Apple Music Replay – January ’24

Apple Music has always lagged behind Spotify Wrapped – both in popularity and feature. However, that hasn’t stopped Apple Music from trying. And this year, the dozens of us who subscribe to Apple Music got a nice little reward – presenting Apple music Replay: Monthly Stats! Now this is something I can get behind! It’s like free content every month for my blog!
And just guess what I am going to try do (even though I am officially like 3 months behind…)

Welcome to my Apple Music Replay – Month by Month series! And hopefully, it will help me write my end-of-year music wrap up as well. But for now, these are intended to be short, sharp posts with all the stats for the past month.

Because of doing #75Hard, I have been listening to way more music than normal, to the tune (ha, get it?) of an extra 90ish minute per day. While it doesn’t sound like much, it all adds up. Plus, now that I have Homepods, my music history is more accurately tracked as well, compared to the spotty Apple Music integration with Sonos. All this to say, every minute of music is now tracked (except my YouTube listening habits, but that has fallen off a cliff since I have to be so physically active…).

So, let us dive into January – the month that was. In total, I managed to bless my ears with 2,488 minutes of fantastic tunes. You’re welcome ears! Thats over 41 hours in total. If I had known how close I was to two full days, I would have pushed through just another hour or five.

My top artist was Bloodred Hourglass, who, even after receiving massive playtime in December, remained in my rotation throughout the month. Firstly – you need to understand how good their Your Highness (2021) album is, and secondly, there are tonnes of different artists being played if they are my top at only 100 minutes out of 2,000+. The same goes for Testimony of Apocalypse’s The Offering (2023) album. Amazing Christian metal that you really should add to your library!

Another great feature I really enjoy are called Milestones. These mark a bunch of different things – from when you have listened to a certain amount of artists or listened to a certain number of songs. All with the date you “achieved” them. I find this to be a very cool way to gamify your listening habits, while allowing you to compare month by month (for those that way inclined).

January saw me listen to 250 different artists and 500 songs! All achieved on the very last day of the month as well. These are such cool stats, and the still images really don’t capture just how beautifully Apple has presented the data here. Everything flows, and is swish and is soft woosh … When it comes to UX, Apple both flexes really hard and falls oh, so short. And here they have chosen to flex to the max!

Here we can see the standouts – Bloodred Hourglass and Testimony of Apocalypse stand head and shoulders above the rest. Pretty impressive when my library size is around the 24,000 song mark… Still, I find myself using the curated playlists a lot more now, along with the brand-new Discovery Station that Apple have introduced. So February will be an interesting month to look back on…

If you’re interested in what my 2024 listening habits are shaping up to be – here is my Replay playlist. As I listen to more music, have more songs on heavy rotation, and just use Apple Music throughout the year – this playlist will dynamically change and update. Thats something I really love about Apple Music. It feels like it’s adapting to me, instead of me being forced to adapt to it.