Weird Science

Album on my re-listen radar this week is John Barleycorn Must Die, by Traffic. Wanna feel like an underachiever? Steve Winwood was 22 when this album came out, and it was the band’s FOURTH.

Anyway.

Every now and again I check on the stats for the podcast. For those who don’t know, that means that I can look in on how many times a show has been downloaded, how many times it’s been played through the website, how many times it’s been played through other means, and so forth.

Recently I discovered that the podcast also has geography-related statistics. I can click on a link and it gives me a world map, in which the countries where the shows have been downloaded are highlighted in blue. The darker the blue, the more downloads there have been. So there’s no surprise in noting that the show is more popular in primarily-English-speaking countries than in others.

But I also discovered that if I click on the map, it drills down a little farther. Which means that I can tell that, for the past week, the show was more popular in, say, Nashville than it was in Raleigh, NC or in New York City.

And that’s pretty much all I know. There were 64 downloads in Nashville and 34 in New York City last week. But when I ran stats this morning, something a little weird caught my eye (and I’m going to be hazy on purpose with the details, now)

In the last week or so, the show has had 23 downloads from a town in Alabama. But not only do I know what town in Alabama, the stats report told me what STREET in that town in Alabama. I’ve never seen anything like this before, and of all the places listed, this is the only one. And because the street is kind of short, I could (if I were extra-creepy) go knocking on doors and find out within a few minutes who my Big Fan in that town is. I know, it’s already creepy that I looked it up in the first place, but I was genuinely curious about that listing and whether it actually led to something.

Or, maybe everyone on that block is a fan and they’ve only downloaded a couple of episodes each. Anyway, Hello, Alabama Fan(s)! I envy your proximity to a Publix! ’cause Publix is awesome and the closest one to me is literally a hundred miles away.

Anyway, I promise to use this power only for good, not evil. Though I presume it’s just a glitch. Also, I don’t know how to use it for good OR evil.