2024-01-04
If you're not familiar with what Last.fm is, it is basically a website that keeps track of the songs you listen to. I've been scrobbling (their term, not mine) tracks since 2011. I have a lot of data with them (a privacy nightmare) and I don't care because I love the stats!!!
Right off the bat, Last.fm is always more accurate than Spotify. I don't listen to music just on Spotify. I have a local library that I listen to as well and Spotify doesn't keep track of that. With their yearly summary, Last.fm also includes listening in November and December, which Spotify doesn't. Yes, the Spotify-Last.fm connection can be spotty so it is not 100% but I think it all cancels out.
Last.fm switched things up this year and finally implemented a year end summary that's more similar to Spotify Wrapped. Every year I eagerly await the stats but this year I was so curious about how Last.fm would implement it this time around.
Let's dive into it.
I have listened to 3,339 artists this year. I'm not sure if that's a lot? Is it? I have no idea what the typical number of artists a person listens to in a year.
Admittedly, the bar graph is a little confusing to me. Each bar represents the number of artists that I listened to each week. But is it unique artists across each week? For example, if I listen to Green Day in Week 10, are they also counted when I listen to them on Week 22? My gut feeling is no.
The lowest point in this graph is around the July-August range. This makes sense to me because I was travelling overseas. I couldn't listen to as much music because I was too busy being a tourist and I didn't come across wi-fi too often. I did download a few Spotify playlists but the selection was pretty limited.
I listened to 5,831 albums this year. Again, is this a lot? I don't really know!
I listened to 9,316 tracks this year. I kinda want to try to hit 10,000 next year. Solely because 9,300 is "only" 700 tracks away from 10,000. It can kinda get dangerous how Last.fm manipulates how I listen to music.
I listened to songs 40,424 times this year. Admittedly, sometimes I play music when I'm sleeping. But I tried really hard to clean up those scrobbles in the latter half of the year. I can't speak for the beginning of the year, though.
This year I listened to 109 days and 3 hours of music. Nice. That's almost 1/3 of the year. Checks out, honestly. I am a music fiend.
I liked what Last.fm did. The graphic is a little simplistic but it was animated and everything. Very cute.
109 days and 3 hours of music translates to 1746 cassette tapes. Have kids these days even seen a cassette tape in real life? This was a cute tidbit but it's hard to visualize. Maybe CDs would land with my generation better. Or go a bit more universal and use vinyls instead, since those have made a comeback.
If I needed to commute to moon 34 times, I have a very long playlist I could listen to on my way there and back. This is a cool stat! Apparently it would take less than 80 hours to travel to the moon. I'd probably be sleeping for most of that, hah.
I am the top 55th listener of the band Protest the Hero. I'm surprised I didn't rank higher for anyone else. But I will take it. I saw Protest the Hero in concert this year and it was a lot of fun. I fell in love with their discography all over again this year.
Okay... I'm only the top 10th listener of Volition??? I swear I played this album so many times. I need to know who the other 9 top listeners are. Volition is such a good album. I think Palimpsest is a more consistent album (as in, it's a no-skip album) but Volition have a lot of tracks with great replayability. So it's the best of both worlds: a strong album start to finish (it does have its weak tracks) and has songs that I can play over and over.
I am the top listener of 沒有人想念沒離開的人 by William Wei!! He really surprised me with this track. Typically he releases a lot of ballads. This song was... Not a ballad. It was way more groovy than I expect from Mr. Wei but more than anything, it had an ethereal quality to it. It felt tender but also a little forlorn at the same time. Outstanding track from William Wei.
My top tags this year were K-pop, Japanese, indie, rock, indie rock, J-pop, and J-rock. K-pop being my top genre was a little surprising to me... I think the other genres balance it out, though. I definitely think I do listen to too much K-pop. There's just so much more music out there!! This year I'm trying to listen to less K-pop.
This is a really cool graphic. So it kinda documents when I listen to music. A flat line means no music at all. And you can see dead times (aka sleeping hours) in the graph. Kinda looks like a mountain range that is drawn by a polygraph machine.
My top artist is TAEMIN with 2196 scrobbles. I'm a little surprised by the lack of scrobbles in January and February. Apparently I listened to a lot of Protest the Hero and Coheed and Cambria during that time frame. I think with the news of Taemin coming back from the military spurred on the listening in March/April.
My top artists this year were TAEMIN, NewJeans, Coheed and Cambria, and Protest the Hero. This bubble graph isn't the greatest. The smaller circles don't have any text and you need to hover over it to see the names. Not the greatest for wanting to share it with others (aka you, dear reader).
To the surprise of no one, my top album this year is NewJeans's Get Up with 589 scrobbles. It's impressive how it came out halfway through the year and managed to rocket up the charts. This album is good. It's a shame how short it is but I will take brevity if it means quality.
I love album collages... I blame /r/lastfm. Here are my top 25 albums of 2023.
SONG. OF. THE YEAR.
My top 5 tracks of 2023:
The Playback is different from the Last.Year. It's in a different format, more web page than scrollable phone experience. A lot of the information is repeated but there are some differences.
For example, the total scrobbles gives a month by month breakdown instead and also compares it to last year. I think I prefer this view over the Playback view.
I like how this section also shows the top new artist. For me, that was boygenius this year. My library was also 49% new artists. Aiming for 50% next year!
Top new album is Get Up. Of course. Also have 61% new albums this year. 2020s just has a lot of good music, okay.
Top new track is Cool With You. Another non-surprise. With 58% new tracks. As I said earlier, I'm going to try to aim for 10k unique tracks this year.
What a fitting song to start off the year. The first song I scrobbled in 2023 was White Feathers by L'Arc~en~Ciel. A really pretty song and off of my favourite L'Arc~en~Ciel album, too.
A heat map of all my scrobbles every day. December and April were pretty consistent. April was consistent I think because of Taemin's military discharge. December because I was feeling particularly down and music comforts me.
I didn't take a screenshot of all my ratios but here they are in list form:
My ratios are about what I expect. I listen to a lot of playlists in order to discover new artists. Some artists/albums/tracks I listen to once and never again. Which balances out how obsessive I can get with certain artists/albums/tracks.
A less aesthetic but still aesthetic version of the mountain range. This is a circular bar graph that shows my peak listening times. Apparently that's 11am, hah.
I once ran Pudding's roast-my-Spotify tool and they said I don't listen to enough music released before 2019. It's true. My music taste is solidly in the 2020's, apparently. I should branch out and listen to more classics. But so many people are releasing super cool music nowadays.
My mainstream score is 58%. My most obscure artist is Ueda Tatsuya, apparently?? I think that makes sense because most of the songs I have from him in my library are bootlegs, lol.
Well, at least I'm consistent. Last year I was 58% as well. I want to be obscure, though. We'll give it a shot but my taste is honestly so basic, even though I talk like I have sophisticated taste.
One of my favourite pro features is the leaderboard. I don't bother competing with some of my friends on Last.fm. Some of them are truly power users.
This year I ranked 7th in terms of number of tracks scrobbled. I think my summer months contributed to my fall in rank.
I rank 14th. I have no idea how the top person on my leaderboard managed to listen to 99% new artists. That's awesome. It would be nice to hit 50% this year.
I love stats!! Last.fm is weird because the stats do kinda influence how I listen to music. It makes me want to discover more and go out of my comfort zone. I don't think that's a bad thing. I'm both hard and easy to please. I love finding new music and discovering new tracks. I feel weird when I get into listening ruts. So trying out different music is something I do naturally anyway.
Here's to another year of listening. Can't wait for NewJeans to come out with the next song of the year.
2024-01-01
I love music stats. I love stats in general. But I especially love music stats. I rely on Last.fm for most of my music stats needs. Most people know of Spotify Wrapped but it notoriously fudges some of the data and excludes any listening from November and December. Last.fm is more accurate for me, especially since I don't just listen to music on Spotify. Last.fm can aggregate your listening from Bandcamp and other music software or apps.
That being said, let's see what Spotify said about my music in 2023.
This is no surprise. Taemin finally came back from the military. He turned 30. He came out with a mini album. Why wouldn't I blast his discography to celebrate all these milestones?? I'm also in the top 0.05% of listeners. That kinda surprised me. He has around 3.3 million listeners per month. That would put me in the top 1700 listeners. Did I do the math right? That can't be right, haha. But I do admit, I listen to a lot of Taemin in April, when he was discharged. I'm just happy that he's back.
To be honest, they are my group of the year. I know there has been a lot of controversy around this group but almost every thing they have released has been amazing (ignoring the League of Legends song they did for Worlds). Get Up was a solid mini album and I liked it front to back. When it came out late July, I played it quite a lot in August.
Coheed and Cambria almost always makes it into my Spotify Wrapped. They're definitely in my top 5 of all time musicians, not just for this year. But for 2023 in particular, I've been slowly growing into their latest release, Vaxis II: A Window of the Waking Mind. I also went to one of their Neverender shows in September for No World for Tomorrow. After seeing them live, I put that album on repeat quite a bit after the concert (hence the October peak).
I'm a recent-ish Protest the Hero fan. When they released Palimpsest in 2020, I didn't think about ever seeing them live again. But when I saw that they were coming to my city, I just had to. I decided to dive deep into their discography a little more because I was only really familiar with two of their albums. I saw them in October so that coincides with the October peak.
Okay, this was a surprise to me. Did I really listen to so much SHINee? I checked Last.fm and yes, I really did listen to that much SHINee. When they released HARD in June, I pretty much played it on repeat for a bit. I still can't say I love the album but it was an okay release. I also dove a little more into their discography since I'm really only familiar with their singles.
Song. Of. The. Year. I love Ditto so much. I hope I never get tired of it. The beat will live forever in my heart.
INVU by TAEYEON I'm surprised at the lasting power of this song. This was my #1 song in 2022. Just goes to show how good this song is. I feel like every time I listen to it, I can uncover another layer of the song.
One Last Kiss by 宇多田 ヒカル I love Utada so much!!! This song is perfect. The longing in this song and the fondness... Makes my heart melt.
もしもし by EMI MARIA Another song from last year. This song is just too good... Maybe this says more about my listening habits, than anything else. I love to put things on repeat. And I think I discovered this song near the end of 2022, too.
Cool With You by NewJeans I knew from the very first beat that this was going to be my song. It feels so high fashion. I love hearing that from NewJeans. Seriously addictive.
K-pop I'm kinda ashamed at just how much K-pop I listen to, hah. But I think the other genres kinda balance it out.
Rock This is so generic. Rock??? Maybe I just listen to plain generic rock. Depressing, if true.
J-rock Okay, I do listen to a lot of J-rock. I was going to say that unlike K-pop, J-rock has a lot of variety within the genre, but these days I'm having trouble finding J-rock bands that don't sound like something I've heard before. Additionally, there is variety in K-pop. You just gotta look harder for it.
Indie Pop Another vague genre... I do like my indie, though. Although sometimes I wonder just how "indie" they are when I know so many people who know "indie" pop artists.
Visual Kei This one surprised me. I didn't think I listened to that much visual kei... I do listen to DIR EN GREY on the regular. Versailles did come out with a new song mid-way through the year and I went on a mini-Versailles kick. This one has me puzzled, haha.
Apparently I listen to the same music as people from Berkely, California, USA? Funny how the examples listed in the image (Japanese Breakfast, boygenius, and Sleater-Kinner) are very considered to be "for the sapphics." Glad to know I would fit in with the WLW crowd in California.
According to Spotify, I'm a Time Traveler. Which means I go back to old songs I liked and then put them on repeat. Basically, I don't get tired of songs. I mean, I do get tired of songs but maybe over the course of several years.
I've listened to 113,661 minutes of music on Spotify. That's average 311 minutes a day, or around 5 hours. Which checks out. I tend to listen to a lot of music at work and throughout the day. I'm listening to music right now (playing I'm Your Man by Mitski). Truthfully, my focus on the music itself can vary throughout the day. Like right now, I am in love with I'm Your Man so I'm singing along to it as i type this out. Other times it does fade out into the background a bit.
As of writing this post, the 2023 stats have not yet been released on Last.fm. I will definitely be putting up a post when it's released. The last two months of listening can really change things up, especially if I discover something new or if there is a new release towards the end of the year.
But I'm looking forward to seeing if Last.fm can top Spotify Wrapped. It seems like they're taking the year end stats in a new direction and I hope they can deliver...
2023-12-30
As of today I have traveled around the sun 29 times. It's kinda wild to think about. I don't feel 29 but does anyone ever really feel their age? A big part of it (and I've mentioned a few times across the Internet) is that the last three (and soon to be four) years seemed to have slipped away from me. I often say that I still feel the same as I how I did when I entered 2020 but when I think about it more, I have changed.
In 2020 I was stuck. I was still madly in love with someone who had clearly moved on. For a long time I saw them as the villain in my love story. But when I look back on it now, I feel sad for them. Maybe it was my empathy that landed me with that person in the first place, but I had so badly wanted to (cliche alert) be the one to defy the odds and fix them. I wanted them to love me back so badly. But they were wrapped up in their own hurt which ended up hurting me.
I'm just tired of chasing. Throwing myself at the feet of someone to beg for their attention. I don't want to find love, I want it to find me. So many of my relationships I was the initiator. I just want to be chosen for once.
I'm trying to choose myself more these days. Being by myself is something I am pretty content with. It's when I get a taste of what it would be like to have a connection with someone that I get a little wistful. Lately I am craving for love and most of all, companionship. I miss physical, spiritual, and mental closeness. I want to share myself with someone. I want someone to share themselves with me.
This year I'm going to try to go a little more "low stakes" and aim for friendship. As much as I desire for it, I don't think I'm ready for love. I need friends, more than anything.
2023-12-27
I had a consultation with an astrologer recently and they said, "I don't really see the Venus in Scorpio in you." In my head I was like, "Oh man, I feel Venus in Scorpio in everything I do."
The way I consume music is the first thing that came to mind. This is so significant for me because music is like a cornerstone of my personality so I spend a lot of time in this realm. What elevates a song from "this is a banger" to "this is imprinted onto my soul now" is the emotional intensity of a song. This usually means that the music can evoke a certain mood that resonates deeply with me and, at the same time, the lyrics are relatable. Songs that are like this are almost always a little more darker in tone, topic, or sound. That's not to say I don't like lighthearted music. I can appreciate a good up-beat song once in a while but the songs that make an impression on me are usually darker. For example, I like K-pop. It's fun. Relatively cheery. Very colourful. But I am mostly just interested in songs like Want by TAEMIN or 28 Reasons by Seulgi or Galaxy by LADIES' CODE. Kinda not what K-pop is known for.
Speaking of certain artists... When it comes to musicians in particular, I often obsess over them as well with their music. I dive deep into their Wikipedia pages. I watch interviews. I read biographies. I watch concert videos. I write fan-fic. I read every single article I can come across. I daydream. I fantasize. Sometimes I even make websites devoted to them. But yeah. I'm one of those fans. I try my best not to display it outwardly (unless you follow my music alt fedi account and in that case, you know what you signed up for) so it is something that I try to keep to myself. 12th house things.
Another place where I feel very Venus in Scorpio is in my romantic relationships. This could be due to Pluto being so close to my Venus but when I have my heart set on someone, I get obsessive. It's either 0 or 100 for me, no in between. I get possessive. Jealous. It's an all-consuming feeling. I want to merge (physically, spiritually, mentally) with the other person. I can't stop thinking about them. I fantasize about them. Obviously, this isn't healthy and, often times, not necessarily even love, but it is a pattern that I see.
It makes sense though why the astrologer I spoke to couldn't see this in me, though. All of this is taking place in my 12th house. The 12th house is what is hidden, buried, subconscious. A lot of this stuff is what goes on in my interior. Sometimes it leaks out into the material world but mostly, I keep it inside. The astrologer I saw did mention how Venus in the 12th can indicate affairs. I've never cheated but I do often find myself attracted to people who are in relationships. Again, not a healthy habit and I never act on it because I am morally against it. It's just another pattern that I see.
So. Yeah. That's my case for 12th house Venus in Scorpio. I don't take the things I like lightly. I feel it intensely, mostly to my detriment (Venus in Scorpio is in detriment, after all). But astrology is all just patterns, at the end of the day. Things can go off script. And what makes astrology work is that the archetypes can be so broad and general that you can just about apply it to anything. Still. I enjoy astrology. And I definitely see 12th house Venus in Scorpio in me.
2023-12-24
I'm always dehydrated but these days I actually feel it. My mouth feels perpetually dry. I think it's because I've been talking more than I usually do.
After I stop talking, I get hit by a feeling of loneliness. Regrets pile up in my mind after I talk. "Why did I say that? What was the point of that? I should have just kept my mouth shut."
It's been literally years since I've talked about myself, to another person, in such depth, with my own voice. Even if it's the trivial things, I feel like I'm sharing my own soul. There are so many things I want to say. I want to be seen, to be understood.
I've been saying things to the wrong person.
I'm sorry, stranger, it's so selfish of me.
I should stay hydrated.