As you may understand, music is such a powerful source of joy in my life. Growing up in a golden age of extremely productive and skilled musicians during the 1970s and 80s, the amount of vinyl records I wanted to buy far outnumbered the ones I had the budget for.
Enter digital and streaming, that luckily changed during my lifetime. I now have access to, basically, every record ever made and released. Or, at least, way more than I could ever consume. Discover-ability of new-to-me artists is also way better and easier.
Anyhow… thinking back, I realised that it was a lot of albums I never really got to listen to. Sometimes, I’d borrow one from a friend, other times, we’d only play the hits etc. So, setting out to remedy this, I started my personal Project Discography.
Try this at home
The workflow is dead simple: Start with an artist you really like. Now find their list of studio albums on your streaming service of choice and start with the oldest one. Put on your headphones and listen from the beginning, in track order, through the whole album. Now, do the same with the artist’s second album. Repeat. If you’re up for it, add in the live albums too and check compilations for any previously unreleased or remixed tracks. (Feel free to skip the goofy Christmas albums, I mostly did.)
If you try this, I promise you will get quite a few surprises and probably discover fantastic tracks that you’d never have discovered otherwise.
Status tracker
This far1, I’ve completed2 the discographies of 80 artists, totalling 1030 albums. I don’t have any reason to stop any time soon — it’s just so much great music out there.
| Airplay (1 albums) | Al Jarreau (15 albums) | Aretha Franklin (34 albums) | Art of Noise (11 albums) |
| B52s (11 albums) | Bahama Soul Club (6 albums) | Betty Davis (5 albums) | Billy Joel (12 albums) |
| Bo Kaspers Orkester (18 albums) | Bob Marley (10 albums) | Bonnie Raitt (19 albums) | Candy Dulfer (10 albums) |
| Chaka Kahn (12 albums) | Chic (10 albums) | David Bowie (28 albums) | Diana Krall (16 albums) |
| Donald Fagen (4 albums) | Doors (6 albums) | Duran Duran (16 albums) | Earth, Wind and Fire (22 albums) |
| Eliane Elias (25 albums) | Elton John (36 albums) | Erykah Badu (7 albums) | Eurythmics (10 albums) |
| Everything but the Girl (11 albums) | Ezra Collective (4 albums) | Fatboy Slim (5 albums) | Grace Jones (10 albums) |
| Incognito (20 albums) | James Brown (50 albums) | Jamiroquai (8 albums) | Janet Jackson (11 albums) |
| Japan (7 albums) | Jonathan Coulton (6 albums) | Joni Mitchell (20 albums) | Joy Division (3 albums) |
| Kate Bush (10 albums) | Kraftwerk (8 albums) | Lady Gaga (12 albums) | Lizzy McAlpine (4 albums) |
| Maceo Parker (14 albums) | Manhattan Transfer (17 albums) | Marcus Miller (18 albums) | Melody Gardot (8 albums) |
| Meshell Ndegeocello (14 albums) | Michael Jackson (12 albums) | New Order (9 albums) | Nikki Yanofsky (5 albums) |
| Nils Landgren Funk Unit (12 albums) | Patti Austin (16 albums) | Prince (44 albums) | Propaganda (3 albums) |
| Queen (13 albums) | Randy Crawford (15 albums) | Rebecca Törnqvist (11 albums) | Rufus, with and without Chaka Khan (10 albums) |
| Scritti Politti (5 albums) | Shannon Curtis (13 albums) | Sheila E. (9 albums) | Simple Minds (24 albums) |
| Siouxsie and the Banshees (10 albums) | Spandau Ballet (7 albums) | Steely Dan (9 albums) | Stevie Wonder (24 albums) |
| Sting (15 albums) | Suzanne Vega (12 albums) | Talking Heads (11 albums) | Taylor Swift (11 albums) |
| The Clash (7 albums) | The Cure (16 albums) | The Meters (9 albums) | The Police (6 albums) |
| Thomas Dolby (10 albums) | Tina Turner (9 albums) | Trintje Oosterhuijs (16 albums) | Victor Wooten (11 albums) |
| Weather Report (15 albums) | Yazoo (3 albums) | Yello (14 albums) | Yellow Magic Orchestra (10 albums) |
- as of 2025-05-20 ↩︎
- “Completed”, as in all albums available on Tidal at the time of listening. A match of Wikipedia’s album listing can sometimes reveal albums that are not available for streaming. ↩︎