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With audible copyright protections and the like, I don't buy from major labels. Their decline is a result of their own greed. I, for one, buy vinyl and or from smaller labels.

I was pretty disapointed with music releases for the year. Just to add my two cents or more accurately my 999 cents, I have been completely disgusted with CD prices for the last few years to the point where I have cut back on my music purchases to 10 a year from a high of 75 to 100. I remember going to Best Buy or Circuit City (early 1990's) and buying new releases for $9.99 and catalog stuff for $11-12.99. I have a computer but have not downloaded any music. I do buy many of my CDs used. New prices have gotten ridiculous. Forget about $17.99 at Tower or "mall" stores, I can't stand $15.99 at the discounters.

All in all I think we had a pretty decent year. NEW TOOL

Alienating customers won't help. The industry clearly neads to refocus its distribution model without penalizing legitimate users. Oh yeah, and mac users too, EMI! :-)

Another year, another mish-mash of the good, the great, and the ugly. So what's new?

The return of crossover recordings is not for me. Well-performed, well-arranged, well-composed, and well-recorded music is what will sell long term. Artists should only record their best work.

It depends on how far back you want to go. In this case I'll assume "previous" means 10 years ago. I still keep an "ear to the street" so to speak, and I heard a lot of good new music out there, rock, pop, and r&b. That doesn't sit well with the majority of Stereophile's readership but, oh well . . .

Part of the problem is the formatting. Are we going to code them for CD player only or release them for SACD/DVD-A or watermark them so they can't be recorded? The other side of the coin is there has not been a great deal of new artists hitting the scene this year, nor have any of our old favs put out much new material. Seems all they care about any more is the next big release by Ms. Spears and all her vast musical talent. In my opinion the music industry is turning in to a media "Glam Rock" industry. We need more great labels like Sun to come out that just find and record great talent the raw and natural way (only on better and more refined recording gear).

It depends on what you're looking for. Quality recordings can still be found, but most of the new stuff is recorded in such a way to sound reasonable on systems with limited range. I'm worried about this year, when companies start watermarking.

The "pop" market really stinks—it's strictly for young teens now with virtually no "adult contemporary." The jazz scene continues to satisfy my needs, but there are few new artists and fewer great new songs.

The real crime is the lack of variety of styles of music played on kids radio. When my teenaged kids bring their friends over, I play em all kinds of stuff, anything but the narrow boring formula crammed down their brains on FM "rock," and they dig most of it. "Where do you ever get all this stuff?" All they need is to be able to hear it, but the Big Boys are cutting their throats by thinking the kids only want to hear 15 different songs a day on the radio, all basically the same style. The kids today are smart and aware, and there is a huge audience of them that hates the pop crap, and the music garden is going unpicked by the mass radio scene, and the majority of intelligent young music lovers are not being served well by the industry that cries in their corporate spilled milk.

I believe 2001 is a little worse than 2000, and I base this on the observation that the music industry has been fairly weak for some time. I limit my purchases to reissues from Classic Records, and the like. Many are purchases I missed in my younger years. In the past, my friends and I often talked about "must-have" recordings. Sadly, the list is much shorter today.

I have probably bought fewer new releases this past year than any other year that I can remember. The talent pool is at an all time low. Prices are still way too high and I am getting very sick of all the re-hashing going around in music today. I mean, how many versions of Creed do we really need anyway? I think I lost count after the first dozen or so. Musical "puppets" such as Shania Twain, Faith Hill, Alanis Morrishite and so forth seem to be setting the trends and you can bet your bottom dollar that the music industry is going to capitalize on this type of marketing. As long as the industry has these types of "talented" artists to flog and re-create over and over again, copy protection aside, we are in for some serious dark days ahead.

I did not buy one single CD this year. Prices are out of control. There seems to be some price fixing going on when evryone wants $13.99 for all CDs. Bring down the prices to $8.99 and you won't be able to print enough CDs to keep up with demand. Who wants a copy for $5 when I can buy the original for $8 or $9, same with DVDs.

BARF!

CD prices are still way too high overall.

I've noticed that comparisons of reviewers' year-end best-of lists yielded little overlap, meaning either there were a lot of great albums out there this year or nothing was singularly outstanding. I think it's the latter. I can't remember a year when I had so few records to recommend to friends.

I did not find any wonderful classical releases this year; on the other hand I started to explore jazz. The release of the Armstrong hot fives and sevens and the Miles Davis LP release on Mosaic of entire sessions made my year. With a wonderful library of LP music and an upgrade of a DtoA my CD library took great leaps forward. If 2002 has as many hours of enjoyment it will be a great year. Happy New Year to all.

I've noticed over the years that some recordings are great while others are plain music encoded on plastic. There seems that when added together there seems to be little change.

Rap music sucks as much as Disco!!!

As long as you are willing to search a bit there is always great music being made. It is ashame we have to wade through so much crap to find it. Tim McD.

There is actually, I believe, a more new music than ever, but it's lower quality. I think the musicians are losing fertility of imagination. The engineers seem to be "cookie cutting" and there is no focus on quality. The record companies seem to be spending their energies on profit areas such as new releases and the coveted "copy protection" issue. I think that one other ingredient to blame here is "uncertaintity of format," the record industry doesn't seem to know where they need to focus the most. Let's hope that '02 brings something exciting and pleasing and buyable.

The only album I can think of coming out of this year that was remarkable was David Gray's Bablyon. Everything else I heard was retreads of same old, same old.

It is about the same but it doesn't feel like it. It seems harder and harder to find good quality recordings. The music releases are there but high quality recordings, great mixes with excellent mike placements seem to be a rare thing.

I can only think of one or two rock albums that really deserved purchasing. There are about one million cookie cutter sound-a-likes, so it gets frustrating to listen to the radio. For fans of rock music, or pop in general, something new and refreshing needs to take place. Mostly instead of buying new albums I have been spinning CDs that have had little play. To my surprise it is like listening to new music again, not stale like it is today. Maybe at 27 I am growing nostalgic, but I am having fun finding more depth to the old albums in my collection.

Music releases were great this year . . . from small, independent labels. I bought over 100 CDs this year, but only two major label releases. Partly, I did so because I try to boycott major labels, but mostly because they just don't release any compelling music anymore. Stick to the indies: they release uncompromised music and the artists actually get some of the money.

I have to admit I'm nostalgic for the rock music of my youth (60s & 70s). I don't think the newer music compares. I listen more to jazz and some classical these days. My favorites (Keith Jarrett, Charlie Haden, Dave Douglas, Ralph Towner) are still still around doing wonderful music. Popular music to my ears has always been cotton candy. Reissues of jazz and classical have been especially rewarding over the past few years. Look and it's there to be found.

I think that music in general is getting worse. With the acception of classical there seems to be no effort to be creative anymore. It's like you have to go to a stereo store and have them put on one of those demo CD'S that the maufacturers send to show off thier components with.

I can't remember a year anywhere as near as bad. I still bought as many or more recordings than I normally would, but they were re-issues and other older recording I did not already own. Only a few things that I bought were "new" recordings.

A lack of diversity in the mass media music world has me "droned" into believing that all bands are the same. Yes, the song titles are different, but why do they all sound the same? It appears that the powers in control of the airwaves (MTV?) believe that we should pay more attention to booty shaking and formula bands rather than consider the quality of the music, composition, and performance. I'm sure there are talented artists out there working hard to make their name. LET US HEAR THEM!