Instead of a top twenty or whatever, every one should pick one album that they think is worthy of a top-whatever list that no one else (or few others) would likely know of. then we could all get to experience some new music, rather than sift through Arcade Fire, Spoon, Andrew Bird, The National (all of which are great) to find a hidden gem.

I don't really think this is a good idea on it's own since it requires people to rank music by exclusiveness rather than actual quality.

On the other hand the traditional Top 20 list produces a scored inventory of the years albums running into the hundreds which is much more useful.

With the full board and individual lists it is an easy task to 'cross reference' your tastes with others on the board with similar listening habits.

We need the 'known' albums as a sort of ruler against which we measure the 'unknown' albums. If I love the White Stripes and you love the White Stripes and I like The Coffee Mugs more than the White Stripes then that gives you some sort of critical scale to judge against.

If posters wanted to 'highlight' a lesser known artist from within their top twenty then that would be fine since it would then have some context and we would know how highly that person ranked that album within their own top twenty (first, eighth, seventeenth etc).

Darrin is really big on systems.

I totally agree with his premise though--I totally pay the most attention to people's lists who have similar tastes to try and find shit that I missed.

Yeah, it's good.

okay, it just seems like so many people bag on the year end lists for their sameness.

I check everybody's lists to see where everyone is thinking and to see if anything catches my fancy.

I think people's individual lists are pretty different. It's just that in the end the albums that are on many people's lists make it to the overall top 20 which, by definition, seems samey since they all appeared on so many lists.

The individual year end lists are the reason Obner exists, in my opinion. And that so many Obnerians are already proud of their "only I know this music" terminal uniqueness... many of the lists cause me to research music I know nothing about.

It's the "combined" Top Twenty that is fairly expected and useless in terms of exposing unknown music.

This would be cool if we did this a couple months before the shmoopoll. Each of us pick an obscure album from our list and review it... I doubt it would affect the final list much, but might give some of those 150-300 rank bands some exposure...

Good idea, patrick!

Year end lists are the best way to discover new or unheard bands.

Good idea. First week of December, "I nominate for your consideration...."

Maybe we could have a few music threads before the end of the year where people could post about a few "hidden gems" that they are really enjoying.

really? i think that with the exception of a few lists that try very very hard to not be like anyone else's list, there are very few "new or unheard bands" that are discovered through a year end list. it seems like everyone on this board has access to just about everything put out in a calendar year, it would be nice not to have to sift through all the crap to find a few hidden gems.

Doesn't Bee do this with albums? Maybe not unheard of albums like Patrick is talking about, but still threads dedicated to particular albums as a refresher.

But its useful in pointing out how similar our list is to Pitchfork!

maybe some more of you can actually post up a Top 20 mix including the MP3's of their favorite releases, instead of just listing a Top 20.

i mean really, it aint that tough to share

you are opening a door Dalen where 50 mixes have the song 'Rehab'.

no, NO, NO!

lolz

Not here. Winehouse is marked in my book as an '06 release. Chances of a hoodinternet.com mashup, however, are highly likely.

I will certainly start my annual year-end mix thread in the mix forum. Usually, they are just track-listings, but I uploaded mine last year.

i dont think i can even do a top 20 this year

i pretty much just listen to tracks now, it takes a pretty good artist like Monch to get me to listen to a full album