December 17th, 2019 1:42pm
2019 Survey Mix
I started making “survey mixes” at the end of the year at the start of this decade, and my approach to anthologizing the year’s music has changed over time. Initially it was all about my favorites, and then there was more of an effort to be as expansive as possible. When I’ve gone back to do previous decades, I’ve tried to be as thorough as I can, which is a little easier with hindsight. This year I’ve been collecting the survey in a rolling playlist in real time, and the result is a playlist of around 1000 songs that’s too much for anyone to reasonably listen to but is also STILL fairly incomplete in my mind. The amount of music produced now is truly staggering and we don’t talk enough about what that volume of material actually means for music culture, especially when the full range and diversity of what’s going on in music is largely ignored by media in favor of celebrity and whoever has serious money behind them. Hopefully these 2019 survey playlists will help you find some things you love that exist outside of all that.
Because the main survey is so large and unwieldy I’ve decided to make three other playlists with specific musical themes in the interest of listenability. The first of which is focused on, loosely speaking, R&B and slow jams. There was a huge amount of excellent music in this vein in 2019 and that chunk of the main survey was one of the things I listened to most frequently.
The second breakout playlist is basically all “indie,” which is defined somewhat loosely – I mean, I have a Taylor Swift song in this one – but I think it all fits together quite nicely.
And finally, here’s just a lot of bangers and bops – up tempo pop, dance music, and rap.
If you like what I’ve done here, please consider donating to the site via Ko-Fi!
12/17/19 2:04 pm
Thank you once again for all the great work you put into these year-end lists. I really look forward to them, and I always discover new bands, songs and albums every year. I know I am in the minority, but I still mainly listen to my music on MP3 files rather than through streaming services and I really appreciated being able to download the songs in your annual surveys. Have you stopped offering that feature? Thanks again for everything!
12/17/19 4:19 pm
No more mp3s?
12/17/19 6:14 pm
Will you be offering download links this year, or just Spotify?
12/17/19 7:00 pm
Hi
Will the survey be available as a download
Jules
12/18/19 12:28 am
Will you be posting downloadable versions? I rely on those for my annual music catch-up! (And I don’t really use Spotify.)
12/18/19 1:04 pm
Will you be making a downloadable version?
12/18/19 3:13 pm
Look forward to listening to the play lists.
But will you be making the songs available for download?
12/18/19 4:08 pm
Any plans to put up an mp3 bundle of (some of) them?
12/25/19 9:53 pm
Pretty much all the really great stuff is already available on this site for download!
12/18/19 11:42 pm
Is the 2019 survey only gonna be made available via Spotify this year?
12/19/19 12:46 am
Wahoo! Always look forward to these. Will downloads still be available? Thanks!
12/19/19 5:20 pm
Matthew,
thanks – I always like these. Sadly I am old and downloaded them to play on itunes. despite having Spotify for a decade I just dont get on with it. Mental block.
Keep up the good work
12/20/19 4:49 am
Does this mean that you won’t be putting together a downloadable list? I guess I’m asking for this being one of the only people who would download all your mixes and listening to them regularly on my iTunes and on my phone rather than making the jump to using Spotify.
12/25/19 9:53 pm
It’s just too many songs and I don’t have the bandwidth for the (rather enormous) amount of work that doing that would require when only a tiny portion of the audience is interested in consuming things that way.
12/21/19 7:48 pm
No more downloads? I don’t have spotify
12/24/19 2:26 pm
so no more downloads? :’-(
12/25/19 9:52 pm
I hope you understand why it’s kinda untenable to make a 1000 song zip downloads!
12/24/19 4:18 pm
For the lame-ohs like me who use Apple Music: I was able to convert most of the big playlist using a service called Tune My Music. You just paste the link to the Spotify playlist in there.
12/28/19 11:51 pm
goodness gracious folks it’s not that bad. go through all his posts from the past year & download the songs that way. you’ll thank yourself later. #mp3blogs4ever
12/29/19 4:21 am
Crayton, that is absolutely amazing.
1/2/20 10:37 pm
I can’t imagine all the work you have put into all of your surveys. It is greatly appreciated and has certainly expanded my musical knowledge and influenced a broadening of what goes in my ears. Like the others, am saddened by the lack of mp3’s. Would a fund raiser to collect donations help you in getting what you need to do this? I am going to donate now to show my support. But if survey mp3’s could again be part of this website, I would give more. Just an idea…
1/4/20 10:53 pm
Thanks for assembling the year-end music lists. I’ve learned a lot from them throughout the years and am amazed at the creativity and innovation that happens in popular music these days. I totally get it that you can’t upload mp3s for all of them. Most of the songs are anyway already available through your page and easy to google. Those of us who like to download and listen to them offline can access them that way (and may end up buying some of the tracks that are not available here…).
Happy New Year!