Media Tracking

Topic Infobox
Linked pages on this wiki	Tools (1), Projects (1), People (1)

Media tracking describes the tracking of which different media (be it entertainment or information more broadly) an individual or group interacts with, also known as tracking media consumption or media diet. Examples of media consumption include activities such as interacting with new media, reading books and magazines, watching television and film, and listening to radio or music.

Depending on the type of media, collecting data on media consumption can be done passively, because the digital tools automatically keep track of it or require active tracking. On a very high level, time tracking apps such as RescueTime can try to automatically collect data on media consumption when consuming it on a device that does detailed monitoring/tracking

Tools

There are different active & passive tracking options for collecting data on media consumption. As outlined above, most automatic Time tracking apps also record media use on the computer, which is a lot of media use for many people. There are also "niche" trackers, e.g. for animes, asian dramas etc.

Books

There are a variety of platforms that allow keeping track of which books one has read. Most of these require active entering of books, regardless of whether they are eBooks or physical copies.

• Goodreads: Can automatically update read status for Kindle ebooks due to ownership by Amazon. Does not allow manual import of books not already in Goodreads
• Bookwyrm: Federated Goodreads alternative, allows manual import/creation of new books, also connects to Open Library and Inventaire.
• The StoryGraph
• AudioBooks: Audible keeps track of books listened to

Music

Mostly relies on passive tracking through "scrobbling"

• Last.fm, one of the earliest media consumption trackers, can passively track when which songs are being played. Requires integration into player or 3rd party plugins (e.g. for Spotify, Apple Music, …)
• Spotify, keeps track of which songs were played when. Can export via the Open Humans integration or by using GDPR rights to request copy of ones own data (if in EU/UK).

Movies & TV shows

• trakt.tv, a Last.fm equivalent for streaming video content
• Simkl, similar to trakt.tv
• Letterboxd, a goodreads/bookwyrm equivalent that requires active tracking

Video games

• Steam, tracks the hours played
• Backloggd, a kind of "Goodreads for games"
• IGDB, like IMDB but for games