Apple’s Music app lacks advanced stats regarding your personal Apple Music listening history, but a free new iPhone app released earlier in December fills that void.
Music Year in Review is a new iPhone app by a startup called NoiseHub led by Alex Santarelli. Available on App Store at no charge, this piece of software lets you look back at your listening trends of 2018, including your most listened to genre, artists and song.
You will be asked to give the app permission to access your Apple Music library and provide your email address so it can save data (you can provide a fake email, the app will work without a hiccup). Should it crash or get stuck after that, restarting it will fix it.
After analyzing your Apple Music listening history, which can take a while depending on your device model and your music habits, you will be presented with three cards that visualize your most-played artist and how much time you’ve spent listening to them, plus your top genre, artist and song and the top five songs and artists you’ve listened to throughout the year.
I would like some more data points though.
According to the developer, the app’s already been downloaded 20,000 times since its inception about two weeks ago. A future update will bring more functionality, as well as fix crashes, add a privacy policy and provide clarity around the need to provide an email address.
“I want to make it clear that we currently only take in your top five songs, top five artists, top genre and email—and we keep this data entirely internal,” developers wrote on ProductHunt. “This is a passion project that blew up in a couple days, not a scam.”
“We’ll continue working on it and refining it.”
Designed for Apple Music subscribers, Music Year in Review uses MusicKit JS, which is Apple’s official API that third-party apps can use to handle secure authorization of users’ Apple Music accounts without compromising their Apple ID credentials.
Music Year in Review also generates nice-looking graphics that visualize a few key music listening stats, which you can instantly share on Instagram Stories or Twitter. To get the most out of your Apple Music subscription, be sure to check out an unofficial web-based player.