Its that time of year again! Following our successful outing last year, I’m at it again. Here’s my Different Kind of Top 10 Music List for 2005.If you missed last year’s version, here’s the deal: This isn’t a list of the BEST OF 2005 CDs; Instead, its …

Its that time of year again! Following our successful outing last year, I’m at it again. Here’s my Different Kind of Top 10 Music List for 2005.If you missed last year’s version, here’s the deal: This isn’t a list of the BEST OF 2005 CDs; Instead, its …

You are comparing apples and oranges here. Steal a hubcap, and the car only has 3 hubcaps left. You are physically removing a finite unit inm the corporeal world, and thats a zero sum transaction (Car owner has one less hubcap, thief has one more).

Music downloadeing is not a zero sum game. P2P does not reduce the number of units the copyright owners have for sale; Are you stealing when you listen to the radio or watch a video on MTV? I find P2P to be comparable activities to those. I sample songs, and if I like them I buy them. I used to do that on the radio, but alas, there is hardly any more music on the radio these days . . . P2P is the new substitute.

Fwiw:

“Incidentally, the correlation between my downloaded P2P tunes and subsequent CD purchases is extremely high; I’ll bet others have had similar experiences.”

That’s irrelevant. Theft is theft. We don’t justify the stealing of hubcaps if it drives car sales.

The new Tegan and Sara album is good, but I remain solidly in the thrall of “If It Was You”.

My favorite music discovery this year wasn’t an album, but a service. Realplayer’s Rhapsody has 750,000 songs available in streaming format, many for download. With the associations of “Influences”, “Contemporaries” and “Followers” for each artist you can accelerate your musical education through a supercollider.

You can create endless playlists, radio stations, bookmarks, etc. Custom content to the Nth. Ten bucks a month to have 92% of the music you want and 1000′s of songs you didn’t know you wanted at your fingertips is a real bargain. That’s what? 10 iPod downloads? Bah.

With no download times, no hard drive space, no fear of viruses, no misnamed files, etc to sample a song the transaction costs checking out a song by P2P suddenly seem extremely high.

Also cool is creating your own LaunchCast Radio Station – a bit of work but fun. As you rate songs, artists and albums the station becomes smarter about playing music you love or might like. There’s something really sweet about having your favorite underappreciated songs coming up randomly like a radio station rather than through a playlist that you’ve programmed, even if the playlist is a few thousand songs long and set on shuffle.

You can check my station out here. But since I haven’t started coughing up the 3 bucks month yet, I’ve used up all my minutes. So you’ll have to wait until the First of the year.

Streaming iPod – that’s the future.

Ok, where was I?

Here’s a list of singles that have come out the past 2 years, that are under the radar, and i liked a lot.

Cat Power: He war
(from You Are Free, 2003)

Tegan and Sara: Walking with the Ghost
(from So Jealous, 2004)

The New Pornographers: All for Swinging You Around
(from Electric Version, 2003)

Elliot Smith: Let’s Get Lost
(from A Basement on a Hill, 2004)

Badly Drawn Boy: Something to Talk About
(from About a Boy soundtrack, 2003)