I have talked a lot about regrets on this blog since I started out. Nobody wants them, everyone has them. One regret I didn’t think I had was about LastFM of all things. First off, I didn’t even know that LastFM was still a thing. I thought that died along with FourSquare and MySpace (to add to the list: Digg and Stumbleupon). But nope, it’s still around (even if the website is kinda broken and never gets updates).

Since I started blogging, one of the things I’ve begun to do is tracking as many metrics about my own life as I can. Things like how long I spend on TikTok (too much) or how much time I spend walking around (not enough). These stats keep me thinking about ways to improve my life, my workflow, and the tools I use. They also make me feel like I’m more in control of my data and the things I do.

The only stats I’ve ever really had about my music playing habits come from things like Spotify Wrapped or whatever it’s called. It was a once in a year thing, and wasn’t really all that useful for me since I usually switch between streaming services all the time (they all suck, so I move around when the one I’m using pisses me off). But then I saw that several of my fellow bloggers track all of their music by scrobbling to LastFM or some similar service. As is per usual, I decided I too must do this.

It was pretty easy to set up. Most players you can use have some sort of built in functionality to send data to LastFM. More rare are those that work with FOSS alternatives, so I’ve just stuck with LastFM for now. Once you have your player setup to do that, the stats start rolling in. I put some lists on my music slash page, and my most recent scrobble on my now page. I’ve also found an app called Pano Scrobbler that will also listen when I use any app on Android to listen to music.

I really wish I’d been doing this for years. If I had years of data about what I’ve been listening to, how my tastes have changed, and how much music I’ve listened to, that would be great. I’d really like to know if what I listen to has changed much over the years. It feels like it hasn’t, to be honest. I still listen to a lot of the music I loved back in the 90s and early 00s. But do I? My memory is crap, so there’s no real way of knowing if I’m remembering right or not. I’d love to know just how many songs I’ve listened to over the years. Is it in the millions? It feels like it would be, but then maybe not. I have no way of knowing, as I only just started to collect the data. In the three weeks since I’ve turned this on, I’ve got to about 800 listens. That makes me think that the total number would be right up there, but again, who knows?

There’s no way of getting that data back. Spotify/Deezer/iTunes sure aren’t going to give it to me, even if they do have it. So, it’s lost forever.

I think the moral of the story here is that if you’re into data tracking, start early and save the data. You’ll be happy you did. I’m looking forward to 10 years from now when I get to look back on the things I was listening to in 2025, and how much they’ve changed.