This is another go at scraping data from Facebook. This time, it’s looking at band popularity by age group (the number of users in the age group who list the band as an interest over the total users in the age group). There are a few interesting points here:
Fall Out Boy, which has been around since 2001, and Fergie, who has been doing a solo act since 2006 both have noticably younger audiences. The Rolling Stones’ and The Beatles’ curves are surprising considering when they were in prominence.
Most bands seem to have their highest popularity in an age group below 30. Some possible explanations are 1 — older users feel less social pressure to list musical preferences, or 2 — older users have less of an interest in music.
Another point: Facebook users skew young, which means fewer data points as age increases, so those figures are less accurate. Facebook’s ad targetting system offers approximations without margins of errors. Data points for Fall Out Boy and Fergie over the age of 30 seem suspect.
