Two Christmases ago, my mother gifted me a record player. Ever since I have been slowly buying records—and then listening to them. And over the last year I have been recording those record plays and with 2026 now half over, I decided to run the numbers and see where I am at. As context, my YouTube Music annual wrap had me in the top 0.1% of Radiohead listeners, and so for 2026 I decided to make a concerted effort to listen to other things.
And clearly I like the Ventures.
I think the biggest insight is that I listen to a lot of Radiohead, but I spread the plays across their entire ouevre. My friend from Chicago released her solo debut EP earlier this year, Lil Lisa and the Finks, and I have played that quite a bit. Remain in Light is one of my all-time favourite albums. The rest reflect a decent snapshot of my listening habits—but clearly none of my blues albums are in there.
I also want to extend this to my streaming music listens, but that is a far wider library from which to draw. Obviously I can only listen to records in which I have invested. And I can tell you I do not own several of my favourite albums let alone any records by some of my favourite artists. I would be curious how those lists compare.
Credit for the piece is mine.