Spotify Wrapped is out! But here’s how to get it all year round

Spotify Wrapped has come and gone, and left behind a sea of music listeners questioning why their music age is 82 or above.

The end-of-year breakdown of users’ listening habits on the world’s largest music app, including top tracks and albums, is always a festive treat beloved by everyone.

This year’s round-up included data on users’ total minutes playing music, their top albums and favourite tracks of the year, and, bizarrely, their average listening age.

While waiting until Christmas-time to see how long you spent listening to Lily Allen’s new album makes the yearly musical tradition feel like an early present, audiophiles who take their playlists more seriously might be keen to check their music habits all year around.

Fortunately, there’s an app that doesn’t just allow you to check your Spotify data whenever you want, but will recommend you tracks based on what you’re listening to. It will even link to other music apps like Apple Music or YouTube.

What is Last.FM and how does it work?

Last.FM is a third-party music streaming aggregator which tracks each song you listen to on a plethora of different streaming services.

Users can connect their Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, or SoundCloud accounts to the free service, which will then produce reports based on what you’ve been listening to.

After the plugin collects enough ‘scrobbles’, AKA songs you’ve listened to, it will actively build listening stats, which can be accessed whenever you want, and start to recommend you songs based on your current or all-time faves.

Reports include data on your top songs, albums, artists, and genres, as well as your listening habits including favourite music by decade, how often you skip a track halfway, and even your favourite hour to listen to music.

The data can be filtered chronologically anywhere from 24 hours to the past year, and even since you first created your accounts.

At the end of each year, users will be given comprehensive graphs on their music habits, similar to Spotify Wrapped, which will include scrobbles from all of their connected music streaming services.

The website even acts as a pseudo-social media site where users can share music with one another. It even shows global listening reports and has its own real-time and weekly charts.

There’s one small catch – because Last.FM is a third-party plugin, it can’t access previous listening data, meaning it only tracks songs after you’ve linked your account.

It also locks certain features, such as certain listening reports and advanced statistics, behind a subscription service, which costs £4.99 a month.

Last.FM may not be the cup of tea for those who like to save their music habits until the end of the year, but for serious music listeners it’s a must-have.

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