21 years of listening. 45,647 artists. From post-hardcore in college to spiritual jazz now. A map of everything at once.
Music is a big part of my life. I started my Last.fm account back when I was in college. It was actually my second account — my original account is still out there somewhere and I started using this one more and the rest was history.
When I started, it was all MP3s and scrobbling stuff I found online from all sorts of sources. I had MP3 players from the minute you could get one. I loved being able to take my tunes with me. I had a Zune. Every major streaming service from Zune Pass to Audiogalaxy to Rdio were all in my orbit too.
The thing that’s changed over time is the range of my tastes. I’ve always wanted to be into diverse music — it was just expensive, then it was hard to find or get introduced to. Having people connect me to their tastes has been my favorite part of the music journey over all of the years.
I wanted to use this retrospective as a chance to see what’s been shared. The songs, the albums — when I play them they immediately take me back to moments I’ve forgotten that immediately flood back.
I wanted to look back so I could look forward.
Picking my favorite records is too difficult for me because albums really do come at different times of life. I feel like it took me a while to get to the places I actually wanted to go.
Before I could have taste I had to develop it. Nobody is uninfluenced if you like music.
For me it was Mr. Collins, my high school and elementary school music teacher, who got us into jazz. It was the third grade teacher who played classical music for us in class for some strange reason. It was my parents playing contemporary music because they were young and they liked listening to music — their exposure to things like Jersey club and contemporary R&B were influential even though at the time I wasn’t listening to anything they were playing. My grandparents listening to the music of their childhood and their adulthood, because they were pretty young too, was also influential. Cousins playing things randomly. All of it shaped something.
Then I left home, went to the Air Force, went to college. Making friends who I would trade music with was a huge influencer in helping me shape my own musical journey. I had taste and interest, but other people turning me on to things I thought I didn’t like has been a big part of this journey for a long, long time.
The most genre-distant pair each year.
I started buying vinyl during the pandemic. 144 records and counting. These are the ones I also scrobbled heavy.
Under 50,000 global listeners on Last.fm.