Like so many others, I like to take personal inventory at year-end — examine data; review numbers; analyze.

Luckily for stat nerds and music geeks like me, that process is more data-intensive than ever. Last.FM, for instance, has charted my music-listening habits since 2007. And in the past year, I integrated my libraries from Mog and Pandora into Last.FM’s “scrobbling” machine, so my database of  listening trends is far-reaching and vast.

Join me as I immerse myself in the data bog. The wiggly abyss of sound.

My top 10 artists listened-to in the past 12 months:

…the top 10 albums I drew material from in 2010:

And, somewhere in a parallel universe, the profane, angry voice of Casey Kasem expresses phony pleasure and delight in counting down my top 10 songs of 2010:

Trends from the past three months reflect listening habits partial to…

• Goldfrapp
• The Replacements
• The Frogs
• Van Halen
• The Pixies
• Hüsker Dü

If the more immediate past is a valid indicator of future trends, then the next few months will be rife with still more Goldfrapp and Sinatra, but also a plethora of Rush, the Eagles, and Pete Rock. And according to my Last FM “neighborhood,” I should add more of the following artists to my library:

• Dead Can Dance
• Mark Lanegan; and
• Robert Johnson.

Visualizing all of this is possible with Wordle:

Further visualizations are possible through any number of mediums, as expressed here on the Rocket Surgeon blog.

And via Echo Nest and Music Machinery, I found mass quantities of music-nerd toys like…

• Google’s Discover Hindi Music Project
• Ishkur’s Electronic Music Guide
• Musicovery (warning: opens with Weezer music)
• Pop Ularity
• THE MAP OF METAL
• TuneGlue’s Music Map

Penultimately…the following items have sat in the Link Cage for too long. They are ready.

• David Lynch: “Good Day Today“
• Fantastic Russian stoner-metal album cover (NSFW)
• FLUTES OF FIRE
• Last FM’s Most Unwanted Scrobbles (the Gaga is there)
• Mick Hucknall apology
• Robotic xylophone
• Pop Matters‘ Best Experimental Music of 2010
• Pop Matters‘ Most Disappointing Albums of 2010
• Rest in peace Teena Marie
• ‘Seven girls with bra sizes A-to-G make up the musical notes of La Senza’s Cup Size Choir ‘(NSFW)
• The Russian Kurt Cobain
• The Spider-Man Musical’s warpath of destruction and personal injury
• The Top 50 Cover Songs (Guardian)
• Wikipedia: Microtonal Music
• Wikipedia: Spectral Music

And lastly, the song that I am most addicted to right now:

“OX4” by Ride.

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