Thanks to @borborygmus for reminding me that my musical review of 2009 is constantly being written on my Last.fm page, and whatever I claim to find cool, there’s no escaping from what I actually listened to. And it turns out that what I actually listened to over the course of a year (other than when I was in my car) was about 12,500 songs, which works out at well over 30 a day. Not bad, and something you can probably only achieve if you work from home.

However, I rarely choose what I listen to directly. I merge a couple of iTunes smart playlists, one which selects the music from my iTunes library which I haven’t played for over a year, and the other which selects stuff I’ve added in the last month (until I’ve listened to any track more than half a dozen times). So it’s likely that the artists whose music I’ve had on the most are going to be either those which I’ve got the most music from, or those I’ve got the most new music from.

Top of the pile is an exception though: Half Man Half Biscuit songs (516 plays) do get selected specifically from the iTunes library, as I slowly add to (and update) my Half Man Half Biscuit Lyrics Project site. Feel free to dismiss its significance, but with over 274,000 page views – and something in the region of 1,000 comments – this year, as well as mentions in The Guardian and more, it’s obviously performing some kind of public service. I reckon we’re due a new album in 2010 (a rarity), so that should stoke up even more interest.

Next up come The Beatles (424 plays), reflecting of course the release of the boxed sets, which I have to say I borrowed from @fenlandgent. I played these right through on at least a couple of occasions, and of course the fab four are always lurking away in the background on any iTunes shuffle playlists. None of the rest of the top twenty surprise me: I have a lot of music from all of them, so they’re bound to crop up a lot. But in order, numbers 3 to 20 in my most-played artists of 2009 were Art of Noise, Morrissey, Bruce Springsteen, Prefab Sprout, Pink Floyd, Everything but the Girl, Kate Bush, Monty Python, Sigur Rós, Oasis, Saint Etienne, Genesis, Amy Winehouse, Coldplay, David Bowie, Kraftwerk, The Smiths and Neil Young. I wouldn’t deny that sums up my musical taste quite well.

But what was the new music of 2009 for me? I’m sorry, but Animal Collective join Joanna Newsom, Fleet Foxes, LCD Soundsystem. Bon Iver, etc as yet more critically-acclaimed artists which I just don’t get, so no place in this chart for Merriweather Post Pavilion. I can’t remember a year when the critics’ albums of the year were so diverse, or where I had so few albums which really did it for me. There were decent albums from the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Morrissey and Royksopp, but these were far from their best. The Prefab Sprout album was an old one, really. Bat For Lashes’ Two Suns was pretty good, and although I’m not as sold on The Duckworth Lewis Method as most people, it was fun. So, no album of the year at all for me. Sorry.