pat loughery

Spotify’s perspective of my favorite musicians and songs

The first week of December is always fun for music fans – both Spotify and Apple Music release their recap of listeners’ years. This year’s Spotify Wrapped was not nearly as in-depth as previous years (presumably because Spotify’s deep layoffs over the last 12 months impacted Wrapped more than expected).

Anyway, here’s what Spotify counted as my top artists and songs of the year. I got to see three of these artists – John Moreland at Neumos; Martha Scanlan and John Neufeld at Miller’s; and St. Paul and the Broken Bones at Waterfront Blues Fest – live this year, so it was also a great live music year.

I think I’ve listened to music less than in previous years, partly because I’m listening to more audiobooks and some podcasts, and I’m not so sure about this top – 5. I love these bands, but one or two had spikes for a month or two, but other bands seemed to have more staying power.

Wrapped this year didn’t have any info about genres, or about changes year over year.. like, I know my top artist from last year didn’t show up in my top 10 this year. And my wife’s Wrapped included a top-5 song that she’d never heard of, so some of the source data may be iffy.

I’m looking forward to comparing this to what last.fm tells me.

In addition to the Wrapped report, Spotify created a playlist of my top songs of 2024.

What were your favorite listens this year?

(Note: I wrote this on Dec 26, 2025 – but changed the post date to just after Wrapped was posted, to keep the timeline more realistic)