That Was The Year That Was (In Music): 2025 Edition

~ James Viscosi

Last week I posted my 2025 reading report from Goodreads; this week, it’s time for my 2025 listening report from Last.fm. What was playing this year? If you guessed it’s largely the same as what was playing last year, you won’t be too far off.

Let’s take a look at the big report, shall we?

I’m not sure how I keep having a new listening peak every year. Are years getting longer, or does it all just seem like an eternity … ?

A few observations about these statistics:

  • Once again, my actual favorite band, Metric, is also my most-Scrobbled band, by a pretty wide margin; and my actual second-favorite band, The Joy Formidable (aka “TJF”), is in their correct spot as well.
  • As per usual, Metric also dominated my top albums list, but a couple of other albums with a lot of songs on them sneaked into the top five just by virtue of, you know, having a lot of songs on them. The New Order collection Singles, at #4, has 32 songs, while the Silent Hill Original Soundtrack tips the scales at a whopping 42 songs. Mind you some of them are only like 48 seconds long, but still.
  • My top new artist this year was Suzanne Vega. Not that Suzanne Vega is new or anything, but I finally got around to picking up her “best of” album RetroSpective, which has lots of good stuff on it.
  • After two years on top of my “Most Played Track” chart, “Liana” has gotten dethroned by Metric’s “Gimme Sympathy”, which is not even my favorite Metric track on the moment; the #2 song “Sick Muse” is. Next month it will probably be something different.
  • Apparently I am in some kind of elite-level Metric listener club. I wonder if I get a toque or a free serving of poutine1.

Although Last.fm only tracks artists and albums by play count, it is possible to use third-party tools to get the approximate time you listened to particular things. My top artists list by time looks a little bit different, although the top two are still what you (meaning I) would expect. 

That’s a whole lotta Metric.

Next up, Last.fm provides a little bit of trivia:

I did not, in fact, remember this, but I don’t have to. That’s what Last.fm is for.
Must be the night in my veins …

And after that, we have charts. Yay, data!

I honestly still have no idea what the “Listening Fingerprint” is supposed to mean, but I do know that all those folks who use streaming “discover” more artists than I do. And then promptly forget about them, most likely. SQUIRREL!!!

Next up, we have my “Mainstream Score” and some Quick Facts and trivia:

FWIW we did go see Flow where the soundtrack was performed by the San Diego Symphony Orchestra. I just didn’t tell Last.fm about it, because it doesn’t need to know where I go and what I do. It just needs to know what I play on my phone.

All right, time to get into the lists, starting with my top 50 artists for 2024:

Have I mentioned that I like Metric a lot?

Next, we have my top 50 albums of 2024:

And finally, my top tracks of 2024:

You might think I’d get tired of listening to the same Metric tracks every month, but you would be wrong.

This year Last.fm “Playback” was a thing again, so I thought I would take a look at that.

Gosh it sounds like a lot when you put it that way.
Somebody’s getting a mix tape!
You don’t know how fast my rocket is.
Oh how suspenseful.
Well not that suspenseful. Also I see Jimmy is wearing the hat I was supposed to get. Where’s my bowl of poutine?

Ooh, there are graphs!

The boba tea chart is back too!

Hey Last.fm, how many albums did you say I had listened to this year? Can you average that out?

Of course you can.

All right but I bet you don’t know what my favorite album was, though, right?

Ha! This is not, in fact, my favorite Metric album. That’s Pagans in Vegas. Synthetica Deluxe does, however, have more tracks on it than Pagans.
That’s a whole lotta songs …

Fun fact: I have a special smart playlist on my phone to make sure I listen to everything at least every six months, so that nothing falls through the cracks. This playlist is called “Lost Carols”, which ties back in to the whole Silent Hill soundtrack dealie.

As we know, “Gimme Sympathy” sneaked in just ahead of my actual current favorite Metric song, “Sick Muse”:

We could all use a little sympathy, amirite?
What’s this? I’m below average?! Must. Do. Better.

Incidentally, lately I’ve been listening a lot to a Metric song called “Days of Oblivion”, which can be interpreted as being about dealing with trauma and PTSD, which resonated with me this year because reasons.

Next the totals and the let’s call it personality profile I guess?

What?

Here’s the “Playback” summary, which basically reiterates everything I already went blathering on about:

And that’s a wrap for this year’s music retrospective! Tune in again in January of 2027 for a look back at the books and music of 2026!

  1. Not just an ordinary hat or bowl of soup, on account of Metric is Canadian, of course. ↩︎
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