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Unless I get sick (like last year) or some unexpected event happens, I'm going to do a countdown here of my 100 most played new songs in 2018. As usual, this will include singles, album tracks, EP tracks etc that were released* in 2018.
The Top 100 countdown for 2018 begins here.
Top 10 Albums of 2018 here.
Top 25 Older Songs here.
The cover images representing the 162 songs released in 2018 that charted on my weekly chart from week 1 to 51. It's unlikely (although not impossible) any song not included among these will reach the YEC.
The poll includes, in alphabetical order, nine of my biggest favourite songs from 2018, although not necessarily the final Top 9. The poll will remain open until I start posting the Top 10.
How much did 2018 suck (for me)?
Let's try to answer this question with some statistics.
This diagram shows the number of songs released during each year that existed in my database at the end of that year, from 2000 to 2018. Usually there are more songs from a specific year added after the year has ended, but those are not included here, to make the comparison fair to the current year.
While 2018 isn't completely over yet, right now I don't plan on adding any more songs during the last few days (and if it happens it will most likely just be one or two songs or at most one album). In other words it is already a fact that 2018 is the year with the lowest number of songs so far (since I started adding songs in real-time to my database), and the plunge from the three strong previous years is especially dramatic.
But the total number of songs isn't everything of course; the majority of the songs added during those strong years actually turned out to be crap and only got one or maybe a couple of plays (or before 2015 even zero sometimes). It might be better to look at how many of those songs managed to enter my weekly top 30 chart:
This doesn't look nearly as bad. While 2018 is still much weaker than average, it is no longer the worst year and the difference to the strong years is much smaller. In fact, the correlation between the total number of songs and the number of songs that charted is fairly weak overall. It's only the 2010 dip and the trend the last few years that is really clear.
Most years there were more than 200 newly released songs that entered my weekly chart, so it was more difficult to end up in the YEC top 200 than to chart on the weekly chart (which didn't stop some songs that failed on the weekly chart from appearing on the YEC even most of those years). My "official" YEC was always 200 positions up until now. This was a decision made in 2000 (or on the first day of 2001) because this was the highest even number of songs that I could listen to in one day. I.e. 100 was clearly too few (takes only around 6 hours) and 300 clearly too many, and 250 realistically also too many (although it would have fit nicely with the number of weekly chart hits that first year). Even in 2010 I counted all 200 positions although the lower half was mostly a joke, with just 3 plays at #200. If I had been posting here I would probably have cut it down to 100 that year. Which is was I have decided to do now for 2018, to avoid including any "filler" songs. This will also make it comfortable again to listen to the entire chart in one day; while 200 positions worked well some years it has also led to some problems and generally has become more difficult with time (presumably because I have gotten older; the average song length has actually tended to decrease slightly since 2000).
*) In most cases, the meaning of this is obvious but there are a couple of special cases: 1) If a song was released as a single in 2017 (or possibly earlier) but is also included on an album or EP that was released in 2018 then I will treat it as a 2018 song if I didn't discover it until this year. Similarly, if a song was included on an album released in 2017 (or possibly earlier) but was also released as a single in 2018 then I will treat it as a 2018 song if I didn't discover it until this year. This also means that a song can never appear on the regular YEC more than once. My most played older songs during the year get their own chart.
The Top 100 countdown for 2018 begins here.
Top 10 Albums of 2018 here.
Top 25 Older Songs here.
The cover images representing the 162 songs released in 2018 that charted on my weekly chart from week 1 to 51. It's unlikely (although not impossible) any song not included among these will reach the YEC.
The poll includes, in alphabetical order, nine of my biggest favourite songs from 2018, although not necessarily the final Top 9. The poll will remain open until I start posting the Top 10.
How much did 2018 suck (for me)?
Let's try to answer this question with some statistics.
This diagram shows the number of songs released during each year that existed in my database at the end of that year, from 2000 to 2018. Usually there are more songs from a specific year added after the year has ended, but those are not included here, to make the comparison fair to the current year.
While 2018 isn't completely over yet, right now I don't plan on adding any more songs during the last few days (and if it happens it will most likely just be one or two songs or at most one album). In other words it is already a fact that 2018 is the year with the lowest number of songs so far (since I started adding songs in real-time to my database), and the plunge from the three strong previous years is especially dramatic.
But the total number of songs isn't everything of course; the majority of the songs added during those strong years actually turned out to be crap and only got one or maybe a couple of plays (or before 2015 even zero sometimes). It might be better to look at how many of those songs managed to enter my weekly top 30 chart:
This doesn't look nearly as bad. While 2018 is still much weaker than average, it is no longer the worst year and the difference to the strong years is much smaller. In fact, the correlation between the total number of songs and the number of songs that charted is fairly weak overall. It's only the 2010 dip and the trend the last few years that is really clear.
Most years there were more than 200 newly released songs that entered my weekly chart, so it was more difficult to end up in the YEC top 200 than to chart on the weekly chart (which didn't stop some songs that failed on the weekly chart from appearing on the YEC even most of those years). My "official" YEC was always 200 positions up until now. This was a decision made in 2000 (or on the first day of 2001) because this was the highest even number of songs that I could listen to in one day. I.e. 100 was clearly too few (takes only around 6 hours) and 300 clearly too many, and 250 realistically also too many (although it would have fit nicely with the number of weekly chart hits that first year). Even in 2010 I counted all 200 positions although the lower half was mostly a joke, with just 3 plays at #200. If I had been posting here I would probably have cut it down to 100 that year. Which is was I have decided to do now for 2018, to avoid including any "filler" songs. This will also make it comfortable again to listen to the entire chart in one day; while 200 positions worked well some years it has also led to some problems and generally has become more difficult with time (presumably because I have gotten older; the average song length has actually tended to decrease slightly since 2000).
*) In most cases, the meaning of this is obvious but there are a couple of special cases: 1) If a song was released as a single in 2017 (or possibly earlier) but is also included on an album or EP that was released in 2018 then I will treat it as a 2018 song if I didn't discover it until this year. Similarly, if a song was included on an album released in 2017 (or possibly earlier) but was also released as a single in 2018 then I will treat it as a 2018 song if I didn't discover it until this year. This also means that a song can never appear on the regular YEC more than once. My most played older songs during the year get their own chart.
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