Every year I put together a playlist at the end of the year with some of the new music I found and got into.
Most of these songs are under the radar which is my favorite kind of music.
So I hope you find something new that you like in here.
As usual, here are some songs that stuck with me this year.
I hope you enjoy it.
As is my tradition, I made a playlist of songs that stayed with me in 2019.
This year, I focused on songs that mostly flew below the radar and aren’t likely to be heard on everyone else’s top tracks playlists.
I’ve named it Uncut Gems and I hope you like it.
As is my tradition as the end of the year nears, here are the songs that stayed with me in 2018.
It is a mix of songs everyone knows, like the marvelous All The Stars from the Black Panther soundtrack (which will be a 30sec sample unless you are a paying subscriber to SoundCloud) to little known gems like the starter track and the ending track. It features the biggest musical stars of the moment like Childish Gambino, Cardi B, Kendrick Lamar, Arctic Monkeys, and lesser known artists that I love like Doja Cat, Little Simz, Sampa The Great, and Grapetooth.
It has a healthy dose of SoundCloud rap, in the middle of the playlist, because I probably listened to more of that this year than anything else. But I’ve included a number of genres, from hip hop, to electronic, to R&B, to alternative/indie, and a few tracks that defy categorization.
With that, here are the songs that stayed with me in 2018:
I am publishing my annual year end playlist as a holiday gift to the AVC community.
I did 21 songs last year but 2017 was a great year for music, so I thought I would double that to 42.
And then I threw in Man’s Not Hot at the end for kicks.
It starts with a great Chance The Rapper holiday song and goes on from there. It’s hip hop in the beginning, moves to electronic, indie, folk, and R&B in the middle, and finishes with the big hip hop songs on SoundCloud this year.
There are a few SoundCloud Go+ tracks on it and if you aren’t a subscriber, you will get 30 second previews. I’m sorry about that but most of the songs are free and clear.
Happy Holidays Everyone
Twitter Moments initially launched as a consume only service. But at some point, I’m not sure exactly when, Moments was opened up and anyone can create one now.
I created my first Moment just now.
You go to your Twitter profile, click Moments, and then click “Create New Moments.”
Then you can curate the Tweets you have liked, you have sent, and from accounts you like, into a single stream.
I decided to curate some of the music tweets that have hit my timeline this week.
Here’s my first Moment (click here to see it on Twitter):
Every year since I started this blog, I’ve shared my favorite music of the year with the AVC readers.
In the early years, I would post different album every day for ten days (or eleven) in the process of putting together a top ten list. I moved away from albums a few years ago because I just don’t listen that way very much anymore.
I’ve moved to SoundCloud playlists and today I’m publishing my Essential Tracks of 2014 playlist here at AVC. It’s also available On SoundCloud and everywhere that SoundCloud is available (your phone, your browser, your Sonos, etc, etc). Enjoy.
So this is not really a feature. It’s a relaunch. But I figured I’d use this regular friday column to announce the relaunch of fredwilson.fm. I posted a few weeks ago that this was coming. And it has been live for about a week now.
Anyone can create a yourname.fm website. Here’s how:
1) get yourname.fm from your favorite domain registrar. I use Hover to store and manage all my domains but they don’t sell .fm domains. You can purchase .fm domains at GoDaddy.
2) set up a tumblr with that custom domain.
3) create a soundcloud account and start liking tracks to create a liked feed. Here is mine.
4) go to your soundcloud profile page, click on the share button, then the embed tab, and copy the embed code
5) make two edits to the embed code as shown below in red, then paste the code into your tumblr.
<iframe src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/users/xxxxx/favorites&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&visual=true&auto_play=true" height="450" width="100%" frameborder="no" scrolling="no"></iframe>
So that’s all there is to it. I love having a private radio station. You might too.
While we are talking features, the one feature I would love to have added to this SoundCloud embed is a shuffle feature. Nothing better than shuffling through your favorite songs instead of listening in reverse chronological order.
Now that AVC has moved from Typepad to WordPress and been cleaned up (thanks again Nathan), it is time to turn my attention to another of my web properties that has been languishing, fredwilson.fm. Here is a chart of the fredwilson.fm audience over the past four years:
Sometime in the past year, the streampad player that powers fredwilson.fm broke on the soundcloud embeds in my tumblr and the whole thing stopped updating. You can still get an audio stream there, but it is the same one time after time after time. No wonder hardly anyone goes there anymore.
But I have a plan. I’ve moved most of my audio listening to SoundCloud in the past few years and I’ve built up a really great feed of liked tracks there. So I am now going to make my SoundCloud likes the basis for fredwilson.fm. I should be able to get it back up and running in a few days.
Until then, here’s an embed of my SoundCloud liked tracks for your listening pleasure. It will soon be available all the time on fredwilson.fm.
What's your favorite song of the year?
Here's mine
I always wondered who plays the guitar solo at the end of the song. Brian told me the other night that its John Mayer. That's cool.
