This year may go down for me as the year that the Internet substantially changed my music listening habits. I'm not ready to call it a 'revolution' yet, but the combination of Pitchfork's Infinite Mixtape, Last.fm's indexing of my listening habits, Predixis' MusicIP software, FIQL's playlist sharing community, and my new subscription to eMusic.com have really changed the way I 'consume' music- bot... [+]

This year may go down for me as the year that the Internet substantially changed my music listening habits. I'm not ready to call it a 'revolution' yet, but the combination of Pitchfork's Infinite Mixtape, Last.fm's indexing of my listening habits, Predixis' MusicIP software, FIQL's playlist sharing community, and my new subscription to eMusic.com have really changed the way I 'consume' music- both in the purchasing and listening sense. Pitchfork recently suggested that we have traded the Age of the Album for the Age of the Playlist (http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/39892/Air_LateNightTales) and Peter Jenner claims that "Big labels are f*cked, and DRM is dead" (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/11/03/peter_jenner/).

My top twenty albums of 2006 list certainly reflects these trends. Very few major label releases, and about as many downloaded through eMusic rather as bought on CD.On to the list. I've chosen one great track from each of my top 20 albums of the year:

20. M. Ward - Post-War
19. Guillemots - Through the Windowpane
18. Various Artists - DJ Spooky presents 50,000 Volts of Trojan Records
17. Junior Boys - So This Is Goodbye
16. Regina Spektor - Begin To Hope
15. The Raconteurs - Broken Boy Soldiers
14. The Pipettes - We Are The Pipettes
13. Placebo - Meds
12. Gnarls Barkley - St. Elsewhere
11. Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
10. Johnny Cash - American V: A Hundred Highways
9. I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness - Fear Is On Our Side
8. Band of Horses - Everything All the Time
7. TV On the Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain
6. The Knife - Silent Shout
5. Peter Bjorn and John - Writer's Block
4. Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan - Ballad of the Broken Seas
3. Camera Obscura - Let's Get Out of this Country
2. Cat Power - The Greatest
1. El Perro del Mar - El Perro del Mar
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