In short, yes. Despite Triple J making it harder for them to predict the winner, the guys over at the Warmest 100 were able to successfully guess that Riptide by Vance Joy would top the this year’s Hottest 100 music poll.
The Warmest 100 was developed by four developers – Nick Drewe, Tom Knox, Andy Thelander and Jack Murphy – to predict last year’s Hottest 100 music poll. They collected over 35,000 votes from 3,600 entries across Facebook and Twitter to make their predictions. And while it was a small percentage of the vote, they were able to guess 92 of the 100 songs in the list. They even managed to accurately predict the songs that would be in the top 10, and the top 3 in order.
After the media hype, Triple J tried to make it harder for the Warmest 100 folks to predict this year’s lot – by cracking down on sharing your vote. However, they were able to overcome that because listeners were photographing their entries and sharing those images to social networks. However, because of this, they had a smaller sample size to predict the winners. According to Gizmodo Australia, it was half the 3600 entries they had last year.
And because I got bored (it is a public holiday, after all), I decided to compare the actual results with the Warmest 100 this year.
This year, they managed to get 85 songs out of the top 100 correct – not bad given the smaller sample size. Out of the top ten, they managed to get seven songs correct and managed to exactly predict the number one and number ten song (Riptide by Vance Joy, and Strong by London Grammar respectively).
| Song | Hottest 100 | Warmest 100 | Difference |
| Riptide – Vance Joy | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Royals – Lorde | 2 | 8 | 6 |
| Get Lucky – Daft Punk ft. Pharrell Williams | 3 | 15 | 12 |
| Do I Wanna Know? – Arctic Monkeys | 4 | 2 | 2 |
| Drop The Game – Flume & Chet Faker | 5 | 3 | 2 |
| Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High? – Arctic Monkeys | 6 | 4 | 2 |
| Young and Beautiful – Lana Del Rey | 7 | 24 | 17 |
| Resolution – Matt Corby | 8 | 12 | -4 |
| Is This How You Feel? – The Preatures | 9 | 6 | 3 |
| Strong – London Grammar | 10 | 10 | 0 |
Other than Riptide and Strong, the Warmest 100 also got two more songs in their correct positions: Arabella by Arctic Monkeys (18), and White Noise by Disclosure feat. AlunaGeorge (69).
The song that had the biggest difference between its placement on the Hottest 100 with the Warmest 100 prediction was Without You by Dillion Francis feat. Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs. The Warmest 100 said it would be number 37. It was number 99 on the Hottest 100 – a 62 place difference.
All 15 songs that were on the Warmest 100 that did not feature on the Hottest 100 would later be on Hottest 200 list, which was revealed today. The song that just missed being on the Hottest 100 was What Doesn’t Kill You by Jake Bugg. And, the song with the biggest difference between the two lists was No Waves by Fidlar. It was predicted to come in 81, it would place 194 in the Hottest 200 list – a massive 113 place difference.
You can view the spreadsheet below, or alternatively click here.