ween – 6 Million
Akron/Family – 3.3 Million
The Olivia Tremor Control – 2.6 Million
Soul Coughing – 2.5 Million
Cornershop – 1.1 Million