the tinyblog

I know how to navigate the sea of technology and download just about any newly released album I want to hear, sometimes even before the official release date of the album. And I do. I download and listen to almost any album I'm interested in, probably 50 or 60 albums in any given year.

There's no way I would ever purchase all these albums. If there were no other way to get them, I would listen to probably 1/10th of the new music I do listen to. Instead, I listen to many things I would otherwise never hear. I think about who would like the albums, and I tell people about them. The people I love, I go see live. I have a hard time believing that these artists would have it some other way, but I could be wrong.

I consider myself a kind of music journalist, and these copies of music to be advance copies. I go out of my way to promote the music I really believe in, and consider it my payment for the music.

This year in particular I listened to a tremendous number of albums, and as I started to look around at some emerging top ten lists for the year, and I saw that I had listened to at least half the albums on most people's lists, and I started to think maybe I should assemble and do write-ups on my own top ten albums of the year list.

My list is finally ready, and I'm going to post a countdown of my top ten and do a small (pretty much glowing) review of each album. Then you can feel the incredible tension as you begin to stay up wondering what albums made THE CUT and which albums didn't.