Top albums of 2016

I was discussing my shortlist for favorite albums of 2016 last week with my friend Tom Musick when I made an offhand comment about only having listened to one-thousandth (i.e., 1/1000) of the music out there.  This was intended to demonstrate that, in addition to music tastes being highly subjective, my exposure level to new music is vanishingly small, especially for someone who kind of tries to keep up.

I became curious about the accuracy of that statement, and so decided to research it a minimal amount.  Based on the information here, there were about 75,000 albums released in the U.S. in 2011, which at the time was trending downward; let's leave aside the surprising fact that 60,000 of those sold less than 100 copies.  I don't know how album releases have trended in the last few years, nor do I know what the worldwide album release numbers might look like, nor what percentage of international releases I could have easy access to.  My guess is that I could reasonably potentially have listened to any of somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 albums in 2016.  An examination of the albums I listened to in 2016 shows that I listened to something like 71 albums that were released last year, which is on the order of one-thousandth of the estimated available released albums.  And 71 is not really that big a number...

Anyway, to the list...

1. Moderat - III
2. The Range - Potential
3. SBTRKT - SAVE YOURSELF
4. Radiohead - A Moon Shaped Pool
5. Anderson .Paak - Malibu
6. James Blake - The Colour In Anything
7. Tycho - Epoch
8. ANOHNI - HOPELESSNESS
9. Young Magic - Still Life
10. dvsn - SEPT 5TH

11. Phantogram - Three
12. Yeasayer - Amen & Goodbye
13. Young Thug - JEFFERY
14. School of Seven Bells - SVIIB
15. Mogwai - Atomic
16. MIA - AIM



Also, here's a shout-out to Fetty Wap's album "Fetty Wap", which would have made my list last year if I had listened to it beforehand.