I’ve listened to music on Spotify for over 5,000 hours since I subscribed to their service. I listen the most in the early morning when I’m at the gym and before my morning meetings begin. I’ve listened to more Amon Amarth than I’ve listened to my next three top bands combined, but the album I’ve spent the most time listening to is “The Black Parade” by My Chemical Romance.^[1] The song I’ve listened to the most is “O Father O Satan O Sun!” by Behemoth – Since March 2017 I’ve listened to it 620 times, for a total time of 69 hours, 15 minutes.

How do I know this? I know because for the past few years I’ve been reporting on my Spotify listening data.

Spotify doesn’t have a viable API for this type of analysis, but you can request a copy of your listening history and other account data by emailing privacy@spotify.com^[2]. It takes about a month to get your data, so if you want to report on your own listening history, you should probably email them today.

If you’re interested in using my report as-is or as a starting point for your own analysis, I’ve shared a PBIT file here:

Here’s what you’ll probably need to do:

1. Request a copy of your Spotify listening history by emailing privacy@spotify.com.
2. Wait approximately 30 days for Spotify to prepare your data.
3. Download the zip file prepared by Spotify.
4. Extract the zip file to a folder on your PC.
5. Locate the folder that contains JSON files. This report uses only the “endsong*.json” files that contain your listening history. The other files probably contain other interesting data – who knows?
6. Open the PBIT file in Power BI Desktop.
7. When prompted, enter the path to the folder containing your Spotify JSON data.
   
8. Click “Load”.
9. Cross your fingers, because I’ve never created a PBIT template before. Even though I’ve tested it, I don’t really know if this will work as hoped for you and I’m probably not going to provide any timely support if it doesn’t work.

Music is a huge part of my life, and I’ve had dozens of music-related pet projects over the past 30 years. When I was in college, my “learning a new programming language” routine involved re-implementing my record collection manager in whatever new language that semester’s classes called for. Being able to play with this familiar and very-meaningful-to-me data in Power BI has been a fun way to spend a few hours her and there over the past few years.

Sadly, the reason I’m using this report today is to figure out what albums I need to add to my music collection when I delete my Spotify account. I’ve discovered so much awesome new music because of Spotify^[3], and I am now using this report to prioritize what CDs to purchase. This isn’t why I originally made this report, but this is where we are today.

As you’re probably aware, Spotify has chosen to spread disinformation and hateful propaganda and to prioritize their profits over public health. This is their right to do so, since they’re apparently not breaking any laws, but I won’t give them any more of my money to knowingly cause harm and poison the public discourse.

If you want to call me out for being a snowflake or SJW or whatever, please do so on Twitter, not here. I’ll delete any blog comments on this theme, and no one will get to see how witty you are – wouldn’t that be a shame?

Whether or not you’re planning to delete your own Spotify account, feel free to download this PBIT and check out your own listening history. I found insights that surprised me – maybe you will too. This report is something of a work in progress, so you might also find interesting ways to complete and improve it that I didn’t think of.

As for my post-Spotify music streaming world, I’ll probably end up getting a family subscription to Amazon Music. The price is the same, and it looks like all of the top albums I’ve been listening to on Spotify are there.

I’ll also definitely be spending more time with the CD/MP3 collection I spent decades building before I discovered Spotify. I own thousands of albums by hundreds of artists, and curating this collection was an activity that gave me joy for many years. Now I’m feeling motivated and inspired to rediscover that collection, and the personal satisfaction that comes from mindfully expanding it.

Specifically, I’m adding my personal music collection to Plex Media Server, and streaming it to all of my devices using their excellent PlexAmp app. I’ve been moving in this direction since it became obvious Spotify was going to keep funding and promoting hatred and ignorance, and it’s already reminded me of the wide world of music that’s not included in the big streaming catalogs^[4].

Plex and PlexAmp make it incredibly easy to manage and stream your personal media, and they have both a REST API and a SQLite database for tracking and reporting on library contents and listening activity – and it doesn’t take a month to get your data. Maybe there’s a silver lining here after all…

^[1] If you’re wondering where Manowar is on this list, they’re #8. Please consider that Spotify only has a limited selection of Manowar’s music, and that when I listen to my personal music collection it isn’t included in this data.

^[2] For more information, see the Privacy page at https://www.spotify.com/us/account/privacy or whatever variation on this URL works for your part of the world.

^[3] Four of my top 10 artists are bands Spotify recommended to me, and which I probably would not have heard of were it not for their “release radar” and similar playlists.

^[4] For example, my personal collection includes every album, EP, single, and DVD Manowar has ever released. I may not literally have an order of magnitude more Manowar than Spotify does, but it’s pretty close.