Contents
Musical eras
Nine eras, found by comparing every month's artist mix with the six months before it (section 03) and then reading the results like a diary. Each card shows who defined the era, what you played most, and what changed at the border.
A musical autobiography, 2010 to today
Told entirely through listening behaviour: which machine you were on, which country you connected from, what you looped, what you skipped, and when the music stopped.
The first thing you ever pressed play on was
After a 63-day silence, Friday 14 May 2010 changes everything.
Volume multiplies by six: 9,016 listens, 570 hours, 48 songs on every listening day. This is a desk year, Windows XP and then Windows 7, and the pattern is albums on repeat while you work. On 1, 2 and 3 June you play Paul Oakenfold's
On 5 January 2012 the connection country becomes SG and stays there until July: 2,716 listens from Singapore, on Windows, with shuffle on for 44% of plays for the first and almost only time in your life. The song of the half-year is Adrian Lux's
12,246 listens and 777 hours, the most of any year, on a Mac for the first time from spring. The skip rate falls to 11%, the lowest ever, because you are mostly playing whole albums: Avicii's True (
UK dance radio is the register: Chase & Status'
The spring belongs to
2016 is the quietest year since 2010, 2,647 listens, and it sounds like a different person: Rumer's
The widest year of your life: 902 distinct artists, 360 of them new. The phone overtakes the Mac.
3,042 listens on a Mac and a phone, with a curious run of US connections every month from June to November. Nick Mulvey's
On 10 March 2020 you play The Apples'
Only 403 artists, the smallest catalogue since 2010, but the most loyal listening: Michael Kiwanuka's Light (42 plays), Kate Bush's Cloudbusting (39), Stats' Lose It, Harry Escott's Chess Game Shuffle, Foo Fighters' Home, Labrinth. A Chromecast is the main speaker for the first time, 1,339 plays. Todd Baker's
Max Richter's
Chilly Gonzales'
The first half is Basmati, LP Giobbi, Jillian Edwards, Andrew Ripp, Sparks for exactly one week in April, and the highest skip rate since 2009 (40%) with 43% of plays ended by a manual stop: music on a TV in a room, half-attended. Then on 30 June
4,896 listens, the most since 2014, and 265 hours.
Up to 28 August: 3,015 listens, 747 artists, 306 of them new, the highest discovery count since 2018.
Turning points
For every month, the artists you played are compared with the artists of the previous six months (cosine similarity on log-scaled play counts; 1.0 means identical, 0 means nothing in common). The dips are the months your taste changed fastest. The table lists the sharpest of them, with who arrived and who was never heard again for at least three months.
Reading the biggest ones: May 2010 is the Hybrid weekend, when the 2009 sampler was replaced wholesale. June 2019 is a folk summer (Nick Mulvey, George Ezra, Jack Johnson, Feist, Edward Sharpe) replacing the 2018 singer-songwriters in one go. July 2024 is DROELOE and Bonobo displacing the spring's Jillian Edwards and Andrew Ripp. August 2018 is the jazz week (Miles Davis, Chet Faker, Michael Kiwanuka, Maribou State, The xx) that pushed out isaac gracie and August Wilhelmsson.
Previously on Christian…
A recap for every year, generated from what you actually did: where you connected from, which device, how much you skipped, and the ten artists and songs that defined it.
Obsessed, then abandoned
Artists with at least 60 listens, ranked by a score that multiplies three things: intensity (the share of all their plays that landed inside their best 90-day window), abruptness (the share of plays that came before that window ended, so 100% means nothing after it), and the log of total plays. Only artists you have not touched for at least two years qualify.
Paul Oakenfold is the purest case in the data: 320 of 322 plays in three days of June 2011, then one play in 2013 and one in 2014. Beady Eye managed 81 plays in sixteen days of March 2014 and were never played again. Adele is the giant: 1,105 plays, 859 of them in the 90 days from 12 June 2011.
Musical exes
Artists you played at least 80 times and have not played for three years or more, ranked by how much of your life they took up. Relationship length runs from first play to last; peak month is when it was most intense.
Some of these are amicable: Röyksopp lasted thirteen years and 51 active months before fading. Some are not: Silver Swans were 249 plays in one month of 2013 and then the occasional nostalgic visit until a final play on 5 February 2022. DJ Shadow's Organ Donor was the after-midnight song of 2011 and has been silent since November 2015.
Second lives
Tracks that were played at least five times, disappeared for at least three years, and then came back for at least five more plays. Ranked by the size of the smaller life multiplied by the length of the silence.
Lost & Not Found is the champion: 105 plays in 2013, silence from October 2016 to October 2020, and then a steady second life that is still going in 2025. Mazzy Star's Into Dust is the only one whose second life (34 plays) is bigger than its first (21), after a gap of six years and ten months.
Songs you have loved for ten years or more
Tracks whose first and last plays are at least ten years apart, with at least eight plays. Enduring favourites were played in seven or more different calendar years and within the last two; nostalgia plays are everything else, usually a big early burst and a rare visit since.
Enduring favourites
Occasional nostalgia
Techno Fan by The Wombats has been played in fifteen consecutive calendar years, 2011 to 2025, which no other song manages. Gui Boratto's Beautiful Life is close behind (fifteen years, 2010 to 2024) and Aotearoa, Kids and Beneath Your Beautiful have thirteen each.
What 2010-you loved and 2026-you has apparently forgotten
Artists and tracks with real weight in 2010 that have had no play at all in the last three years, and, for balance, the 2010 artists you are still playing.
Forgotten artists
Forgotten tracks
Still here from 2010
Hybrid is the big exception in both directions: the 2010 discovery that carried you into 2011 and lasted until November 2023, but Empire, I Know, If I Survive and Beachcoma have all fallen silent. Katie Melua, the one thing you loved in 2009, came back in 2023.
How adventurous were you each year?
Five proxies per year, combined into a 0 to 100 score: the share of artists you had never played before, the share of listens that went to those new artists, the diversity of the artist mix (normalised entropy), and, counting against you, plays per track and the share of listens taken by the year's ten biggest songs.
The honest reading: the 2011 to 2014 years were high-volume and repetitive, with the ten biggest songs taking 14 to 20% of everything. From 2015 onwards the catalogue widened and the repeats thinned; 2017 and 2018 are the most adventurous grown-up years, and 2024 to 2026 hold steady in the high fifties despite the DROELOE and BOYY obsessions.
When did you become who you are now?
Each calendar year's artist mix compared with your last twelve months (September 2025 to August 2026), using the same cosine similarity as the turning points. The answer is blunt: your current taste is about two years old.
Of the older years, 2023 and 2022 are closest (Jungle, Tones And I, Florence, Biig Piig, The Kooks), and 2020 beats every earlier year: lockdown you, on shuffle, was the nearest earlier version of today. 2010 shares only 28 artists with the present, most of them Florence + The Machine, Goldfrapp and Massive Attack.
Bridge artists
Artists who appear in the top 30 of more than one era. These are the people who carried you from one phase to the next, or who you carried with you.
Avicii, Calvin Harris and Chase & Status each span five of the nine eras, which is why the dance-radio thread never quite broke. Florence + The Machine is the only artist in the top 30 of both the first era (2010) and the last (2026). Ellie Goulding spans the first four and then stops dead in 2023.
The family tree
Clusters of artists with the month you first played each one, arranged to show how one cluster appears to have led to the next. Read it as a diagram of descent: a seed from 2010 or 2011 at the root of each tree, and the 2024 to 2026 artists at the tips.
Two things stand out. The melodic house you play now sits at the end of the same branch as the radio dance of 2011 to 2015, reached via the deep-house summer of 2014; and the jazz-voice tree that began with Katie Melua in 2009 and Norah Jones in 2011 is what produced the swing years, Miles Davis in 2018, and the Boogie Belgique and Poldoore electro-swing of 2025.
Early discoveries
Artists you started playing well before they broke through, measured against the release or chart moment that made them widely known. Breakthrough dates are from general knowledge, first-play dates from your export.
Three days account for most of this table: 6 December 2013 (Jungle, Tove Lo, Hozier, Glass Animals, MØ, Vance Joy), 12 April 2017 (Lewis Capaldi, Dermot Kennedy, Harry Styles' solo debut, SYML, Bruno Major, Tom Grennan) and 22 January 2022 (Olivia Dean, Fred again.., Barry Can't Swim, TSHA, Maggie Rogers). Those were new-music playlist sessions, and they were unusually good ones.
The most statistically unusual thing about you
You listen in two modes and almost nothing in between. Mode one is a marathon: one song or one album, on repeat, for hours, often all day. Mode two is a sampler: more than half of everything you have ever played was played exactly once. Most people sit somewhere on a curve between those two; you sit at both ends of it.
The longest same-song runs
Days with more than sixteen hours of audio
All four are on Windows machines before 2013. The Mac years never produced one, which suggests an office PC left running rather than a person listening for 24 hours, though 399 plays of one album is still a choice somebody made.
The same pattern shows in the gaps. Your 660 most-played tracks (4.4% of the total) account for half of all listens, and the top 1%, 149 songs, take 22.8%. At the other end, 8,100 tracks and 1,980 artists were played once and never again. The middle ground of songs played, say, five to twenty times over several years is thinner for you than the two extremes would predict. Sections 05, 06 and 16 are all really the same finding seen from different angles: when you like something, you play it until it is finished.
Binges
Your most extreme obsessions over 24 hours, 7 days and 30 days, for artists, albums and individual songs. Only entities with at least 15 lifetime listens are considered. Pick a window.
Skips
A skip here is any play that ended inside 30 seconds. Overall you skip about one play in five, but the rate depends enormously on how a song started: you almost never skip something that started because the previous track finished, and you skip more than half of what you clicked on yourself.
Songs you nearly always skip (10+ plays)
Songs you almost never skip (40+ plays)
Sam Smith's Stay With Me is the cleanest record: 158 plays, three skips. Todd Baker's An Endless Desert is the strangest: 227 plays, 74% of them stopped inside 30 seconds, 137 of them started with the play button between five and eight in the morning. That is an alarm, or something very like one.
After midnight
Around 8% of your listens fall between midnight and 5 am local time. The table shows which artists are disproportionately likely to be the ones playing then, compared with their share of your listening overall (minimum 30 plays).
Sophie Zelmani is the most nocturnal artist you have: 50 plays between 22:14 on 13 August 2011 and 00:57 the following morning, 34 of them after midnight, and none since. Model Man are the modern equivalent, 65 of 158 plays in the small hours of 2025. Bruce Springsteen after midnight is a 2018 habit.
Weekday you, weekend you
You are a weekday listener. Only 23% of listens fall on a Saturday or Sunday, Friday is your biggest day, Saturday your smallest, and the weekend version of you skips a little more and shuffles a little more.
Weekend you plays Adele, Michael Bublé, Miles Davis and the new melodic house (BOYY, Maribou State, WDL, Thunder Jackson). Weekday you barely over-indexes on anyone, because weekday you is most of you; the artists that do lean weekday are the desk binges, Paul Oakenfold, Hans Zimmer, the House of Cards theme, Beady Eye and Mychael Danna.
Morning, afternoon, evening, late night
Four versions of your taste by local time of day. Each card lists the artists most over-represented in that slot and what you actually played most.
Morning you is Chilly Gonzales (Basmati at five times its normal rate), Taylor Swift and Olivia Dean, and the alarm-shaped Todd Baker. Afternoon you is the desk: Avicii, Calvin Harris, Muse, film scores. Evening you leans towards guitars and voices: Keli Holiday, Romy, Jake Bugg, Oasis, Angus & Julia Stone, Royel Otis. Late-night you is Sophie Zelmani, Mild Minds, Model Man and Jon Brion.
Groundhog days
Pairs of days at least a year apart with remarkably similar listening, measured by cosine similarity of the songs played on each (minimum twelve listens per day). Shown once per later day so the same pair does not repeat.
The strongest is 25 September 2021 against 30 March 2024, similarity 0.81 with 25 shared songs, both of them a Chromecast afternoon of Jungle's Busy Earnin', Gnarls Barkley's Crazy, LunchMoney Lewis' Bills and Snakehips' All My Friends. The most distant is 20 January 2017 replaying 2 November 2011 almost song for song: Minuit's 25 Bucks and Aotearoa, Gui Boratto's Beautiful Life, Hybrid's Empire, five years and two months apart.
Streaks
The longest run of consecutive days on which you listened to the same artist at least once, plus the longest run of listening days of any kind and the longest silences.
Calvin Harris holds the record: thirteen days in a row from 2 to 14 October 2011, 86 plays, almost all of them Feel So Close. The cluster of eleven-day streaks starting 22 July 2013 is one fortnight in which Daft Punk, Florence, Generationals, Silver Swans, MRSA, Chase & Status, Justice and Marteria were all played every day: the peak of the big year.
The Christian Music Awards
Ten categories, every year from 2010, decided entirely by the data. Artist of the Year is by minutes played; Discovery of the Year is the new artist with the most plays; the 48-hour award is the most plays of one song in any two-day window; Song I Refused to Let Die is the year's most played track first heard at least three years earlier; Biggest Comeback needs at least two silent years and fifteen prior plays; Most Loyal is the artist active in the most months; One-Week Wonder needs 80% of the year's plays inside seven days and no plays in any later year; Most Brutal Abandonment is the year's most played artist never heard again; Apparently I Really Needed This Song is the most plays of one track in one day; Lifetime Achievement is cumulative plays.
The dinner party
Seventeen versions of you, one long table, no shuffle allowed. Each year gets a persona built from what it actually played, then they are all sat down together with a bottle of wine and told to agree on the music. They do not.
2010: The Windows XP Purist
Plays whole albums, front to back, on a Windows laptop, in Britain, and nowhere else. Shuffle rate 2%. Discovered Hybrid on 14 May and put 275 listens through the speakers four days later, the biggest day of the year. Owns 239 Hybrid plays, 138 Goldfrapp and 134 of The Prodigy, and considers David Guetta a perfectly respectable evening out.
Signature dish Empire - Original
2011: The Adele Completist
Went from 1,234 listens to 9,016 in a single year and refuses to see anything odd in it. Played Adele 926 times, including 399 plays on 18 June alone, and still had room for 505 of Muse and 442 of Foster The People. Bought the Vexille Soundtrack in June and played it 320 times in three months, then never again after 2014.
Signature dish Make You Feel My Love
2012: The Singapore Repeater
Spent half the year in Singapore (3,268 plays there against 2,364 at home) and most of it inside one song. Teenage Crime - Radio Edit went round 306 times, 222 of them consecutively on 28 May. Discovered shuffle, which jumped from 11% to 44%, though it is hard to see why when the answer was always Adrian Lux. Also quietly played Video Games a lot.
Signature dish Teenage Crime - Radio Edit
2013: The Avicii Summer
The loudest person at the table and the most committed: 12,246 listens, 777 hours, and the lowest skip rate you have ever managed at 11%. Played Avicii 822 times, Wake Me Up 123 times on 22 August, and Let Me Know Now 352 times before dropping Silver Swans for good. Bought a Mac. Spent June in the US. Found Klangkarussell in August.
Signature dish Wake Me Up
2014: The Julia Loop
Summer in Switzerland (1,890 plays), a first car speaker (816 plays), and one song for all of it. Julia was played 251 times, 72 of them on 21 October. Balanced this with Matt and Kim (264), Sam Smith (248) and the entire Life of Pi (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) score, 211 times. Shuffle back down to 7%: knows exactly what is coming next and wants it.
Signature dish Julia
2015: The Radio Mix Devotee
Believes the radio edit is the definitive version. Played Robin Schulz 285 times, mostly Sun Goes Down (feat. Jasmine Thompson) - Radio Mix (155) and Headlights (feat. Ilsey) (129). Ran Linux for 1,335 plays, which is the sort of thing this year mentions. Softer edges too: Line Of Fire 77 times, and Florence + The Machine back at 115 plays.
Signature dish Sun Goes Down (feat. Jasmine Thompson) - Radio Mix
2016: The Quiet Swing
The year that turned the volume down. 2,647 listens and 156 hours, the least since 2010, with a skip rate of 28% and a shuffle rate of 3%: a person who knows precisely what they do not want. What they did want was I Believe in You 64 times, Swing Republic, Get A Move On! and Michael Bublé in December. Spain, 201 plays.
Signature dish I Believe in You
2017: The Singer-Songwriter on Android
First year the phone mattered (1,470 Android plays) and first year the car speaker nearly matched the laptop. Found August Wilhelmsson in November and played Somewhere In Between 66 times before Christmas, alongside May I Have This Dance (63). Biggest day of the year was Christmas Eve, 193 listens, almost certainly Michael Bublé. Logged 95 plays from Andorra.
Signature dish Somewhere In Between
2018: The Oh Wonder Devotee
Played Oh Wonder 308 times, three times more than anyone else that year, and yet no single Oh Wonder track broke 40 plays: a whole-album person. Balanced the pop with 103 plays of Miles Davis and 56 of Title Credits. Skip rate up to 26%, shuffle up to 31%, Android overtook the Mac. Restless.
Signature dish Livewire
2019: The Nice To Meet Ya Apologist
Officially the Nick Mulvey year: In Your Hands - Single Version 101 times. Unofficially the year Nice To Meet Ya was played 90 times and nobody was told. Also 43 plays of a Spa Music track and 36 of Nicole Kidman singing One Day I'll Fly Away - From "Moulin Rouge" Soundtrack. Will change the subject if asked.
Signature dish Nice To Meet Ya
2020: The Lockdown Kings
Shuffle rate 46%, the highest you have ever reached, because nobody was going anywhere and the queue could look after itself. Except for Kings (feat. Fred Wesley), played 70 times on purpose. Biggest day of the year was Christmas Day, 153 listens. Also La Vie En Rose, Higher Love and the My Life Is Going On - Música Original De La Serie De TV La Casa De Papel / Money Heist theme, which dates it precisely.
Signature dish Kings (feat. Fred Wesley)
2021: The Speaker in the Kitchen
The kitchen speaker became the main platform (1,339 plays) and the taste went with it: Light 42 times, Cloudbusting 39, Lose It 37, Home 32. Only 403 artists and 111 new ones, the narrowest year since 2010. Comfortable. Probably making dinner while the rest of them argue.
Signature dish Cloudbusting
2022: The Recomposer
Played Max Richter 109 times, nearly all of it Vivaldi taken apart and put back together: Richter: Recomposed By Max Richter: Vivaldi, The Four Seasons: Spring 1 - MBF Version 68 times and Spring 1 - 2012 another 31. Biggest day 22 January, 182 listens. Then, without warning, Life Is A Highway 20 times and Cracklin' Rosie. Went to Singapore and Australia and told nobody what was in the headphones.
Signature dish Spring 1 - 2012
2023: The Basmati Alarm
The quietest year since 2010 by hours (144) and the most fragmented: 716 artists, shuffle at 41%, and a Samsung TV joining the list of devices. The one constant was Basmati, 49 plays, most of them at the hour the alarm goes. Discovery of the year was Drones Club with 19 plays, which tells you how thinly spread everything else was. February in France, 446 plays.
Signature dish Basmati
2024: The DROELOE Latecomer
Skipped 40% of everything, the highest rate on record, until 30 June, when DROELOE arrived and got 180 plays in six months. Foolish Fish 32 times, Basmati still 69 times in the mornings, LP Giobbi and GAMPER & DADONI arriving as the melodic house door opened. Netherlands 545 plays, Australia 289. Turns up to everything half an hour late and insists it was worth the wait.
Signature dish Foolish Fish
2025: The Sheepish Swiftie
The busiest year since 2014: 4,896 listens and 265 hours, with 1,390 plays through the television. The public record is Clarity (47), Shallow Water (46) and Dancing2 (55). The private record is 118 Taylor Swift plays, top track Message In A Bottle (Taylor's Version) (From The Vault), mostly in the morning. Skip rate 30%. Has an explanation ready and hopes not to need it.
Signature dish Clarity
2026: The Love Chains Evangelist
Found BOYY on 5 February, played Love Chains 29 times in its first 48 hours from 28 February, and is at 81 plays with four months of the year still to go. Spent 919 plays in Germany. Backs it up with Teardrop (52), A Moment Apart (46) and Weather (29). Shuffle 12%, skip 21%: settled, for now. Biggest day 17 May, 127 listens.
Signature dish Love Chains
The script
Arrivals
2010: I have brought Disappear Here on a laptop. It is a Windows laptop. We will play it in order, from the start, and nobody will touch shuffle. I have never touched shuffle. Two per cent, and I think that was an accident.
2011: I have brought Adele. All of it. I have brought 926 plays of Adele and I am prepared to use them.
2013: Hi. Sorry. Hi. Is there an aux? Is there a speaker? I have 12,246 listens in me and I am not sitting down until someone plays Wake Me Up.
2016: Could we not.
2012: Nobody is playing anything until we settle the seating plan, because I was in Singapore for half the year and I would like the chair nearest the door.
2021: I will be in the kitchen. The speaker is in the kitchen. If anyone wants Cloudbusting it will be on in the kitchen, at a reasonable volume, and I will not be moving it.
2023: Has anyone got the time? I need to be up at seven. Is there a piano in this house. I need Basmati or I do not get up.
2026: Sorry, sorry, I was texting. Has anyone here heard Love Chains? No? Right. You are about to.
Starters, and the matter of repetition
2015: Before we eat, I would like it minuted that I played Sun Goes Down (feat. Jasmine Thompson) - Radio Mix 155 times and I regret nothing. The radio mix is the correct mix. The album version has an intro nobody asked for.
2014: A hundred and fifty-five is a warm-up. Julia, 251 plays. Seventy-two of them on 21 October, in a single day, back in Britain after the summer. That is not a habit. That is a discipline.
2012: Discipline. Right. On 28 May 2012, in an apartment in Singapore, I played Teenage Crime - Radio Edit 222 times, consecutively, without a break, and I want everyone to understand that this was a choice. Three hundred and six plays that year. I have since had it described to me as a cry for help. It was hot and I had one working speaker.
2014: Two hundred and twenty-two consecutive.
2012: Consecutive. I checked. There were no other songs in between. I would know. I was there.
2011: I was going to stay quiet about this, but on 18 June 2011 I played Adele 399 times in one day. Three hundred and ninety-nine. It was a Saturday. The album was 19, and I know what you are all thinking, and no, it was not 21, everyone had 21. I went back to the debut like a scholar.
2013: One hundred and twenty-three Wake Me Up on 22 August. In August. When it came out. I was early, is my point. Some of you were late to things.
2024: I heard that.
2016: I would just like to say that I skipped 28% of everything that year and shuffled 3%. I did not repeat anything 222 times. I played I Believe in You 64 times across twelve months, like an adult, and otherwise I listened to Swing Republic and did not bother anyone.
2013: You did 2,647 listens. In a year. I did that by March.
2016: Yes, and how are your ears.
Mains, in which the table divides
2013: Right. Case for the prosecution. Summer 2013. Addicted To You, Wake Me Up, Liar Liar, 822 plays of Avicii in a single year, plus Sonnentanz - Radio Edit and Let Me Know Now 352 times, and an 11% skip rate, which is the lowest anybody at this table has ever managed. I committed. I did not dabble. I was in America for June and I still put 12,246 listens through.
2016: And then three years later we were sitting in the quiet with 156 hours for the whole year and Get A Move On! on in the background, and it was lovely, and we could hear ourselves think.
2013: You played Michael Bublé in December.
2016: Everyone at this table played Michael Bublé in December. 2017 did 111 plays of him. 2017 had Christmas Eve as its biggest day of the year. Do not start.
2017: That is a fair characterisation and I will not be taking questions.
2018: Can I say something about Oh Wonder? Three hundred and eight plays. Whole albums. Not one track over 40. That is how you do it. You do not sit on one song like a hen. You let the record breathe. Also 103 plays of Miles Davis, thank you.
2012: A hen.
2018: Two hundred and twenty-two consecutive.
2019: While we are being honest. And I want to say first that my top song was In Your Hands - Single Version, 101 plays, and it is a beautiful record about presence and letting go.
2020: Go on.
2019: Ninety plays of Nice To Meet Ya.
2010: Who?
2019: He was in a band. It has a very good bassline. Ninety plays. Also 43 plays of a track by an artist literally called Spa Music and 36 of Nicole Kidman singing One Day I'll Fly Away - From "Moulin Rouge" Soundtrack. It was a strange year. Can we move on.
2020: Nothing to declare here except Kings (feat. Fred Wesley) 70 times and a shuffle rate of 46%, because there was nowhere to be and the algorithm could do the walking. Christmas Day was my biggest day. 153 listens. Everyone else had gone to bed.
2022: May I. Max Richter. One hundred and nine plays. Richter: Recomposed By Max Richter: Vivaldi, The Four Seasons: Spring 1 - MBF Version, 68 of them, plus 31 of Spring 1 - 2012, which is the same piece with a different coat on. I was the first person at this table to listen to Vivaldi on purpose and I would like credit.
2013: You also played Life Is A Highway twenty times.
2022: It came up. Things come up.
2010: Nothing came up in my year. I chose everything. Shuffle was a rumour. Empire - Original, Breathe, Number 1, She Said, in the order the artist intended, on a Windows machine, in England. You all sound exhausted.
2011: You did 1,234 listens. I did 9,016. Nine thousand. You were a hobby.
Pudding, and a late arrival
2024: Sorry. Sorry. Is there any left. I know, I know. I skipped 40% of everything until the end of June and then I found DROELOE on the 30th and it fixed me. One hundred and eighty plays in six months. Foolish Fish. You have to hear Foolish Fish.
2025: We have all heard Foolish Fish. I heard it 124 more times after you left. Sit down.
2024: Half an hour late is not late. In listening terms I was early. 2013 was early. 2024 was early.
2013: You were not early. I was early.
2026: Nobody here is early. I found BOYY on 5 February this year and by 28 February I had put Love Chains through 29 times in 48 hours. Twenty-nine. That is a pace 2012 would respect.
2012: Twenty-nine in two days is a pace I would call a Tuesday morning.
2026: Eighty-one plays by August. And To Be Low, 25. I am building a catalogue.
2010: You have four songs by them.
2026: They have released four songs.
2021: (from the kitchen) Is 2025 going to say it or shall I.
2025: Say what.
2021: A hundred and eighteen.
2025: Fine. Fine. One hundred and eighteen plays of Taylor Swift. Mostly Message In A Bottle (Taylor's Version) (From The Vault). Mostly in the morning. Mostly on the television, which I did not know counted. Before anyone says anything, 2025 was 4,896 listens and 265 hours, the busiest year since 2014, and Clarity was the top track, 47 plays, and Elderbrook and Maribou State and Bonobo were all in there. She is one artist out of 637.
2026: A hundred and twenty-seven in the last twelve months, actually, second only to Elderbrook.
2025: Whose side are you on.
2026: I also have Harry Styles in my top twelve, so, yours, reluctantly.
2016: I think it is nice that you have all found things to be embarrassed about. I found Rumer. Nobody is embarrassed about Rumer.
2013: Nobody has heard of Rumer.
2016: And nobody at your wedding-marquee summer could hear anything at all. Wake Me Up is what the DJ puts on when he has run out of ideas and the bride's uncle is asking for something everyone knows.
Departures
That was the moment. 2013 stood up, took the speaker off the table, said something about 777 hours being more music than 2016 would hear in three years (true, as it happens: 2016, 2017 and 2018 add up to 667), and left through the garden with Addicted To You still going on their phone. 2011 followed shortly afterwards, not out of solidarity but because 2016 had also described Adele as "what you put on when the guests are getting their coats", and 866 plays of 19 do not sit still for that. 2012 held the door for both of them, being nearest to it, and then sat back down, because 2012 has been through worse than a dinner party.
2024 left half an hour before the end, on principle, still explaining Foolish Fish to 2010, who had not asked, and who packed up the Windows laptop with the specific dignity of someone whose 91 hours were played in the right order.
The washing up fell to 2021 and 2023, which surprised nobody. 2021 had been in the kitchen all evening anyway, standing next to the only speaker that mattered to it, and 2023 was awake because 2023 is always awake at the hour Basmati goes off. 2026 dried, badly, and kept trying to put Love Chains on. 2021 said no.
What actually played, while the plates went back in the cupboard, was Lost & Not Found. It is the one song most of the table had in common: 170 plays between 2013 and 2025, gone from the record entirely between October 2016 and October 2020, then back with 55 more. 2013 had it first. 2020 brought it back. 2021 had it as their top Chase & Status track. 2023 too. It is, on the evidence, the song you return to when the argument is over, and it was still going when 2023 turned the light off.
The playlist exchange
Two of you, sixteen years apart, each handed a blank twelve-track playlist and told to make it for the other out of their own year's listening. 2010 has a Windows laptop, 91 hours of listening, a 23% skip rate and no shuffle to speak of. 2026 has an Android phone, a Samsung television, a flat in Germany for part of the year and Love Chains. Neither has heard the other's music.
From 2010, for 2026
Everything here was played in 2010 (or, for two of them, the tail end of 2009), on Windows, in Britain, in album order.
- Empire - Original Hybrid, 2010, 15 plays that year, 148 lifetimeThe first real obsession, 14 May 2010 onwards. Orchestral breaks with a vocal. Non-negotiable opener.
- Ooh La La Goldfrapp, 138 plays of the artist in 2010Glam disco, Supernature. 2010 assumes this is still the standard for dancing.
- Breathe The Prodigy, top track of 134 in 2010Because the future needs reminding what a snare sounds like.
- Love Is Gone David Guetta, 54 plays in 2010The house track 2010 thinks is a bit cheeky. It is not aware of what is coming in 2011.
- She Said Plan B, 15 plays in 2010Northern soul from Forest Gate, courtroom concept album. 2010 thinks 2026 will find this "quite grown up".
- October Daze (feat. Tina Grace) Nitin Sawhney, 21 plays in 2010The late-night one. Strings, a whispered vocal, a bassline that goes for a walk.
- Help Yourself Perry, 20 plays, the most played track of 2010A single track by an artist you have never played anything else by. 2010 has no idea this is unusual.
- Satellite Lena, 16 plays in 2010The Eurovision winner. Included without irony. 2010 is a fan.
- Nine Million Bicycles Katie Melua, from the first weeks of the record in 2009The very first thing you were playing when the history begins, March 2009.
- Good Luck (Feat Lisa Kekaula) Basement Jaxx, 15 plays in 2009Strings, a soul vocal and a breakbeat. The whole 2009 to 2010 sound in four minutes.
- Teardrop Massive Attack, first played 18 May 2010Found on the same day as the big Hybrid session. 2010 considers this the definitive Teardrop and will not be told otherwise.
- So Easy Röyksopp, first played 25 May 2010, 102 lifetime playsThe closer. Melody AM. 2010 imagines 2026 hearing this on a Windows laptop at midnight and understanding.
From 2026, for 2010
Everything here was played in 2026, mostly on a phone, a good deal of it in Germany. Steal, Aperture and Man I Need were on the long list and did not fit.
- Love Chains BOYY, 81 plays since 5 FebruaryDiscovery of the year. 29 plays in the first 48 hours. Goes first so 2010 knows what it is dealing with.
- Teardrop Elderbrook, 52 plays in 2026, 77 in the last twelve monthsPlaced here deliberately, because 2010 will assume it is the Massive Attack one. It is not.
- A Moment Apart ODESZA, 46 plays in 2026The nearest thing 2026 has to Hybrid: a big orchestral electronic build. Peace offering.
- Weather WDL, 29 playsWeekend music. Loose, warm, a house record that does not hurry.
- Love Sick Doctor Thunder Jackson, 22 plays, all from 2026Guitars, swagger, a bit of Prince. 2026 wants to see whether 2010 still has that in it.
- Here We Go Norman, 31 plays since MarchTwo songs by the artist in the whole history and this is 31 of the 37 plays. A single-song artist, which 2010 will recognise from Perry.
- adore u Fred again.., 23 playsChopped vocal, piano, a beat that arrives late. The 2026 template, and the one most likely to baffle a Windows laptop.
- Dancing2 Keli Holiday, 67 lifetime plays since August 2025, 71 in the last twelve monthsEvening music, disco chassis. Sent to 2010 as a direct descendant of Ooh La La.
- Every Time Boogie Belgique, 24 playsElectro-swing with a vinyl crackle. 2010 was playing Max Sedgley and Mint Royale; this is where that road went.
- You've Got The Love - Jamie xx Rework Florence + The Machine, your top Florence track of 20262010 first played Florence on 30 December 2010, with one day of the year left. This is a message from the far end of that.
- Sinner The Last Dinner Party, 35 playsTheatrical, harmonised, a bit Goldfrapp in its stagecraft. Also, given the section title, hard to leave off.
- The Fate of Ophelia Taylor Swift, 7 plays of this, 127 of the artist in the last twelve months2026 has decided that if it has to own this, 2010 can share it.
How 2026 would take 2010's playlist
Predictions are based on what 2026 has actually done with these artists, rather than what it says it would do.
| Track | Verdict | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Empire - Original | tolerate | Hybrid was last played in November 2023. 2026 respects it the way you respect a school you no longer visit. |
| Ooh La La | love | Goldfrapp was played as recently as April 2026, 151 lifetime plays of this one song. Still in rotation. |
| Breathe | tolerate | The Prodigy also went quiet in November 2023. Good for one run, then 2026 reaches for Fred again... |
| Love Is Gone | skip | David Guetta was last played in August 2023 and the whole catalogue is 275 plays; 2026 has moved on to quieter house. |
| She Said | skip | Plan B has not been played since February 2022. Nothing against it. It simply does not come up. |
| October Daze (feat. Tina Grace) | skip | Nitin Sawhney last appeared in October 2020. 2026 gets its strings from ODESZA now. |
| Help Yourself | skip | Twenty-seven lifetime listens, last in March 2019, all the same song. 2026 does not know who Perry is either. |
| Satellite | tolerate | Lena last surfaced in December 2022, and 2026 has 127 Taylor Swift plays to its name, so it has forfeited the right to sneer. |
| Nine Million Bicycles | love | Katie Melua was played in March 2026 and had 27 plays in 2023. A weekend artist across the whole record. Safe. |
| Good Luck (Feat Lisa Kekaula) | tolerate | Basement Jaxx last played October 2023. 2026 will let it run and check the phone. |
| Teardrop | love | This one vanished from January 2013 to October 2019 and came back; Massive Attack was played in May 2026. 2026 will also point out it has its own Teardrop. |
| So Easy | tolerate | Röyksopp has 303 lifetime plays and none since August 2023. Fond, slightly dusty, allowed to finish. |
How 2010 would take 2026's playlist
2010's verdicts are inferred from its habits: album-order listener, 23% skip rate, a taste running from Hybrid and The Prodigy to Katie Melua and, without embarrassment, Lena.
| Track | Verdict | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Love Chains | love | A hook-first electronic record with a vocal, which is what 2010 heard in Love Is Gone. 2010 will ask what else they have and be told: three songs. |
| Teardrop | tolerate | 2010 will be annoyed it is not Massive Attack, then grudgingly let it run. Once. |
| A Moment Apart | love | The build, the strings, the drop: it is Disappear Here with a 2017 production budget. The easiest sell on the list. |
| Weather | tolerate | 2010 has not yet learned to let a house track idle. It will wait for a drop that is not coming. |
| Love Sick Doctor | skip | 2010's guitar tolerance ran to Plan B and The White Stripes. Falsetto over a funk guitar is a bridge too far for a Windows laptop. |
| Here We Go | skip | Too loose, too talky. 2010 wants a chorus by the first minute and will have moved on. |
| adore u | tolerate | 2010 will hear the chopped vocal and think it is a broken file. Will keep listening out of confusion, which counts. |
| Dancing2 | love | Disco chassis, big chorus, a straight line from Supernature. 2010 will play it twice, which for 2010 is a standing ovation. |
| Every Time | love | 2010 had Max Sedgley on eleven times, top track Happy (Make You Happy) - Go Home Productions Remix. Electro-swing was already in the house. |
| You've Got The Love - Jamie xx Rework | love | 2010 discovered Florence + The Machine with one day of the year left. This will feel like being handed the sequel early. |
| Sinner | tolerate | Theatrical enough to intrigue a Goldfrapp listener, guitar-heavy enough to lose one. 2010 will finish it and not go back. |
| The Fate of Ophelia | skip | 2010 will skip it within thirty seconds, then feel a chill it cannot explain, and go back to Satellite as if that were different. |
The letters
2010 to 2026
Dear 2026,
Thank you for the playlist. I listened to it in order, obviously. I have some questions. Why are there two Teardrops and why is the wrong one yours. Why does the man in track seven sound as if he has been cut up and reassembled by someone who lost the instructions. And who is BOYY, and why do they only have four songs, and why have you played one of them 81 times when I have managed to play the whole of Disappear Here, in order, several times?
That said. A Moment Apart is very good and I would like to know how they got that string sound. Dancing2 is what I hoped Goldfrapp would sound like in the future, so well done there. And the Florence one: I only found her on 30 December, so it is nice to know that lasted.
I have not listened to track twelve. I am not going to listen to track twelve. I have Satellite for that sort of thing.
Please look after the laptop.
2010
2026 to 2010
Dear 2010,
The laptop is gone. Everything is on the phone now, and some of it is on the television, which you would not believe. I listened to yours on a train in Germany, and I want you to know that I did not skip So Easy, even though I have not played them since 2023, because I remembered exactly where I was when you first put it on.
Ooh La La still gets played. I had it on in April. Katie Melua still gets played, on weekends, which I think you would find funny. Massive Attack came back after a six-year gap in 2019 and I have no explanation. The rest, honestly, I have let go of. David Guetta did not age the way you hoped. Perry turned out to be one song for both of us.
About track twelve. You will listen to her eventually. Around 2025, on a television, in the morning, 118 times. I am telling you now so that it is not a shock.
You were right about album order, for what it is worth. I am back down to 12% shuffle. It took sixteen years.
2026
The Christian Stock Exchange
Treat every artist as a listed company and their share price as the percentage of all your listens they held over the trailing three months. What follows is the market retrospective, 2010 to 2026: the bull runs, the collapses, the one-song bubbles and the small caps that quietly paid out for a decade.
Bull markets
The exchange opened in May 2010 with a single dominant issue. Hybrid listed at an instant 28.6% of the market, a founding stock in the truest sense, since for a few weeks it more or less was the market. Goldfrapp listed the same month and hit its own all-time high of 15.2% immediately, and David Guetta followed in June and ran to 29.8% by August 2010 on the strength of a catalogue that would eventually total only 275 plays. Those are the prices of a thin market: with 91 hours traded in the whole of 2010, a few evenings with one album could move a share by twenty points.
The first true bull run belonged to Adele. Listed in May 2010, the stock climbed through the spring of 2011 and in June reached 35.7% of all listens, the highest share any artist has ever held on this exchange and a record that has now stood for fifteen years. The fundamentals behind it were 856 plays in 30 days, and 399 of those on a single Saturday, 18 June 2011. No stock has since come within eight points.
The second was Avicii, a longer and broader run. Listed in August 2011 on the back of Levels - Radio Edit, the stock built steadily for two years and peaked at 18.9% in October 2013, in the afterglow of a summer in which Wake Me Up was played 123 times in one day and Addicted To You went on to become the most played track in the company's history. Over its life the stock traded for 94 active months and accumulated 1,427 plays, the largest volume of any listing.
Alongside it, three mid caps had their moment. Muse listed in December 2010 and touched 13.9% in October 2011 with 846 plays over its life. Foster The People listed in July 2011 and ran to 13.4% by January 2012, on the way to 1,023 plays and the most played album on the exchange, Torches. Jungle listed in December 2013 and hit 15.1% in December 2014, a twelve-month run built almost entirely on Julia.
Crashes
The market's defining feature is that its highs do not hold. Adele went from 35.7% in June 2011 to 0% by November of the same year: five months from record high to no trades at all. It last traded in February 2024.
Avicii took longer to fall and fell just as far, from 18.9% in October 2013 to 0% by September 2014. The Kooks tracked it almost to the month: listed August 2011, all-time high of 13.7% in January 2014, zero by September 2014. That autumn was a general correction: the Swiss summer ended and the 2014 portfolio was sold down. The Kooks, though, still trades, with 44 plays in the past year and a last transaction in May 2026, whereas Avicii has not traded since October 2024.
The steepest crashes are the more recent ones. Oh Wonder listed in June 2015 and spent three and a half years as a quiet holding before an extraordinary spike to 24.9% in January 2019, then nothing: 0% by August 2019. Robin Schulz listed in April 2015, was at 22.5% by May and had gone to zero by January 2016, a full cycle inside nine months. And DROELOE listed in June 2024, hit 26.7% in September 2024 and was down to 0.8% by December, though it has continued to trade in small volumes and was last seen in May 2026.
Bubbles
A crash is a stock that was worth something and then was not. A bubble never reflected anything you could call a catalogue, and this exchange has specialised in them.
The purest example is Adrian Lux: listed August 2011, all-time high 27.8% in July 2012, delisted to 0% by May 2013, 530 lifetime plays of which essentially all were one song, Teenage Crime - Radio Edit. The market was in Singapore at the time and appears to have had one working speaker. Paul Oakenfold is the same shape compressed: listed June 2011 at 14.2%, traded for three months, 320 plays of the Vexille Soundtrack in June 2011 alone, delisted April 2014. Silver Swans listed in April 2013, peaked at 9.7% in June, traded for only 16 active months in total and was delisted in February 2022, with 376 plays and a single track, Let Me Know Now, accounting for nearly all of them.
DJ Shadow fits here too. It peaked at 12.8% in May 2011 on Organ Donor - Extended Overhaul, accumulated 312 plays and was delisted in November 2015. Klangkarussell did the same in miniature, listing in August 2013 and hitting 8.3% in October 2013 on two versions of Sonnentanz (Sun Don't Shine). Matt and Kim reached 10.2% in July 2014 with a more evenly spread book of 350 plays and still went the same way.
The lesson the market has never learned is that any stock over 20% is a bubble. Hybrid, David Guetta, Adele, Adrian Lux, Oh Wonder, Robin Schulz and DROELOE all cleared that line and every one of them was at or near zero within eighteen months.
Surprise IPOs
Most listings arrive gradually. A few arrive at a sprint. BOYY is the reference case: listed in February 2026, and in its first 48 hours from 28 February the market bought 29 plays of Love Chains. It now holds 112 plays for the year and is the third-largest stock of the past twelve months on the strength of, at the time of writing, four songs.
DROELOE was the previous record for a debut, listing on 30 June 2024 into a portfolio that had been skipping 40% of everything and reaching 26.7% within three months. Robin Schulz did something similar in April 2015; Paul Oakenfold opened at 14.2% in June 2011 and never traded higher.
The odd one out is Michael Bublé: listed August 2011, all-time high 12.5% in January 2017, only 19 active months in total, and every one of them a December or a January. It is less a stock than a seasonal derivative: 179 plays in the 20 to 31 December windows across the record, and nothing for the other ten months.
Comebacks
Calvin Harris is the market's great late bloomer. Listed in July 2011 alongside Foster The People, the stock spent eight years as a solid second-tier holding before reaching its all-time high of 10.3% in May 2019, with Giant (with Rag'n'Bone Man) as the top-traded line that year. Its 129 active months are the most of any listing, its last trade was May 2026, and its lifetime 897 plays sit fourth on the exchange.
OneRepublic did it even later: listed April 2012, all-time high of 6.1% in December 2022, a ten-year gap between IPO and peak. Chase & Status, listed February 2011, peaked at 7.4% in January 2020, nine years in, with End Credits as its top line in both 2019 and 2020. Later that year Lost & Not Found, which had traded 115 times before vanishing in October 2016, returned in October 2020 and traded another 55. It has 96 active months and last traded in December 2025.
Arctic Monkeys is the modest version: listed October 2011, a lifetime high of only 2.6%, but that high came in May 2019, and the stock has 267 plays. Some companies are simply never in fashion and never out of it.
Blue chips
The market rewards volatility with attention, but the most valuable holdings have been the ones that never spiked. Florence + The Machine listed in December 2010, has never traded above 6.3% (May 2015), and yet has 89 active months, 573 plays and is still trading at 0.9% today. Hot Chip listed January 2011, peaked at 4.8%, and has 85 active months, 488 plays and a current price of 0.2%. Empire Of The Sun listed August 2011, never above 3.8%, 84 active months, 407 plays, trading at 0.6%. Coldplay listed May 2010, all-time high of 3.4% in May 2014, 94 active months, 334 plays. The xx listed July 2011, high of 2.7%, 71 active months, 374 plays, last traded February 2026.
These are the stocks a sensible fund would have held throughout. Jungle has migrated into this category since its 2014 peak: 82 active months, 587 plays, still trading at 0.5%, with Busy Earnin' appearing in the top tracks of 2017, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.
Penny stocks that paid off
The Lumineers listed in March 2013 and never traded above 5.5% (May 2015), but it currently holds 1.1% of the market, the highest present share of any stock older than 2020, with 325 plays behind it. Norah Jones peaked at a mere 4.4% in June 2017 and has 347 plays; Sunrise has traded from 2011 to 2025. José González topped out at 5.1% in March 2014 and holds 336 plays. Ellie Goulding listed in August 2010, peaked at 5.3% that December and went on to 433 plays across four eras before a last trade in October 2023.
Sam Smith (listed October 2013, high 5.4% in July 2014, 391 plays) and Rudimental (listed July 2013, high 6.7% in February 2014, 526 plays) are the mid-cap versions of the same story. Minuit listed in July 2011, peaked at 6.7% in October and has 388 plays, with Aotearoa still being traded in 2026, fifteen years after listing. Small positions, held for a long time, outperforming almost everything that made the front page.
Outlook
The current leaderboard, on the last twelve months of volume, reads Elderbrook 152 plays, Taylor Swift 127, BOYY 112, Keli Holiday 91, ODESZA 80, Waiting for Smith 66, WDL 60, Olivia Dean 57, Maribou State 55 and Fred again.. 51. It is the broadest market in years: no stock is anywhere near a 20% share, and the top ten is spread across melodic house, pop and whatever Waiting for Smith is.
The analyst's caution is historical. Every stock that has opened as fast as BOYY has been at or near zero within eighteen months, and DROELOE, the most recent comparable listing, went from 26.7% to 0.8% in a single quarter. Against that, Elderbrook listed quietly in December 2018 and has taken seven years to reach the top of the table, which is the Calvin Harris pattern rather than the Adrian Lux one, and Maribou State has been trading since June 2015 without ever making a headline. The market's own record suggests that in 2036 the survivors from this list will be the ones currently trading at two or three per cent, and that Love Chains will be a fond entry in the section on bubbles. The market's own record, of course, has been wrong about Calvin Harris for fifteen years.
25 things Spotify Wrapped would never tell you
Longitudinal patterns rather than top-artist trivia, each with the evidence. Wrapped works in calendar years; almost none of these fit inside one.
You have had exactly one 24-hour day, and it was Adele
On Saturday 18 June 2011 the first play was at 00:02 and the last at 23:56, 399 plays, 1,439 minutes, every one of them from the album 19. Three other days exceed sixteen hours (18 May 2010 with Hybrid, 19 June 2011 with more Adele, 12 January 2012 in Singapore with Avicii), and all four were on Windows PCs. Nothing on a Mac, a phone or a TV has ever come close.
Three single days predicted the next decade
On 6 December 2013 you played 18 artists for the first time, including Jungle, Tove Lo, Hozier, Glass Animals, Vance Joy, MØ, FKA twigs and BANKS. On 12 April 2017 it was 23 new artists including Harry Styles (solo), Lewis Capaldi, Dermot Kennedy, SYML, Bruno Major and Tom Grennan. On 22 January 2022, through the TV, 25 more: Olivia Dean, Fred again.., Barry Can't Swim, TSHA, Maggie Rogers, Pa Salieu. Every one of the named artists broke through between three months and four years later.
Your longest repeat is 222 plays of one song without a break
You are a Radio Edit person
5.7% of all your listens have "Radio Edit", "Radio Mix" or "Radio Version" in the title, and 9.2% carry some remix or edit tag. Of your ten most played songs of the 2011 to 2015 eras, six are radio edits: Teenage Crime, Levels, Crave You, Feel So Close, Sonnentanz, One Day (Vandaag), Alive, Sun Goes Down. You wanted the version the radio played, and you wanted it 300 times.
Friday is your biggest day and Saturday your smallest
13,502 listens on Fridays against 8,481 on Saturdays. 77% of everything is Monday to Friday. Weekend listening starts later, runs later and is skipped more (21.5% against 19.0%).
Your listening moved five hours later in a decade
From 2009 to 2018 the peak hour of the day was 15:00 in every year but two. In 2019 it was 20:00, in 2021 22:00, in 2022 19:00, in 2026 20:00. The 15:00 peak is a desk; the 20:00 peak is a living room. The exceptions, 2020 (12:00) and 2024 (13:00), are the years the living room became the office.
You are most decisive at midnight and most accepting at dawn
The skip rate at 00:00 is 26.5%, the highest of any hour; at 05:00 it is 6.8%, the lowest. Between 03:00 and 05:00 almost nothing gets skipped, because the person who put it on has stopped paying attention.
Basmati is your alarm clock
Chilly Gonzales'
And An Endless Desert is the alarm you keep hitting snooze on
Todd Baker's
Music became something you switch off, not something you skip
In 2011 to 2014, 2% of plays ended with a manual stop or logout. From 2016 it was around 20%, and in 2024 it reached 43%. The skip rate barely moved. That is the signature of background listening on speakers and TVs: the track is not rejected, the room is just finished with it.
You have listened on 24 different kinds of device
Windows XP Pro SP3 until 2012 (the last 7,185 plays on XP were in 2012, three years after Windows 7 came out), Windows 7, a Mac from 2013, a Linux ARM device with 1,803 plays in 2015 and 2016 that looks a lot like a Raspberry Pi, an Android tablet, a Samsung phone from 2017, four generations of Chromecast, an Amazon Echo for one Spa Music weekend, a Samsung TV from 2023, and 613 plays on something Spotify calls "not applicable".
You have lived in the data in four places
Not visited, lived: a run of connections long enough to leave a taste. Singapore from 5 January to 7 July 2012 (2,716 listens, Teenage Crime and Levels). The United States for the month of June 2013 (1,047 listens, Silver Swans and Generationals). Switzerland from 19 May to 30 September 2014 (1,704 listens, Sam Smith and Life of Pi). Germany for a third of 2026 (919 listens, BOYY and Pulp). Australia appears in eight separate visits, almost all in December.
Michael Bublé is a season, not an artist
372 plays, and 241 of them in December, 51 in November, 76 in one August (2022, when a Christmas album was apparently the right choice in summer). He has been played in only 19 distinct months since 2011 and is your Artist of the Year for 2017 without releasing anything. White Christmas has been played by twelve different artists, Silent Night by ten, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas by nine.
You have played a song called Home by thirteen different artists
Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros (25 plays in 2019), Foo Fighters (32 in 2021), Naughty Boy, Jack Savoretti, Good Neighbours (2025) and eight more. Runaway has been played by eleven artists, Closer and Intro by ten each. You are drawn to a title.
Lost & Not Found is the best second life in your library
105 plays of
Techno Fan has been played in fifteen consecutive years
The Wombats'
Stay With Me has never really been skipped
Sam Smith's
Adele is 78% one summer
1,105 Adele plays, 859 of them in the 90 days from 12 June 2011. In the fourteen years since, fewer than 250. She held 35.7% of all your listening in June 2011, the highest share any artist has ever had, and by November 2011 the share was zero.
Paul Oakenfold is three days
322 plays: 147 on 1 June 2011, 143 on 2 June, 30 on 3 June, all from the Vexille soundtrack, and then one play in October 2013 and one in April 2014. He is your 36th most played artist of all time on the strength of a single working week.
Half of your tracks were played once, and 4% of them are half your life
8,100 of 14,924 tracks (54%) have exactly one listen; 1,980 of 4,979 artists (40%) likewise. Meanwhile 660 tracks account for half of all 77,126 listens and the top 149 take 22.8%. The middle is missing.
Shuffle is a Singapore and lockdown habit
Shuffle covered 44% of plays in 2012 (Singapore), 46% in 2020 (lockdown) and 41% in 2023, but 2% in 2010, 7% in 2014, 3% in 2016 and 12% in 2025 and 2026. You shuffle when you are somewhere unfamiliar, or stuck somewhere familiar.
Your two longest silences bracket the two biggest changes
63 days of nothing from 12 March to 14 May 2010, ending with the Hybrid weekend that started everything. 61 days of nothing from 23 February to 25 April 2023, followed within a year by the DROELOE summer that started the current era. Every other gap since 2010 is under 40 days.
Your late peaks: artists who mattered most years after you found them
Calvin Harris hit his all-time high share in May 2019, eight years after his first play. Chase & Status peaked in January 2020, nine years in. OneRepublic peaked in December 2022, ten years after their first play. Michael Kiwanuka, first played August 2018, was Artist of the Year in 2021. Elderbrook, first played 22 December 2018, is your most played artist of the last twelve months.
Your present taste is two years old and your closest older self is lockdown you
2025 scores 0.70 similarity to the last twelve months and 2024 scores 0.41; no earlier year clears 0.28. Among the older years, 2020 (0.26) is closer to today than 2021, 2019 or anything from the big 2011 to 2014 period. Shuffle in a living room in 2020 was, it turns out, a rehearsal.
You played Taylor Swift 48 times in a private session
1,015 plays in your history were made in incognito mode. Taylor Swift leads them (48, almost all in 2025), followed by Swedish House Mafia (37, in 2012), Avicii (30), The Kooks (22) and Lana Del Rey (15). Across all sessions she has 161 plays, 118 of them in 2025, twelve years after you first sampled her in March 2013.