People, not algorithms
Every discovery in this timeline traces back to a specific person handing me specific music. Friends, roommates, coworkers, people at shows. A pre-algorithm taste identity built entirely through human networks.
The genre map
Twenty-one years of scrobble data, sorted into broad genre buckets. Watch alt-country dominate the early years, emo rise and fall, and synthwave take over entirely in 2023.
The constants and the shifts
Artists who stayed in the top 10 year after year — and the ones who appeared, disappeared, and came back. Ryan Adams held on for 12 years. That's not a phase.
Same person, different universe
The five biggest sonic swings in 21 years of listening. Midwest emo and Bing Crosby in the same year. That's not range — that's a personality disorder.
The deep cuts
Artists I've played heavily that fewer than 50,000 people on Last.fm have ever heard. The stuff that doesn't show up in anyone else's recommendations.
What I actually loved
Last.fm has a heart button. I've used it 845 times in 21 years. Scrobbles measure what I played — hearts measure what I stopped and endorsed. The gap between those two signals is where the real story lives.
What Last.fm can't see
250 records on vinyl. The most important listening happens off-platform. Mineral — the all-time favorite — lives almost entirely on the turntable. The scrobble data has a vinyl-shaped hole.