There’s a certain, nonsensical trend, among magazines and blogs, to post their tops of the year lists as early as possible. Some even in early December! What’s the point of doing a year’s-end list if there’s still one month to go, one twelfth, more than 8 percent of the year left? If you stop and think about it for a single minute, it makes no sense! We also did the same here on the blog, we’re not without flaws, but it was just because everyone around was doing it, and we didn’t stop to ask why, or why not.

However, there are more than one valid reasons to stop this trend, and we – our little and meaningless independent music blog – intend to act as an example, and we’ll be posting our picks of 2015 in early 2016. Why? Well, any release in December has an unfair disadvantage against those that came out throughout the rest of the year. Even if your album came out in early December, most year’s-end reviews are around mid-December, so you’ve got way less time to be heard, and really be listened to. It doesn’t mean that you won’t, eventually, but if some writer catches on you a month later, for example, even a few weeks late, the 2015 picks have already been made, and there’s no chance to be featured on the 2016 list. Not only that, but there will also be “albums we missed of 2015” posts. And even though the intention is laudable, the result is that these albums don’t get the same treatment as others, and definitely don’t get the recognition they deserve, and that, just because they were released later in the year. I mean, any entity that has the least bit of self-respect and respect for the art and artists it covers should at least give a fair chance to all the contenders.

That’s why we break from tradition and will be posting our staff’s picks somewhere in January. There is absolutely no haste to release it, as some seem to think, and it’ll do both the artists and fans, as well as you, the readers, a service, the right note on the subject. Of course, there are still albums we’ll miss – we’re still uncovering albums from 5, 10, 20 years ago that just now come to our ears and blow our minds -, but it only seems just to wait for all the year to pass before writing on what’s been good in 2015.