Project Overview

Author

Linsen Lu

Introduction

The music industry is constantly evolving, with emerging genres and artists reshaping cultural landscapes. One notable example is the rise of “Oceanus Folk,” a genre popularized by the artist Sailor Shift. Understanding her influence requires examining musical trends, collaboration networks, and the genre’s transformation over time.

Hence, there is a need for analytical tools that allow users to explore Sailor Shift’s career, collaborations, and legacy within the broader Oceanus Folk community. In this project, we propose a data-driven approach using visualizations to uncover key patterns in her artistic journey and forecast future genre developments.

Motivation

Oceanus Folk began as a niche genre tied to the cultural identity of the small island nation of Oceanus. Its unexpected global emergence—catalyzed by Sailor Shift’s meteoric career—offers a rare opportunity to examine the interplay between individual stardom, genre influence, and collaborative networks in music. Understanding how a genre spreads and evolves offers insight not only into musical trends but also into networked cultural transmission.

Methodology

To understand the evolution and influence of Oceanus Folk, particularly through the career of Sailor Shift, our team adopted a modular, data-driven approach. The methodology consists of four key components:

  • Network Construction: We parsed a JSON-based music knowledge graph into a tidygraph structure, identifying key node types (artists, songs, albums) and edge relationships (e.g., collaboration, influence). This provided the foundational structure for our visual analytics.

  • Career Profiling: We traced Sailor Shift’s career over time using timeline and slopegraph visualizations to reveal genre transitions and key milestones. This helped surface patterns in her collaborations and viral growth.

  • Influence Analysis: We extracted subgraphs to study how Sailor influenced and was influenced by others. By filtering specific edge types (e.g., coverof, interpolatesfrom), we mapped both direct and indirect genre diffusion and constructed genre-level Sankey diagrams and network timelines.

  • Rising Star Detection: Using centrality, clustering, and influence scores, we developed a model to highlight rising artists. We compared their early trajectories with Sailor’s to predict future Oceanus Folk influencers.

Storyboard

Our storyboard is structured into multiple interactive modules. Each module is specifically designed to address a key question that users may have about the Oceanus Folk music community, enabling them to explore Sailor Shift’s influence and the genre’s evolution from various perspectives. These proposed modules together will create a comprehensive, user-driven exploration platform, enabling a deep dive into the artistic and cultural dynamics of the Oceanus Folk genre.

For more details, please move to our Shiny APP!