A year in the life…

Almost all music I play on my computer at work is automatically pushed to a statistics/music info site called last.fm. This is partially because I’ve been doing it so long (I’ve been a member since 2005) and partially because I’m a bit of a stats nerd. Though I have no statistical aptitude of my own – thanks, university stats – I enjoy seeing data and trends in a visual way.

Anyway, my profile on last.fm is full of a bunch of listening data; what albums I’ve been spinning, who my go-to bands are. That sort of thing. And there’s been a bunch of ways that data can be used. I like to make graphs of my listening. This one is the first one made with some standalone software because the old tool I’d been using create the other charts has since stopped working.

I try to scrobble (that’s the verb for sending play data to the site) albums I listen to on traditional media, too; though that’s hamstrung by whether I can be arsed, or whether the release has enough data (track length, etc) in last.fm’s libraries.

I’m uncertain whether this graphic is useful to anyone – it’s only the top 100 artists by listens, and the font size means some of the data is really difficult to see (though you can zoom in by clicking the picture itself). But as a report of what I’ve heard over the past year it’s pretty dead-on. Lots of Morrissey? Yeah. Lots of Smiths? Duh. More Dr. Hook than I’d thought, but I suppose that’s OK.

I’m waiting for my ten-year anniversary at the site – I figure that graph should be plenty interesting…