10) A spanking new iPod.

Early on this year I got a 30gig black iPod, and I’ve used it every single day since then. I love it, and I don’t know what I would do without it (yeah I do – I’d rush down and by an iPod touch, damnit!)

9) Beastieboys.com

I’m a huge fan of the Beasties. Have been since License to Ill came out more than 20 years ago(!). I’m also a great fan of the Beasties’ online HQ – www.beastieboys.com. The guys make great use of the medium, integrating music, videos, blog posts, images from flickr and much more – all of this neatly packaged in a great looking site.

8 ) Radiohead

I’m not the world’s greatest Radiohead fan (Radioheadhead?), but their initiative around the release of ‘In Rainbows’ made quite a stir, and will no doubt end up playing an important role in the DRM debate, and the guys deserve much respect for that.

7) The Hype Machine / Today’s Blog Music

Inspiration is great, and even though last.fm and emusic deliver inspiration in spades, I still get a kick out of The Hype Machine. In essence, The Hype Machine is a blog aggregator monitoring conversations about music and regularly posting mp3s in their podcast ‘Today’s Blog Music’. This site kicks proverbial musical ass, and deserves major big ups.

6) Arctic Monkeys

The guys did an effing brilliant show at VEGA earlier this year. Personally, it meant a great deal as, in a strange and complex way, it laid the groundwork for my girlfriend’s and my decision to try for our first kid – long story, really, but the kid arrives in december, and the Arctic Monkeys gave what I consider one of the greatest shows of the year. Despite the fact that 90% of the audience was half my age.

5) VEGA

Speaking of great shows, it’s worth mentioning that for a show to be great, the venue has to be great as well. In my opinion, VEGA is the number one venue in Denmark – no doubt – and the plans for mega VEGA (a venue that will hold 3.000 seated guests without compromising the great sound that has become a trademark for VEGA) it looks to become even better.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

4) Emusic.com

This year saw the possibility of downloading DRM free tracks from iTunes – but only selected tracks, and at an extra cost. I recently turned to emusic.com for my downloading needs, as they offer a sweet deal on monthly subscriptions, they have a bunch of interesting, independent acts, and everything is DRM free.

3) Birdy Nam Nam

These guys not only blur the lines between hip hop and electronica, they are also a perfect example of how collaboration can lead to great things. With birdy nam nam, the result is greater than the sum of its parts. I wrote about them a while back.

2) Last.fm

I used to spend as much time on Pandora nearly as I did on my computer, but alas, mindless legislation got in the way of that. More here. Luckily, last.fm hasn’t suffered the same cruel fait as its American counterpart, and I’m on there every single day, listening, discovering, interacting, adding pictures from shows etc.

1) The Cold War kids

Picture courtesy of Søren $midt

These guys kinda deserve three spots on the top ten, seeing as I’ve had three no less than amazing experiences with them in 07. Their gig at Lille VEGA in the spring kicked it off. They absolutely blew me away, and I rushed home and bought their brilliant album ‘Robbers & Cowards‘ – my second great CWK eperience of the year. A week doesn’t go by without me listening to the album, and it just keeps getting better. Finally, the guys did a gig at Den GrÃ¥ Hal in Christiania just last week, and once again they delivered. For me, this is THE best band of 07 – hands down.

Honourable mentions

These guys didn’t make the top ten – mostly cause I didn’t just want bands and albums on there, but also communities, services and gadgets. They’re worth mentioning, though – if nothing else, then because they top my iTunes and last.fm play lists:

Common

Jay Dee (J Dilla)

Herbaliser

Roots Manuva

Rufus Wainright at Operaen

I could go on, but I’ll stop here, recognizing that 2007 isn’t over yet and hoping that 2008 will be as great a year in music as 2007 has been.

But how about you? What’s been your musical highlights this year? What did I miss and what should I keep an eye out for? Please do share – I’m dying for inspiration.

I recently wrote about Pandora, that has been forced to limit access to North American IP adresses, and now I’m having a hard time thinking of a good reason why the same shouldn’t happen to lastfm. Lastfm used to be British. Since the purchase, it’s American. That means that lastfm now has the exact same legal issues that Pandora had, and will most likely be forced to block access for non-US IPs.

Man… between this, Pandora, iTunes movies not being available for European customers and the same going for BitTorrent, it sometimes kinda sucks to be European.

Hi, it’s Tim from Pandora,

I’m writing today to ask for your help.  The survival of Pandora and all of Internet radio is in jeopardy because of a recent decision by the Copyright Royalty Board in Washington, DC to almost triple the licensing fees for Internet radio sites like Pandora.  The new royalty rates are irrationally high, more than four times what satellite radio pays, and broadcast radio doesn’t pay these at all.  Left unchanged, these new royalties will kill every Internet radio site, including Pandora.

In response to these new and unfair fees, we have formed the SaveNetRadio Coalition, a group that includes listeners, artists, labels and webcasters.  I hope that you will consider joining us.

Please sign our petition urging your Congressional representative to act to save Internet radio: http://capwiz.com/saveinternetradio/issues/alert/?alertid=9631541

Please feel free to forward this link/email to your friends – the more petitioners we can get, the better.

Understand that we are fully supportive of paying royalties to the artists whose music we play, and have done so since our inception.  As a former touring musician myself, I’m no stranger to the challenges facing working musicians.  The issue we have with the recent ruling is that it puts the cost of streaming far out of the range of ANY webcaster’s business potential.

I hope you’ll take just a few minutes to sign our petition – it WILL make a difference. As a young industry, we do not have the lobbying power of the RIAA. You, our listeners, are by far our biggest and most influential allies.

As always, and now more than ever, thank you for your support.

-Tim Westergren
(Pandora founder)

I wish there was something I could do, cause I really want my Lastfm and my Pandora – internet radio is my number one way of finding out what music to buy. Unfortunately it looks as though only US residents can participate in the savenetradio campaign, so all I can do is post this, and hope that some of my readers stateside will participate on my behalf (and their own, of course).

Internet radio is great – don’t ruin it, huh?

i like hip hop music. Hip hop artists have a tendency to fill up their albums with skits (20-30 sec. soundbites where they rant about this and that). I don’t like skits. I think they’re boring and very rarely musical. I would LOVE if I could choose not to listen to skits. If there was a button on lastfm like the ‘don’t play this track for me ever again’ button to avoid tracks with the word ‘skit’ in them. After all, meaningless rants between tracks is one of the reasons I stopped listening to ‘regular’ radio…

Too much to ask?