For a Deeper Look at Your Music Listening Habits, Try Last.fm ⇥ macstories.net

Harley Charlton, MacRumors:

Apple today rolled out the Apple Music Replay experience for 2023, allowing subscribers to see their top artists, songs, albums, genres, playlists, and stations of the year.

[…]

‌Apple Music‌ Replay is Apple’s answer Spotify Wrapped, but ‌Apple Music‌ Replay remains a web browser only experience. The Music app itself can only show and play a basic playlist of your top songs for the year, ranked by most played, once it has been added via the Replay webpage.

Every year, millions of people give Spotify free marketing by sharing their music listening habits, and that must drive someone at Apple absolutely bananas. It is still a website, unlike Apple Books, and based on my searches of Twitter and Instagram, it seems many people miss the sharing button below each Replay section and just screenshot the page. Spotify Wrapped is an obviously better and more sharing-friendly product.

But you know what is cooler than either of these things? It is when you separate analyzing your music habits from how you listen to music.

John Voorhees, MacStories:

Spotify does a better job at surfacing interesting data with Wrapped, but if you’re like me and prefer other aspects of Apple Music, sign up for Last.fm, use one of the many excellent indie apps, like Marvis Pro, Soor, Albums, Longplay, Doppler, and Air Scrobble that support the service, and then enjoy your weekly, monthly, and annual reports in Last.fm’s app or on its website.

When I like a record, I buy it — often from Bandcamp, but sometimes from iTunes or elsewhere — and, in the process, cut off the Apple Music connection, which makes my Replay stats non-reflective of my actual listening habits. I am not someone who feels the need to quantitively analyze my entire life, but I do appreciate the way Last.fm collects information from many of the places I listen to music: in Music on my Mac, and in a variety of apps on my iPhone. And Voorhees points to AirScrobble as a way to fill in the gaps for when I am listening to a record or one of the mixes in each edition of Web Curios on my stereo.

If Apple Music Replay or Spotify Wrapped work for you, that is great; I have no reason to try to change your mind. But if you want to move between different listening sources and retain some control of what you entrust to any one service, I think Last.fm remains a great option.

Update: Joe Rosensteel:

This whole thing feels like someone was very excited to animate things, move album artwork around, and transform data, but no one really gave much thought to what this whole thing is supposed to mean to someone. How it makes someone feel.

Could not have written this any better myself. For anyone who loves music, seeing an album cover probably conjures up memories of a time when it was playing. It should transport me through a year of what I put into my ear. Does Apple love music? It used to.