I was thinking maybe of doing something like this when I got 5000 tracks scrobbled, but it's a dull evening and I've got a long download going, so let's go. Here's my current top 50 artists, and where I first encountered them:

1. Nine Inch Nails
Heard Closer on the radio in late 1994 when it cracked the Australian top 10. Took quite a few more years to become a fan though.

2. Nirvana
They were everywhere on the radio in 1991 and 1992. Of course you've heard a Nirvana song, even if you weren't even born then. As a young kid, all I knew then was that there suddenly seemed to be a lot of good music on the radio.

3. The Clash
Knew about these guys for quite a while, but the first time I was really conscious of "hey, I'm listening to the Clash" was at my brother's 21st. There'd been a mixup with the music and all we had to listen to was a Clash greatest hits album, and Rock the Casbah got played over and over...

4. Curve
I knew nothing about these guys before 2008. But the shoegazing music blog Shoegazeralive kept pimping the band (anyone who likes shoegaze should have it bookmarked), so I checked it out and found these guys had beaten Garbage to the punch by half a decade.

5. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Would have been 1995, cause that was when JJJ started broadcasting in Bendigo and we got to hear tons of unheard artists. The Let Love In album had been out for about a year but they still played plenty of Cave, particularly Red Right Hand.

6. Sonic Youth
Heard them on JJJ sporadically throughout the late 90's and early 00's. Didn't pay them any attention until I finally picked up Daydream Nation last year. I think they may be the greatest rock band still around.

7. Cruyff in the Bedroom
Also in 2007 I'd gotten into shoegaze music in a big way thanks to My Bloody Valentine, mostly because I wanted to find an album as impossibly beautiful as Loveless. This band came recommended on a music forum as high quality shoegaze, and after a listen to their album Hikarihimawari I think these guys are the best of the current shoegazers. Their guitars are a bit harder and cleaner than the shimmering tremolo of Kevin Shields, but the songs are hooky and use plenty of feedback texture.

8. Blur
I used to hear the Pet Shop Boys' remix of Girls and Boys a lot in 1994 while working out at the gym. Then came Country House...

9. Radiohead
Heard Creep plenty in 1994, it never made an impression. Few years later, all I remember hearing off their second album was My Iron Lung, which I thought at the time was wilfully difficult. It was the epic scale of Paranoid Android that finally changed my mind about the group.

10. Hüsker Dü
You can only hear an artist praised so long before you give in. I picked up New Day Rising in 2006 and heard a guitar sound I'd never heard before.

11. Killing Joke
Only knew these guys because they supplied Metallica with one of their better covers. Then I started getting into Ministry and Joy Division, and just this year finally got into them via the very radio-friendly Night Time. And then I found I remembered Love Like Blood from the 80's.

12. Depeche Mode
I knew Just Can't Get Enough, but the rest of their catalog was a mystery until I heard some of the Ultra singles. If you don't know this band much pick up the singles collections, they'll be a revelation.

13. Wire
Another band I got into because critics kept praising them and calling them things like "influential", "groundbreaking", etc. I like a lot of their stuff but Pink Flag is the only essential.

14. Red Hot Chili Peppers
Been a fan of these guys for a long time, right back to 1992 when I first heard Under the Bridge. The stats don't reflect this but I think I've listened to Blood Sugar Sex Magik more than any album I've ever owned.

15. Gogol Bordello
I saw their duet with Madonna and then picked up Multi Kontra Culti vs. Irony. It is impossible to listen to this album for more than two minutes and remain still.

16. Pixies
I went after Surfer Rosa a few years ago because I knew this band was a big influence on Nirvana, and this album in particular sounded a great deal like In Utero. That turned out to be the case but the songs are a great deal poppier and upbeat. Which is good.

17. Big Black
The band may have contained Steve Albini and been a big influence on Ministry, but I didn't have to hear a single note: saw the cover for Songs About Fucking and was sold.

18. Pearl Jam
Somehow I completely missed Ten: my first contact with these guys would have been the Go single. And Vitalogy was the second album I ever bought.

19. XTC
Senses Working Overtime was always on the radio, and that was the only track of theirs I knew when I picked up the Fossil Fuel singles collection. Judging by their scrobble count this must be the most overlooked band in history.

20. Faith No More
Epic, of course. Though I wasn't really a fan until King For A Day.

21. The Cruel Sea
Flipped for these guys after hearing Black Stick and thinking it was the strangest song I'd ever heard. And The Honeymoon Is Over turned out to be the third album I ever bought (you won't be hearing the first).

22. The Verve
Only heard about these guys when they broke onto Australian radio with Bitter Sweet Symphony. I don't own any of their albums: this scrobble count is based entirely off a bootleg of their performance at Blackpool in 2007, which I unreservedly recommend to everybody.

23. DJ Shadow
I like trip-hop but didn't know about DJ Shadow until last year, when I picked up Endtroducing.....

24. Ratatat
I don't know anything about these guys other than the songs on LP3, which I got cause I heard they liked to cross genres a lot. Still don't know exactly how you'd categorize this album.

25. Massive Attack
I got into this band after hearing Protection, which had a delicacy you never heard on the radio.

26. Pet Shop Boys
Another band you'd hear all the time on the radio, and I was prepared to write them off for life after that atrocious Absolutely Fabulous song. Then a few years ago I saw Discography and it looked like a good deal. It turned out they were something more than a couple of smartarses...

27. The Smiths
Back in 2003 or so I was curious about the band, mostly through having heard How Soon Is Now? on the radio, but didn't know where to begin. Then I saw Hatful of Hollow on special and snapped it up. Was a fan within a few songs.

28. Catherine Wheel
Got interested in them in 2007 as a shoegazer band, but these guys tend to change styles quite a lot from album to album. There's really no typical Catherine Wheel song.

29. Queens of the Stone Age
I remember the first I heard of these guys was when the Monsters in the Parasol single got some airtime. I wasn't a stoner rock fan at the time but Queens of the Stone Age turned out to be my gateway drug.

30. Thumlock
Case in point. This band was based in Wollongong but I never heard them on the radio. First I heard of them was on a music forum last year. They were described as stoner rock, like dozens of bands, but with a strong element of psychedelia and heavy doses of Hawkwind. Lunar Mountain Sunrise was the album, and if you think they might be something you'd like, give the title track a listen.

31. Manic Street Preachers
Australian radio knew nothing about these guys until If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next, which got tons of airplay and charted really high. Then radio entirely forgot about them again. But before that happened I'd picked up This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours on the cheap.

32. M.I.A.
Her first album missed me altogether and somehow I picked up the second without having first heard Paper Planes. Think it was a glowing review from Robert Christgau that made me check her out.

33. AC/DC
I was a little kid in short pants watching Hey Hey It's Saturday when they played the Thunderstruck video. Love at first sight.

34. Saul Williams
The only artist on this list I became a fan of for political reasons: Saul had teamed up with Trent Reznor and they'd put out his latest album as a free download, or $5 if you felt like it. Since I want to see more music put out this way, and Reznor was producer of the album, I bought it. Luckily it turned out to be really good, and in a way a companion piece to Year Zero.

35. My Bloody Valentine
I sometimes heard Only Shallow on the radio during the nineties, but that track alone won't tell you much about the band. I got Loveless a few years ago after seeing it in top ten list after top ten list. One listen alone with headphones...

36. Daft Punk
Da Funk made it onto the radio back in the nineties: maybe as a novelty track, but it made it. I borrowed a copy of Homework and thought it had a lot of filler. So in 2005 when I decided I wanted a copy of Da Funk, I made sure to pick up the greatest hits collection.

37. New Order
Everyone knows Blue Monday, but I got into these guys as a fan of Joy Division. I had the Joy Division singles collection Substance, and Substance seemed like a good way of continuing the story. It turned out to be even better, not just a greatest hits or singles collection but a unified, cohesive album that summed up their whole career.

38. Regurgitator
I heard I Like It Like That on JJJ in early 1995 and was a fan from the first point that static just randomly cuts through the song. I bought their first EP but my mum made me take it back to the store when she read the lyrics sheet. Which if anything just made me more of a fan.

39. Ethyl Meatplow
The album was posted randomly in a music forum with the sort of raves these albums usually attract, and I downloaded it just as randomly. This band gets described as industrial, but it's basically some shouting over a synthesizer rhythm track. The heavy use of slap bass always reminds me of the Doom soundtrack for some reason.

40. Joy Division
I'd known (and generally disliked) Love Will Tear Us Apart, and it wasn't until watching 24 Hour Party People that I realized they actually had a very strong body of work. Quickly picked up the three albums (Unknown Pleasures, Closer and Substance). A quick listen through Substance and I was hooked.

41. The Birthday Party
I'd become a big Nick Cave fan so I was always going to check these guys out, although for a while the only song I knew was Release the Bats, since they'd play the music video on Rage. I found a copy of Junkyard on the cheap in JB in 2005.

42. Soundgarden
First exposure was Black Hole Sun, inescapable on the radio in 1994. My favorite band to listen to while driving.

43. Moby Grape
Don't know why I sought after these guys, I think it was a rave review on All Music Guide, for some reason. Guess I must be a sucker for anything described as a lost treasure. Could not find this in stores, but while on holiday last year my cousin's husband offered to demonstrate his DC++ album downloading skillz (!), and I got him to download their self titled album.

44. Leftfield
I remember quite well a review of The Prodigy's The Fat of the Land album back in 1997, in which the reviewer said he preferred Leftfield as a techno act. They were getting played on the radio at the time, but they're the kind of band that can sit in the background very easily (like Air). I eventually bought Leftism simply because their name had stuck with me, and it turned out to be excellent chillout music. And I knew half the tracks already.

45. Kyuss
I was a fan of QOTSA, and after seeing Blues for the Red Sun described as the "stoner rock bible" picked it up in 2002.

46. Mono
This is in my top 50 but it's actually two artists: Japanese post-rockers Mono, and Portishead clone Mono. The latter I got into after hearing Life Is Mono on the radio, the former because I'd picked up an interest in Japanese rock and their names kept coming up.

47. Deerhoof
The Runners Four started getting a lot of hype, so naturally I went and bought Apple O' . Which was good really because it's much better.

48. Lush
Another shoegaze artist I had to follow up on once I fell for My Bloody Valentine. Think I have the Shoegazeralive blog to thank, again.

49. Mr. Bungle
I heard a track of theirs on the radio in 1999 - can't remember which one now, but it was utterly stuffed to the gills with genre switches, sudden loud bursts of noise, catchy poppy bits, and verbal gymnastics from Mike Patton (okay, that's every song from these guys). A few years later I started to really get into the Angel Dust, and since this was apparently the most Mr. Bungle-like FNM album, followed it up with California.

50. Beth Rowley
I was surprised to see her in the top 50, I picked her album up not long ago after hearing Nobody's Fault But Mine. It's not threatening music at all, but Beth's cute, charming and cool.

Okay. Maybe I ought to type less words per album...