2022 in Music

What I Listened To

• 4508 unique tracks
• 1800 artists
• 2905 albums

My Favorite Music from 2022

This year, I started tracking my music monthly, adapting and expanding my last.fm reports to highlight songs and albums I was enjoying throughout the year.

Top Played

My top artists were:

1. Islands (329 plays)
2. Abney Park (225 plays)
3. Tame Impala (225 plays)
4. The Bird and the Bee (176 plays)
5. OK Go (167 plays)

If we were including CD plays, Nine Inch Nails would bump up into the top five (from #7 on last.fm).

I would have guessed OK Go would be higher than The Bird and the Bee, and was surprised Tame Impala was still on the list, but no real surprises.

My top played song was Us by So Below, which I listened to 65 times.

My favorites throughout the year

Each month I highlighted my top played songs, “jams” from the month, and new favorites. I compiled a playlist of my favorite songs throughout the year (plays from Soundcloud and Apple Music).

Listening data by month

I listened to about 14,400 songs — on average, 40 songs a day.

Data come from last.fm and only includes music I played on my desktop or phone.

2022

Month	Monthly scrobbles	Avg daily tracks	Unique albums	Unique artists	Unique tracks	% new artists
January	1683	54	542	425	686	9
February	1716	61	618	476	989	16
March	1362	44	617	479	846	12
April	1272	42	629	482	761	8
May	1307	42	710	549	937	7
June	731	24	304	259	375	14
July	1542	50	627	491	950	13
August	1182	38	492	387	778	9
September	1317	44	592	487	803	10
October*	576	19	236	221	352	10
November*	425	14	210	185	346	14
December	1321	43	532	428	789	8

* Tidal Desktop stopped sending info to last.fm from Oct. 11 through Dec. 1 so October and November only show what I listened on mobile or other platforms 😠 I have my suspicions about June, but I can’t remember fixing anything.

New Music Discovery

I value listening broadly and finding new music (probably more than I should 😂). 29% of the artists I listened to were new to me. I also listened to more albums and tracks from artists I already knew. Overall 40% of the tracks I listened to were new, and 49% of the albums.

How many different songs did I listen to each month?

How many different artists did I listen to each month?

What proportion of new artists did I listen to?

According to TuneR, half of my top-listened artists this year were new to my top plays list. Some are artists I discovered this year, and others are The Cars 😂

How I Listened

I switched from Spotify to Tidal in February 2022, but I’m not a huge fan.

I bought a bunch of CDs for the car in February, so I mostly stopped listening to the radio. I probably could have bought fewer to start since we’ve listened to NIN’s Pretty Hate Machine for the past six months 😂

Where I listened

I like listening to music while I write, and use putting on my headphones as a cue to focus. Sometimes I’ll listen to whatever I feel like, or if I’m writing prose I’ll often put on one of the POV playlists I made to help me get back in the vibe of the character.

While I’m cooking or hanging out downstairs reading, I’ll often put on music on my phone and stream it via Bluetooth to a Tribit speaker.

Finding new music

To find new music, I’ve been listening to Tidal’s recommended mixes, which are OK, and their automatic mixes that start playing at the end of a playlist, which are not very good. Whenever I hear something that I like (or think I could like), I add it to my new music playlist for the year.

In the spring, I made another playlist of artists I know with new-to-me songs, but it’s proven harder to pay attention to new songs I like while I’m cooking. Recently, I’ve been trying out new stuff when people mention music on their blogs or on micro.blog. I’d like to shift away from relying on algorithmic music recommendations, but my musical tastes don’t seem to overlap with many people I know.