After decades of wanting my own personal Top 40-style chart and frustrated by my efforts to reshuffle Billboard's Hot 100, I finally hit upon the idea of using my last.fm scrobbles as the basis for my own chart. I began The Hideaway Top 20 in February 2025 using the previous month's scrobbles and intended to use the same artwork for each monthly post, including the previous month's Top 20 most-listened to songs, as well as a throwback chart of tracks, albums, or artists from a previous day, week, month, or year. As you can see below, the whole project continues to evolve from what we originally intended...
Our Most Listened-To Songs from January 2025
published
February 10, 2025
Our Most Listened-To Songs from February 2025
published
March 3, 2025
February's scrobbles revealed a Top 29 due to a few ties in the number of scrobbles, though we kept Hideaway 20 in the title and artwork. If you know me, you know the odd number bothered me on several levels, and a few editorial decisions were made:
- Twenty songs will always be the minimum, but the maximum number will expand as needed due to ties.
- If the maximum number of scrobbled tracks ends up as an odd number, we will suck it up and publish it as is.
- last.fm handles ties by listing tracks alphabetically by artist, while The Hideaway will handle ties by randomly shuffling the tied tracks a minimum of six times, then applying sequential ranking numbers.
Our Most Listened-To Songs from March 2025
published
April 11, 2025
Like the title says, we had enough ties with the number of scrobbles to extend the countdown to The Hideaway 40. In particular, there were thirty-four tracks tied for the seventh most scrobbles in March 2025. Rather than go with a severely abbreviated Top 6, the countdown expanded to include forty songs.
Our Most Listened-To Songs from April 2025
published
May 19, 2025
The Hideaway 20 returned in April 2025, but it wasn't bereft of ties amongst the most-scrobbled tracks. There were fifteen songs tied for the sixth most scrobbles, and those, coupled with the Top 5, conveniently returned us to The Hideaway 20.
Our Most Listened-To Songs from May 2025
published
published
June 19, 2025
Amazingly, there are only two ties in May's Hideaway Top 20, but they forced the expansion of the countdown to The Hideaway 56. Eight tracks tied for the most scrobbles, and a staggering forty-eight tracks ended up in a tie for second most scrobbles.
Our Most Listened-To Songs from June 2025
published
July 14, 2025
We achieved maximum scrobblage in June 2025, logging nearly 4,500 unique scrobbles. The only way we could realistically achieve more scrobbles is to alter our sleep habits, creating more listening time and that's just not going to happen. There was a clear most listened-to song and a twenty-seven-way tie for second most listened-to song which yielded The Hideaway 28.
To be continued...
AI DISCLOSURE
The Hideaway 20 artwork was generated by Google's Gemini