As a music geek, December is one of my favorite times of year, since its when all my favorite music blogs and fellow geeks on various mailing lists publish their “Top 10 Albums of 2008″ lists.

I’ve been keeping a similar list since 2001 (you can see the last 3 years on the sidebar of this blog). Every year narrowing down the list to 10 becomes a challenge. There’s so much great music out there.

Every year it amazes me, upon reading people’s lists, just how much music I haven’t heard, although I consider myself someone who keeps up with a ton of it in many different genres. Through the miracle of Rhapsody, the last few weeks of December are spent queueing up dozens of albums that others love that are totally new to me.

One of the best discoveries I’ve made so far is an album called Glider by the band The Sight Below, on the amazing Ghostly International.

I will not attempt a full review here, but suffice it to say this is hauntingly beautiful beat-based ambient reminiscent of things like Hammock and a less sample-filled KLF “Chill Out”.

You can listen for free via Lala (I <3 the freakin internet)

Good year for music, had trouble paring down to 10

In no particular order:

1. Johann Johannsson - Fordlandia (4ad) (just insanely gorgeous)
2. Jesu – Why Are We Not Perfect (hydrahead) (the denser more active counterpart to JJ)
3. Dear and the Headlights – Drunk Like Bible Times (EVR) (second time this band has been on my list… great The Band-influenced indie rock)
4. The Weepies – Hideaway (Nettwerk) (Now one of my favorite indiepop/singer-songwriter albums of all time)
5. M83 – Saturdays=Youth (Mute) (lush and beautiful in that 80s shiny way. Nostalgia that’s also a reinvention)
6. Santogold – Santogold (downtown) (Everything that I dont see about M.I.A. I see with Santi)
7. Sun Kil Moon - April (Caldo Verde) (Every top 10 list needs a somber poor-me album for depressives. Nobody does it better than Kozelek. Meditative.)
8. Robyn - Robyn (EMI) (best pure pop record this year)
9. Ida – Lover’s Prayers (polyvinyl) (another pretty m/f duet indiepop record, this more melancholy than The Weepies but equally worthwhile)
10. The Hush Sound - Goodbye Blues (decaydance/fueled by ramen) (gets the Nellie McKay schizophrenic-influence indierock award, and a great way to come out of the meditative/depressive coma of some of my other records. Also a heavy Carole King influence which is awesome.)

Runners-up:
Kylie Minogue – X (one of her strongest outings in ages, not as much replay value as Robyn tho)
Los Campesinos - Hold On Now, Youngster (i remember this being a great record, haven’t listened to it since it came out)
Raphael Saadiq - The Way I See It (Columbia) (great record)
Mercury Rev – Snowflake Midnight (awesome awesome sparkly record, sadly only room for 10. if you haven’t heard it, hear it.)

Most disappointing: Ben Folds … dude… wtf.
Best early ‘09 record i’ve heard because I work in the biz: Derek Trucks Band (seriously funky stuff)
Albums I’m looking forward to in 09: Paper Route, the inevitable Amy Winehouse disaster breakup album, NEW A CAMP RECORD OUT ON MY BIRTHDAY VIA NETTWERK.
Best album from 07 that shouldve been on my list but i didn’t hear until 08: Lucky Soul (ruffa Lane) (insanely catchy Cardigans-meets-Phil-Spector stuff)
Best album i’ve rediscovered from my collection: The Autumns – The Autumns
Music-related thing i’m most proud of having done in 2008: Tie between
Thrillercast and 60 Second Soundtracks

Rhapsody and other streaming services have always had a bit of a hurdle to overcome. The majority of the market owns iPods, and a slew of bad marketing in the beginning leading to the typical response of “Well, I don’t want to rent music, I want to own it!” What they have not effectively communicated is that what you’re paying for isn’t the ability to rent music, it’s access to the cloud of several million songs with no barrier to experience any of them. I could technically listen to 30 full days worth of music for the same $10 that would get me ONE album on iTunes. Trying to sell this idea to iTunes users used to the STORE paradigm ( (e.g. go somewhere, pick your music, pay for it, listen) vs SERVICE paradigm (pay up front to get access) when it comes to consuming music has been quite a challenge, and Apple certainly isn’t going to make it easier (that is, until the inevitable iTunes Music Rental Model).

I started this blog post with the intention of writing about why Rhapsody and Napster have had a hard time breaking through into the iTunes-dominated marketplace, but about halfway through a point dawned on me that maybe even the ppl at those companies haven’t thought about.

Streaming services are the “functionality” side to music blogs “content” side.

iTunes has been successful because their interface is built around editorial picks, and generally stuff that will direct you to a particular album/video/movie/podcast/etc.Streaming services have never been particularly strong in this area, mostly as a function of the lack of a barrier to “just play anything”. Drawing focus to particular items in their available catalog is counter to the whole point of the experience.

However, there are places online that are very strong in drawing focus at particular items within their enormous catalog: Music Blogs. There are thousands of people who are interested enough in music and what’s going on to dedicate significant time and resources toward filtering content for other people.

If Rhapsody were to position itself as “the music blogger’s best friend” or “no post is complete without a RhapLink”, or something about “the flipside of the coin”, I think their overall listenership/usage would go up.

There are two particular tribes that should be pointed toward streaming services:

1. Music geeks with a wide-ranging knowledge of different genres and know what they want to listen to at any one point but don’t want to lug their collection around with them
2. People interested in learning about music from external sources (blogs, last.fm, hypemachine, friends, etc) and then reaping the rewards

As a P.S. One of the big frustrations for streaming service users is the inability for Last.Fm to track their listens. Listening to a song over Rhapsody ends up not ‘counting’ as much as from CD or a file. It turns out theres a quick and free DLL plugin called ScrobRhapsody that will connect your Rhapsody client to your Last.Fm software

For an interesting alternate take on this, check out what Bob Leftsetz had to say about Rhapsody needing to pitch itself as a luxury item.

OK fine, so it’s a confluence of two of my favorite things. Whatever. Watch and enjoy the new video for “Can’t Go Back Now” directed by Brad Aldous

One of the projects I’ve been working on at Sony is a video series entitled 60 Second Soundtracks. The concept is simple. I work with some of the biggest music geeks I know, but we’re rarely given the opportunity to share our love of music professionally from a personal viewpoint. The series was conceived to give us all a place to talk about our favorite albums and why we love them so much.

There was no direction given as to which albums to choose, other than that they were in the SonyBMG (now Sony Music) catalog.I encouraged people to pick albums from deep in our catalog rather than the obvious choice (I strictly forbid anyone from picking “London Calling,” for example, we have so many Clash fans!)

The result is, I think, a really interesting collection of stories of people’s love of a wide range of albums and songs, and reminiscences of their own personal histories. Nobody picked albums we ‘happened to be working on this quarter’.There was no business reason behind the choices, other than that they felt that these albums needed to be heard by more people.

Thanks to Chris at Etc. Productions and Joe at Vella Interactive for making the vision a reality.

I hope you enjoy them.

This is the part of the blog post where I would embed a YouTube player, except that my companies YouTube strategy is to disable sharing on all the videos that we deliver to them. So you will have to make do with a:

Link: 60 Second Soundtracks playlist on YouTube

Update: here’s a widget with some of the vids, not all.