I have been trying to guess how John figured out his analysis of where the music he has been listening to comes from (see “Last Time This Year“). Did he find an online mash-up to automagically figure it out or was it just a case of counting on his fingers? I think he was just working with a week’s worth of data, so maybe it was the latter.

I took a look at my charts on last.fm. Here is my top ten for the last year (as of this morning – it may change before the end of the year):

1		Bill Frisell			77
2		King’s X			74
3		Larry Norman			68
4		Steve Lawson			67
5		ZZ Top			64
6		Queen			61
7		Hiromi			59
8		Magpie Lane			51
9		Peter and the Wulf			46
10		Sting			44
11		Ted Nugent			43

Yes, I know that is eleven artists — I couldn’t decide whether or not to count Peter and the Wulf, since my listening to this has been as much for purposes of making music as for being entertained. The figures are either UK (5), USA (4) and Japan (1) or swapping figures for the US and UK if Mr Nugent is brought into play. There is a fairly wide range of other nations represented if you delve down into the long tail of the figures but I think I will wait to stumble across a tool to figure that out for me as there are getting on for 1,000 artists represented (although most still originate from the US and UK).

I must try to feed in some more geographically widespread listening in 2011.