OK, I've procrastinated long enough. Here are the rules:

1) List your 10 favorite albums of the year in order.
2) Give each album a score of anywhere between five and 30 points.
3) The total points given out for your 10 albums can not exceed 100.
4) To be eligible, you must submit at least five albums on your list.
5) For every album you are under 10, you must subtract five points from the total 100 you are allowed to give out. For example, if you list eight albums, then you are only allowed to give out a total of 90 points to those albums.
6) The ballots will be due by Jan. 14, with results to follow shortly thereafter.
7) E-mail your ballot to rosters@wsfantasysports.com. I will reply with a confirmation and to let you know if your ballot doesn't add up correctly.
8) Please just list your albums in the body of the e-mail. No Word or Excel attachments, thanks.
9) Now go forth and multiply.

1)TV ON THE RADIO - Dear Science (26)
2)Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Dig Lazarus Dig! (16)
3)PORTISHEAD - third (12)
4)Bon Iver - For Emma; Forever Ago (9)
5)Sigur Ros - Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spillum endalaust (8)
6)DEPARTMENT OF EAGLES - In Ear Park (8)
7)FRIGHTENED RABIT - Midnight Organ Fight (6)
8)Deerhunter - MICROSCATLE (5)
9)THE HOLD STEADY - Stay Positive (5)
10)Santogold -SANTOGOLD (5)

PLEASE READ RULE NO. 7

lol...My bad. A D D Kicked in full gear, or maybe it was the Beatles on weedbrownies!

Thanks, Rocky, for the announcement of yet another fine album poll.

To the rules, I have the ever returning question about album officially released the year before, like e.g. MGMT and Bon Iver. Are they eligible to vote for or not?

Sure, since no one seemed to know about them last year anyway.

IMPORTANT: Forgot to mention in the rules that you should tell me what name you use on AM for when I post individual lists. Thanks.

Bringing this back to the top, so people see it.

Totally agree, Penguin.

Back to top again, 9 more days to go ...

No songs, right?

I've got my hands full with albums, but if someone else wanted to do songs, that's fine.

Here are the submitted lists as of Monday, Jan. 4, 2:46 p.m. PST

Rocky Raccoon
John
Netjade
VanillaFire1000
Tim
Miguel
Alex
John #2
Michel
Ned
Penguin
Kevin
Chris
Stephan

If we're going for a songs poll as well (and why not?), than I can volunteer to moderate that. Is it a good idea to start the voting right after this poll, i.e. the 15th and let it run until the end of January?

The rules can be quite similar to the ones Rocky set up for the albums poll, I just need to come up with another e-mail address...

Anyone against the idea?

I think you got mine but didn't list it as BillAdama. I got your confirmation.

A songs poll by the same rules would be harder because there would be a far greater variety of inclusions. Maybe for the songs poll we should do something with two phases. First, one where you can vote for anything and narrow it down to maybe 20 or 30, then one where you vote on those 20 or 30.

I just don't think with only twenty or so votes, many songs are going to get more than two or three different votes.

I agree, there just aren't enough voters to do songs.

... and BillAdama

Also, the way Pazz & Jop does the songs is everyone sends in a list of 10 and each and every song gets one point.

OK, the two phases is a good suggestion, BillAdama. I guess, this would work with nominating let say 20 songs each in the 1st round and vote for the 20 / 30 best nominated in the 2nd round.

How about this alternative: We submit a songs top 20 instead of 10 songs only? Than there will likely be more songs with multiple votes. The rules than could look like:

1) List your 20 favorite songs of the year in order.
2) Give each song a score of anywhere between 5 and 50 points.
3) The total points given out for your 20 songs can not exceed 200.
4) To be eligible, you must submit at least 10 songs on your list.
5) For every song you are under 20, you must subtract 5 points from the total 200 you are allowed to give out. For example, if you list 17 songs, then you are only allowed to give out a total of 185 points to those songs.
6) The ballots will be due by Jan. 31, with results to follow shortly thereafter.
7) E-mail your ballot to (to be announced). I will reply with a confirmation and to let you know if your ballot doesn't add up correctly.
8) Please just list your songs in the body of the e-mail. No Word or Excel attachments, thanks.
9) In the e-mail, please mention the username that we know you by in the AM forum.
10) Now go forth and multiply.

I think, it should be no problem to make a list of 20 songs and with 20+ submitters this still could work out fine...?

Hmm, thinking it over again, I like the two phases concept much more!

For the simple reason, that after the nominating phase, we will have songs in the qualified list, that we've never heard before. So in the second round, guided with songza links, we can all listen to the same set of songs, some we know and like a lot, some we know and like less, and some we hear for the 1st time.

I like the two phase concept!

OK, to not further distract the albums poll from the discussions about a songs poll, I'm gonna take the initiative to get this two phase songs poll going by starting a separate thread. To be continued ...

7 more days left to submit your favourite albums of 2008!

3 more days left to submit your favourite albums of 2008!

yeah, I'm working on it
I'll senb my list wednesday
Still some (re)listening to do

so when exactly is the deadline rocky?

Greg, according to rule #6 it is January 14th and I guess that day is included, so submit your lists before January 15th.

Rocky, I submitted my list on Sunday and did not get a life sign back. Just resend it again, did you get any mail from me?

Got it, Andre. And yes, you can still submit lists on Wednesday. That's about 24 hours left.

just one question

The album "Ready For The Flood" by Mark Olson & Gary Louris (ex-Jayhawks) was out in France on 22 nov 2008, but the massive US release is for january 2009, and Rate Your Music has it as a 2009 album.

Can I include it on my list or not ?

Hi Rocky.
I've just sent my list !

I sent my list last night, Rocky.

Is it OK Rocky ? I haven't received your confirmation mail.

Go for it, nicolas. All confirmation e-mails have been sent at this point.

It was harder to find 10 favorites from 2008 than to find 20 favorites from any year during the '80s (this might have something to do with that I started listening to 2008 albums in December). Anyway, my list is sent.

lol, I recommend at least starting in November this year.

Rocky, I haven't received a confirmation e-mail yet - did you get my list?

mine's on its way

Harold, I suspect that he's going to use his own list twice this time.

i have a list of 175 albums I still have to hear, but I guess I'm gonna send you my list too because i'm wise and I like a little sleep sometimes

sent
now sleep

Rocky, I didn't get a confirmation e-mail back!

sent!

Hmmm, I did send confirmations, but perhaps they didn't go through. Rest assured, all who have asked about their lists, I have received them.

Re-sent mine as I didn't get a conformation and my connection dropped out over nigh, hope I'm not too late!

I bought way too many albums last year. This year I'm limiting myself to two new and one old per week.

(The new ones accumulate if I don't use them, the old ones don't. :D )

Of course, now I have a stack of dozens of CDs all of which I want to give one more chance before selling them, but I don't necessarily want to spend the time on them. (At least I won't be paying for new CDs for a while.)

You need to find a job in the music business. I get tones of free shit

The only free LP I got so far for writing reviews is The Stills - Oceans will Rise
I would not have paid for it honestly ^^

We call those bonfire CD's. Every month we'll have an office party and burn the shit out of every useless free thing the company gets. At the end of the year we have a special Nickleback burning day. T-shirts, posters, cd's, everything...

I thought the official list would appear shortly thereafter?

hey, Kevin, wait a minute. Rocky is busy working on it, maybe he has other things to do, so be patient. ther's no hurry, it is not the NYT, and a a little suspense is good.

You're right Nicolas. But I expect to have a list posted on Sunday. Here's a spoiler for all of you who are anxious: Nickelback didn't quite manage to crack the top 30, but Portishead did.

lol...Good to know that Nickleback, despite all there healthy critical acclaimed, didnt manage a top 30 position.