How to remember the albums you loved this year

Why aren't streaming stats enough?

Year-end recaps from streaming services are fun, but they count plays. The album you put on to fall asleep to every night will beat the one that floored you on a single walk home. And anything you heard on vinyl, on CD, on the radio or at a friend's house doesn't show up at all.

Recaps also belong to the service. If you switch to another one, your listening history often stays behind. A log you keep yourself goes with you.

Play counts also miss the why. A log can say "first listen on the train, in the snow" or "the album we played all through the move". That's what you'll want to remember in ten years.

What's worth writing down?

• The album and the artist.
• The date it clicked, which isn't always the first listen.
• A rating.
• One line about where you were or what it reminds you of.
• Your favourite track, if one stands out.

Keep it that short. You want something you'll do in the minute after the last track ends, not a review you'll put off.

How do you listen so albums stick?

Play it start to finish. Shuffle and playlists are great, but albums are built to be heard in order, and you'll remember them better as a whole.

Give it more than one go. Plenty of favourites start out as "fine". A second and third listen a few days apart tell you more than the first.

Make one album a week your album. Pick something new to you and give it a proper listen with nothing else going on. Fifty-two albums a year is a lot of music to know well.

Where do you find albums worth logging?

Not just the new releases. Some of the best entries come from sideways: the band you saw as a support act, the soundtrack of a film you loved, an album a friend logged, a record from the year you were born. Following one of those threads is a good way to hear things your streaming recommendations would never suggest.

Should you log albums you didn't like?

Yes, at least the ones you gave a fair go. A two-star entry with a line about why tells you as much about your taste as a five-star one. It also stops you giving the same album a fourth chance in three years' time without remembering the first three.

Scrobbling or logging?

Last.fm "scrobbles" every track you play from many apps and devices, building an automatic history that can go back years. It's brilliant data, and the most accurate record of what you actually listened to.

A log is the opposite: deliberate and small. You only add what mattered. The two work well together. Let Last.fm count everything in the background, and keep a log for the albums you'd put on a list.

How do you make an end-of-year albums list?

If you've logged as you went, this takes ten minutes instead of a weekend.

Look at this year's entries, highest rated first. Everything near the top is a candidate.

Read your lines back. They'll remind you why each one mattered, and some albums will move up or down.

Trust what you kept going back to. If you logged an album twice, that tells you something.

Keep the list short. Ten albums you love beat fifty you liked.

Then keep it somewhere you'll see it again. A list you made in December is a lovely thing to read the next December, when you're making a new one.

Where does artsvibe fit?

If you've been looking for a Letterboxd for albums, artsvibe works in a similar way for music: you rate an album in half stars, add a line and the date, and it sits in the same diary as your films, series, books and gigs. The diary shows the year by month, so you can see the album you had on while you read the book you couldn't put down. And your profile is a pixel-art room where your favourite covers hang on the wall, which is a nice place for a year's best to end up.

For the dedicated album apps, see Is there a Letterboxd for books, music and TV?