2010 statistics

This is the traditional time of year for "best of" lists covering the past 12 months. This blog is quite orthogonal to trends, so let's steer clear of a list touting how much of an early adopter I can pretend to be. Instead let's examine actual data.

Last.fm has a somewhat inaccurate reflection of my listening habits, due to their filtering out some legitimate plays. This especially affects incessantly repeated plays of tracks that are not yet in the Musicbrainz database, resulting in Vaxadrin, Too Wonky Traktors, and Space Heroes of the People appearing much lower in the list than they have a right to. Even so, there are 31 free tracks in the top 100, 13 in the top 40, and one of the top 3 is free, so it seems reasonable to conclude that roughly one in three tracks I've listened to during 2010 has been free music.

The top 100 spans tracks going back to the Brian Eno track The Big Ship from 1975, while the top 500 goes back to 1927's Potato Head Blues by Louis Armstrong. The top six tracks are from 2007, 2005, 2008, 1993, 1994, and 2008. To qualify for the top 500, a track had to have been played at least 12 times during the year. Over the next few years some of the 2010 appearances in the top 500 should reappear in higher positions, for instance artists Four Tet (Kieran Hebden), Drivan (Swedish poptronica), and Com Truise (the most recent name used by Seth Haley, who also has recorded as Sarin Sunday).

According to Last.fm my top free track for 2010 was Boreal Network's Wetland. My iTunes playcounts show that the mysterious Vaxadrin EP actually was played more often.