I could probably drive myself mad trying to decide on a definitive top 30, top 40, top 100 albums list, but here’s the next best thing. And if not the next best, then at least the next that came into my head. 30 songs, each from an album by one of the 30 artists that I have listened to the most since joining last.fm (or audioscrobbler as it was called when I signed up back in 2004).

I realise, of course, that this massively skews the list in favour of albums released since 2004, or artists active since then. Worse than that, though, there’s some skewing residue left over from my very early days of scrobbling: I was listening to music everywhere and anywhere I could, but the only listens that were tracked to last.fm were those from my work laptop, which contained only a skeleton selection of music from which I could choose. As a result, there are one or two artists still hanging around in my Top 30 who I haven’t listened to very much recently, and one or two artists I’ve listened to quite a lot recently who didn’t quite make it into the list.

But never mind that; the quality is as high as ever. Even higher than ever! Let the countdown begin…