Lists and Stats From 2010

I love lists and stats on music, and I look forward to doing my year end recap. Crunching numbers, and ranking the best releases from the past year. In years past, I've just posted about how much I've bought over the last 12 months, but this year I took a tip from Marcus and plugged the numbers into a spreadsheet for a much better presentation.

It wasn't any surprise that I bought a lot of music this year. What I was surprised to see was how many CDs I bought last year. With the purchase of my first ipod this August, I expected to see the number of CDs drop. Granted my CD purchases were down from 145 last year, but still...100 CDs?!?!

Here is the monthly data presented in a graph. You can see my attempt to catalog and file the backlog of records that had built up by December. My resolution for 2011 is to not fall that far behind. At one point, I was about 20 posts behind on the blog. My goal is to keep things more up to date. Other months that stand out were April, when Jeff and I went on a big shopping spree in Boston for Record Store Day, and then August, when I got a few records and CDs for my birthday.

Here is a graph to show how 2010 compared to the last few years. Wow, my purchases have really picked up over the past couple of years.

I knew that 2010 was a good year for new Hardcore releases, but I didn't know just how strong it was until I started putting together my Top 10 lists. There were so many records that could have taken the number ten spot...Said and Done, Hands Tied, and the new Outlast all were contenders, but in the end I gave it to Fire & Ice. After picking up both Gods & Devils and Grim this past month, I can't stop listening to this band.

I still have a few 2010 Metal releases that I need to pick up on vinyl. Both the Ghost and Accept albums were nothing short of amazing, and a complete surprise for how much I enjoyed them. The year ended too quickly, and I was unable to pick up the vinyl for these incredible releases.

To wrap things up, I've managed to pull my Last 12 Months listening charts from last.fm to see what I spent most of my time listening to. It will be fun to look back at the end of 2011 and see how they compare.

Thanks to all of you who have followed along with my obsession and have left comments along the way. Let's see what 2011 has in store for my record collection.