Data: Everything I listened to in 2025
Well, I crunched the numbers. It turns out that I primarily consume media and entertainment via audio these days.
I listen to podcasts on Overcast. I listen to music on Spotify. I track my music through Last.fm—and somehow have been for 20 years.
Here’s mostly everything I listened to between Jan. 1, 2025 and Dec. 31, 2025.
Most Played Artists
Total: 2,498 artists
The Beach Boys reign supreme again. By my count, this the 4th time in 20 years they’ve been my most-played artist of the year. They really have a little bit of something for the whole family. Not even the combined zeitgeist of Cameron Winter + Geese could take them down.
Tired: Vince Guaraldi Trio’s A Charlie Brown Christmas. Wired: The Ramsey Lewis Trio’s Sound of Christmas. This tally is nearly all Christmas music and is likely an undercount.
John Williams is there because we just introduced our kids to Star Wars this year.
Springsteen and Van Morrison are always floating around here somewhere.
Simeon ten Holt is usually in direct correlation to how much writing I accomplished this year, which was not much, so that tracks.
I don’t recall listening to this much Joni Mitchell, Mountain Goats, or Bleachers in 2025.
An uncharacteristically light year for Paul McCartney.
Most Played Songs
Total: 6,150 songs
No surprises here: it’s mostly Cameron Winter and songs that I featured on mixtapes this year.
The two exceptions are “All I Ever Asked” by Rachel Chinouriri and “Good Time” by Brazilian Girls—both new to me, both absolutely infectious.
Play count might seem alarmingly high for “Love Takes Miles”—and even more surprising once you find out the first time I heard the song was near the end of September—but it’s one of the great pieces of music. I will be happily listening to it for the rest of my life. Plus, my five-year-old loves it, so that, if you will, goosed the play count.
Most Played Albums
Total: 4,143 albums
More Geese up top.
The rest of the albums on this list are ones that I tend to listen to as complete albums.
Most Played Podcasts
Up top as always: The Pen Addict, some news, and an assortment of comedy podcasts.
Tech podcasts are new. I updated from a 2015 MacBook Pro to an M3 MacBook Air last year and the jump in technology blew my mind. Desperate to find out what I had been missing out on for the last decade I discovered Mac Power Users and 52 hours later I now have a Keyboard Maestro subscription.
Not captured: The Headlines, The Daily, and the rest of the shows I listen to on the New York Times app.
Some highlights:
Pete Docter on The Inside Out of Pixar’s Process — Working It Out with Mike Birbiglia
Marc Maron on the end of WTF — WTF with Marc Maron
Any Austin on the Hermeneutics of Video Games — Conversations with Tyler
John Amaechi on Leadership, the NBA, and Being Gay in Professional Sports — Conversations with Tyler
There were more, but I didn’t keep great records.
Mixtape Making
While dozens remain simmering in the kitchen, I only got around to finishing three mixtapes this year:
And only one, The Bend, was a wholly new creation. Spangled and Tonics were both slightly reimagined versions of older mixes from 2012 and 2016, respectively.
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