Hops vs. The Blogosphere

I'm happy to say that I was one of 774 music blogs who contributed to a really cool project called "Music Blog Zeitgeist 2008" on the Hype Machine. They took the Top 10 albums from hundreds of blogs across the Web and averaged them together to determine their Top 10 albums of the year. Even cooler is that you can stream all of the 50 of the best albums of the year for free.

So how do my picks compare to the rest of the Blogosphere? Here you go:
I'm not surprised by many of the picks. Of the 774 blogs I'm the only one who had Aimee Mann as the #1 album of the year. In fact, she only showed up on 6 lists in total. A.A. Bondy, appeared on exactly one list, All You Need Is Hops, which is criminal. He's a true talent. Another surprisingly low score went to Nine Inch Nails' The Slip, which not only was given away for free, was a fantastic and well received album. On the positive side I was happy to see Kathleen Edwards crack the Top 100. I wouldn't have guessed that.

Overall, I would venture to guess that the majority of people who have music blogs are younger and hipper than me, which is why more "adult" music like Aimee Mann (#179), Randy Newman (#227) and Matthew Ryan (#172) were not ranked higher. Many of the more popular bands clearly trended towards college radio and blogosphere-only sensations. I doubt many 18 year olds really have a connection to Aimee Mann.

In total only 1585 albums appeared on the lists of all the blogs. Here is how some of my other favorites from this year stacked up:

The most upsetting results: Nine Inch Nails Ghost I-IV at #196 only getting mentioned 6 times. Glad to see somebody else like the Builders and the Butchers and Hayden. You can also download the data used to prepare these lists here: raw data, compiled data.