I was wondering - what does your last.fm year in music report tell you ? I always find it interesting / surprising / slightly embarrassing to find out who & what I've played all year. It's also interesting to compare to your AOTY submissions (if you entered) - only one of mine actually show up on the last.fm stats, which is... interesting ! (I also apparently listen to way too much VoA, but I knew that)

Last.fm stats


My AOTY entries

I'm only going to put my top artists, as top 10 albums and songs are wall to wall Tori Amos with a single appearance from Miranda Lambert in each list. My metal album of the year entries didn't get close to registering. Scrobble numbers in brackets.

01 Tori Amos (2208)
02 Alice Cooper (1185)
03 Bad Religion (548)
04 Miranda Lambert (508)
05 Less Than Jake (405)
06 The Offspring (375)
07 Nickelback (368)
08 Bon Jovi (346)
09 Iron Maiden (343)
10 Eminem (321)

Good idea for a thread!

My top 10 for 2020 was:

Artists:
1) $uicideboy$
2) Hello Meteor
3) Deftones
4) Miles Davis
5) Polyphia
6) Incubus
7) Soulfly
8) Havukruunu
9) Dance Gavin Dance
10) Mayhem

Albums:
1) $uicideboy$- Stop Staring At The Shadows
2) Polyphia- New Levels New Devils
3) Incubus- Morning View
4) Within Destruction- Yōkai
5) Deftones- Ohms
6) Havukruunu- Uinuos Syömein Sota
7) Playboi Carti- Whole Lotta Red
8) Soulfly- Primitive
9) Zheani- The Zheani Sparkes
10) Beneath The Massacre- Fearmonger


My AOTY Lists were:

Granted, none of this shows what I listen to in the car or at the gym. I only scrobble music when I'm at home in front of my computer. Which is a lot, because I have no life. Interesting how the two lists compare. A lot of the albums aren't from artists in my top 10, and visa versa.

Artists:
1.) Sabaton
2.) Iced Earth
3.) Demons & Wizards
4.) Nightwish
5.) Pontus Hultgren
6.) Avantasia
7.) Rammstein
8.) Yasunori Nishiki
9.) Midnight Syndicate
10.) Katatonia

Albums
1.) Resident Evil 2 Original Soundtrack
2.) Sabaton - The Soundtrack To the Great War
3.) Demons & Wizards - III
4.) OCTOPATH TRAVELER Original Soundtrack
5.) Iced Earth - Plagues of Babylon
6.) Diablo II Original Soundtrack
7.) Avantasia - Ghostlights
8.) Pontus Hultgren - The Final Fantasy VI Symphony
9.) Katatonia - Dance of December Souls
10.) Iced Earth - Incorruptible

My top 10s weren't all that metal really even though I listened to quite a bit last year, just really spread out I guess.

Total scrobbles: 27,318
Avg. daily: 75
Listening Time - 80 days, 1 hour

I often throw on a few albums to fall asleep to so that's why the numbers seem so big.

Artists:

1. King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - 3130
2. The Murlocs - 2277
3. Igorrr - 1017
4. Van Halen - 866
5. Type O Negative - 861
6. Rush - 780
7. Tropical Fuck Storm - 759
8. Cloud Rat - 756
9. Warbringer - 647
10. Tame Impala - 590

Albums:

1. The Murlocs - Old Locomotive - 873
2. Igorrr - Spirituality and Distortion - 625 (my favorite album of 2020 big time)
3. The Murlocs - Young Blindness - 565
4. The Murlocs - Manic Candid Episode - 508
5. Johann Johannsson - Mandy Original Motion Picture Soundtrack - 379
6. Tropical Fuck Storm - A Laughing Death in Meatspace - 366
7. King Gizzard - K.G. - 321
8. Tame Impala - The Slow Rush - 272
9. Tyler Bates & Joel J. Richard - John Wick 3 Original Motion Picture Soundtrack - 268
10. Warbringer - Weapons of Tomorrow - 261

Tracks:

Old Locomotive is straight up my top 13 tracks lol.

Total scrobbles: 9,621

Artists:
1. Sepultura (302)
2. Ripship (296)
3. Wax Chattels (274)
4. Metallica (237)
5. Black Sabbath (213)
6. Bloodhound Gang (175)
7. Björk (173)
8. ZZ Top (165)
9. Vader (163)
10. Sticky Filth (132)

A mixture of new releases, binging favourite artists and binging Sepultura's albums to rank them on another metal forum.

Albums:
1. Ripship - Greebles (EP) (257)
2. Wax Chattels - Clot (187)
3. Wax Chattels - Wax Chattels (87)
4. Vader - Solitude In Madness (71)
5. Pearl Bailey - I'm With You (59)

I like how the first 4 are from 2018-2020 and then #5 is from 1953. In 2020 I spent quite an effort to find any music I like from the 40s and early 50s. The next two albums were double disc compilations with over 50 tracks which I listened to once each so I stopped the list there. My top tracks were basically all from albums 1 & 2.

Tracks loved in 2020: 8. I use loved tracks sparingly for my absolute favourite songs (about 150 of them). It's more than I usually add in a year as I overhauled the list and added a few glaring omissions:

What the fuck are scrobbles?

A scrobble means documenting in an online database that you listened to a song. The music fan's equivalent of fitness freaks posting maps/stats of every run they go on, or video gamers recording how long they've spent playing each game via Steam, or WhatPulse counting your keystrokes & mouse button clicks, or...

Thanks mate. Some of these lists are quite, ummm... interesting.
Cool to see Sticky Filth on your list. I last saw them with the Supersuckers at Whammy, fuck that was a late one!

I can't say I'm shocked, but you have the closest top 10 yet of anyone on the forum to me. Delain and Draconian are also in mine, Wytch Hazel would have been if I hadn't taken 'til the 1st of this year to finally check them out, and Paradise Lost was in my honorable mentions list. If you extended your list out to a top 20 or more I imagine there could even be others overlapping.

I haven't used last.fm in many years, but using Spotify data (which obviously doesn't count non-streaming digital plays, CDs, vinyl, Youtube, portable media players, and assorted other sources, so only a portion, but something):

1 - TesseracT
2 - Darzamat
3 - Van Halen
4 - Anathema
5 - Edge of Sanity
6 - ROB
7 - Katatonia
8 - Soilwork
9 - Agnes Obel
10 - Oceans of Slumber

Archived Top 10:

1 - Draconian - Under a Godless Veil
2 - Oceans of Slumber - Oceans of Slumber
3 - Delain - Apocalypse & Chill
4 - Katatonia - City Burials
5 - Soilwork - A Whisp of the Atlantic
6 - Darzamat - A Philosopher at the End of the Universe
7 - Angerot - The Divine Apostate
8 - Puteraeon - The Cthulhian Pulse: Call from the Dead City
9 - Demonical - World Domination
10 - Noumena - Anima

Non-Archived Top 10:

1 - Aziza Mustafa Zadeh - Generations
2 - ROB - Gretel & Hansel soundtrack
3 - PVRIS - Use Me
4 - Daniel Tompkins - Ruins
5 - The Midnight - Monsters
6 - Agnes Obel - Myopia
7 - Rein - Reincarnated
8 - Sordid Pink - Sordid Pink
9 - Volkor X - This Is Our Planet Now
10 - Shedfromthebody - A Dead and Aimless Hum

To explain the discrepancies, I'd sort of forgotten about TesseracT for a few years, then had some massive binges on them at a few points last year. I revisited the entire VH discography when EVH passed away, plus additional plays to some favorites. Anathema has received heavy play for a number of years since getting into them way too late. EoS is another discography run-through plus some assorted favorites.

Artists:
1. Zeal & Ardor
2. Deftones
3. Vader
4. Weyes Blood
5. Run The Jewels
6. Judas Priest
7. Night Club
8. Charli XCX
9. Tombs
10. Hum

Albums:
1. Run The Jewels-RTJ4
2. Charli XCX- How I'm Feeling Now
3. Vader-Solitude In Madness
4 Weyes Blood- Titanic Rising
5. Deftones-Ohms
6. Zeal & Ardor-Wake Of A Nation
7. Hum-Inlet
8. Eternal Champion-Ravening Iron
9. Night Club-Die Die Lullaby
10. Eskrota- Cenas Brutais

Still deep into grunge

1 Alice in Chains (185)
2 Glorior Belli (134)
3 Flotsam and Jetsam (111)
4 Stone Temple Pilots (89)
5 Machinae Supremacy (88)
6 Second Coming (76)
7 Woods of Desolation (63)
8 Show Me A Dinosaur (55)
9 Austere (54)
10 Lichtblick (54)



1 Lichtblick - Phrenesis (53)
2 Woods of Desolation - Torn Beyond Reason (50)
3 Mad Season - Above (43)
4 Common Grave - Il Male di Vivere (38)
5 Second Coming - 13 (38)
6 Austere - To Lay Like Old Ashes (35)
7 Alice in Chains - Rainier Fog (34)
8 Grey Waters - Below the Ever Setting Sun (32)
9 Alice in Chains - Jar of Flies (30)
10 Second Coming - Second Coming (30)

Hey, now there's a band I haven't thought about recently. I used to really like Overworld, especially the track "Edge and Pearl". I should revisit them and check out their other albums.

If this proves anything, it proves I'm still a sucker for angst and melodrama.

Top artists (365 days):
1. Nightwish
2. Cradle of Filth
3. AFI
4. Kamelot
5. The Gathering
6. Immortal
7. Epica
8. Type O Negative
9. My Dying Bride
10. Conception

Top albums (365 days):
1. Seven Spires - Emerald Seas
2. Conception - State of Deception
3. Nightwish - Human Nature (well, I mean... I liked it at least)
4. Unleash the Archers - Abyss
5. Visions of Atlantis - Wanderers
6. Ad Infinitum - Chapter I: Monarchy
7. Immortal - Pure Holocaust
8. My Dying Bride - The Ghost of Orion
9. Saves the Day - Through Being Cool (this just kinda sticks out like a sore thumb doesn't it)
10. Moonspell - Irreligious

Top songs (365 days):
1. Conception - No Rewind
2. Seven Spires - Ghost of a Dream
3. Seven Spires - No Words Exchanged
4. Cradle of Filth - Dusk and Her Embrace
5. Lifetime - Young, Loud & Scotty
6. Immortal - Unsilent Storms in the North Abyss
7. Seven Spires - Succumb
8. Conception - The Mansion
9. Type O Negative - Pyretta Blaze
10. AFI - This Celluloid Dream

Artists:
10: Rhapsody
09: CoF
08: Venom
07: Nektar
06: Scorpions
05: Prince
04: Hawkwind
03: Bowie
02: Absu
01: KISS

Albums:
10: KISS-The Elder
09: Impiety-Asateerul Awaleen
08: Soft Machine-Volume One
07: Nektar-Journey to the Centre of the Eye
06: Absu-Absu
05: Nocturnal Rites-In a Time of Blood and Fire
04: Absu-Tara
03: Nico Fidenco-Zombi Holocaust
02: Toni Van Duyne-Cosmic Dancer
01: Mother Goose-Stuffed

Man after my own heart - what era Hawkwind are you listening to ? and is KISS - The Elder actually any good ? (I've always given it a miss based on reputation, but it's top of your pile !)



You're not wrong in terms of the last.fm list, Van Halen & Anathema make appearances there once you're in 11-20 - I didn't buy that many 2020 albums, so we'll have to keep the mystery for the AOTY list I actually got to the point mid-lockdown earlier last year of manually uploading vinyl scrobbles. I stopped this when I realised I was bordering on bus spotter (train spotters but for buses, honest) territory

Good to see some old-school prog rock here.

Hawkwind's mid-70s era is their most played as far as these charts go.
The Elder is one of KISS' best if you're into pompous D&D fantasy.

Total scrobbles 45,300, Listening time 109 days 16 hours

There's something like a five minute average song length disparity between game music and metal that always heavily skews my charts, and working from home lead to my kids choosing half of my playlist, but black metal weeb list ahoy:

01 久石譲 (Joe Hisaishi)
02 近藤浩治 (Koji Kondo)
03 植松伸夫 (Nobuo Uematsu)
04 野見祐二 (Yuji Nomi)
05 RADWIMPS
06 Summoning
07 David Arkenstone
08 崎元仁 (Hitoshi Sakimoto)
09 菊田裕樹 (Hiroki Kikuta)
10 Mannheim Steamroller
11 平野義久 (Yoshihisa Hirano)
12 Russian Circles
13 Liturgy
14 Enslaved
15 Mystras
16 Obsequiae
17 Boris
18 잠비나이 (Jambinai)
19 Blind Guardian
20 Oranssi Pazuzu

15,208 Scrobbles, 36 days, 16 hours time

Gonna post the top 20:

1 Vargskelethor 416
2 近藤浩治 (Koji Kondo) 315
3 James Paddock 283
4 ThePlasmas 171
5 Macabre 169
6 Konami Kukeiha Club 166
7 植松伸夫 (Nobuo Uematsu) 141
8 Drawn and Quartered 134
9 David Wise 131
10 Deicide 127
11 VHS 124
12 God Dethroned 113
13 Fear Factory 104
14 Jay Reichard 103
15 Graveworm 100
16 Darren Mitchell 96
17 In Flames 96
18 Repulsion 96
19 Grant Kirkhope 93
20 Fukpig 89

Albums:
1 Super Ghostbusters Vargskelethor 140
2 FINAL FANTASY IV 植松伸夫 (Nobuo Uematsu) 137
3 The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past [SNES version] 近藤浩治 (Koji Kondo) 116
4 Horrified Repulsion 96
5 Diddy Kong Racing David Wise, Graeme Norgate 80
6 The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past [GBA version] Koji Kondo, Yuko Takehara 80
7 Hybrid Theory (20th Anniversary Edition) Linkin Park 74
8 Perfect Dark Grant Kirkhope 71
9 Super Mario World 近藤浩治 (Koji Kondo) 70
10 X68000 GRADIUS II GOFER no Yabou COMPLETE SOUNDTRACKS Konami Kukeiha Club 64
11 The Devils Congeries - Volume 3 Nunslaughter 62
12 The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 近藤浩治 (Koji Kondo) 59
13 Turok: Dinosaur Hunter Darren Mitchell 56
14 TimeSplitters 2 Graeme Norgate 56
15 Super Star Soldier Keita Hoshi, Nozomi Nakahashi 56
16 Lemmings [SNES version] Tomomi Hatakeyama 56
17 GoldenEye 007 Graeme Norgate & Grant Kirkhope 50
18 Sonic The Hedgehog 2 中村正人 (Masato Nakamura) 48
19 Plutonia 2 James Paddock 45
20 JIKKYOU OSHABERI PARODIUS ~forever with me~ Original Game Soundtrack Konami Kukeiha Club 45

I'm surprised by the amount of video game music above (even Sonic & Goldeneye ?!) - when do you listen to that stuff ? Or is it on shuffle lists ?

I have a very large collection of that stuff. I only put on full albums at a time so if I put them on it's the full soundtrack.

Not really being into video games much anymore, my occasional times checking out a game score, I'm often serendipitously surprised by the quality of them. I suspect it's an unmined treasure trove hidden from non-gamers.

Did not realize there were people still interested in Last.fm Last year was an interesting year, I aimed for 20,000 scrobbles last year and hit 26,568 scrobbles.

Top 10 artists:

1. FIN
2. White Lung
3. Aborted
4. Megadeth
5. Alter Bridge
6. Trivium
7. Immortal
8. Goo Goo Dolls
9. Enslaved
10. Darkthrone

Top 10 albums:

1. FIN - Refutable Arts of the Noble Reserve
2. FIN - The Furrows of Tradition
3. White Lung - Paradise
4. FIN - Arrows of A Dying Age
5. Megadeth - Rust in Peace
6. FIN - Fated by Will and Iron
7. Trivium - What the Dead Men Say
8. Aborted - The Necrotic Manifesto
9. Goo Goo Dolls - Superstar Car Wash
10. Immortal - Pure Holocaust

Top 10 Artists:

1. AC/DC
2. Rush
3. The Who
4. Van Halen
5. ZZ Top
6. Genesis
7. Carcass
8. King's X
9. Budgie
10. Rhino Bucket.

Previous years would've contained more metal and modern artists. Guess I'm slowly turning into a boomer.

Nice thread! Just got last fm running again maybe halfway through last year, but here are my top artists for 2020 anyway:

1. Sonata Arctica 721
2. VNV Nation 409
3. Bathory 371
4. Iron Maiden 332
5. Twisted Tower Dire 328
6. Cain's Offering 312
7. Burzum 247
8. Walpyrgus 224
9. Paysage d'Hiver 211
10. Insomnium 194

I missed that one and the one that clashed with Buzzcocks, but I think I caught all their other Auckland gigs from Sep 2007 onwards, plus their 21st anniversary gig in Wellington before that. I'm waiting for a chance to hear their debut tape so I can 'scrobble' them even more, as 600 Witches is a great song. They were my fav NZ band for some time, until I caught the Headless Chickens reunion and thoroughly enjoyed how well they recreated their sound, but SF is still a close second.

Hey, good to see other fans of theirs here. I particularly like their late 90s/mid-00s albums.

Nice! I enjoyed Empires and Judgement for a long time before checking out the rest of the discography. Saw them on the Automatic Empires tour in 2017 which was great.

I finally saw them in '14. I like that Ronan has been using more analog and modular synthesizers in recent years again instead of just plug-ins, but I enjoyed the music and songwriting more back when it was darker. Something like "Saviour", for example. Do you like other similar artists?

Yeah I agree, the vibe on Empires is my favorite of theirs, which does seem to be a common stance. I was pleased to find Noire pretty strong overall, especially compared to Transnational. I'm pretty limited in this arena but I am a fan of Kraftwerk, Covenant, The Future Sound of London, BT... Recs welcome!

Yeah, Noire I think was a significant step back up from the last few albums, and probably the best since Judgement. Covenant is a great band and definitely in the ballpark of VNV. I'd also suggest Assemblage 23, Mind.In.A.Box, Liquid Divine, and Seabound or Edge of Dawn to go further. VNV Nation's weakest aspect to me is vocally. Assemblage 23 is pretty similar, but with slightly better vocals. Seabound/Edge of Dawn (same vocalist with a different collaborator) has much better vocals, though is slightly weaker on synths. Mind.In.A.Box and Liquid Divine are slightly more genre-bending, a bit more instrumentally-oriented, with more processing on the vocals, but more complex and interesting synth and drum programming.

Kraftwerk, Future Sound of London, and BT are also good, though they're from different subgenres, both from each other and from VNV, and more mainstream, though still iconic.

Not a particularly high traffic listening year but always interesting to see! So 2020 looked like this:

Artists:
1 Delain
2 HIM
3 Nickleback (.... yeah...need to rectify that this year, too much easy listening!)
4 Avantasia
5 AFI
6 Matchbox 20
7 Within Temptation
8 Jimmy Eat World
9 Darren Hayes
10 Sigur Ros

Most played albums were Moonglow by Avantasia and Apocalypse and Chill by Delain. Got more of my music ripped now so can put more through scrabbles - finally got all my current Thin Lizzy collection ripped, yay!

I actually just went through a Thin Lizzy binge, going through most of their discography.

Nowt wrong with that my friend. They've got loads of great songs and at this point I could happily listen to Silver Side Up every week or two.

I do enjoy it! I quite like their first album for it's 90's sound nostalgia

Same - recently got my hands on a load of their discog from HMV - never had physical copies despite being one of my fave bands, so been listening a lot. What's your favourite album do you think? I've a lot of love for Thunder and Lightening.

There are only a handful of their songs that have stuck with me, but "Too Bad" is one of them.



That's definitely a fascinating one, Sykes gives them a different vibe than their 70s output. I'm still partial to Jailbreak and then maybe Fighting, mainly for the big hits on them. "The Boys Are Back In Town" is one of those songs I was enraptured by when it was on the radio when I was young, which led to me picking up a best of that I played quite a lot.