Not another year-end list

HIGH NOTES

Another year in music gone by and this column is as tempting a place as any to list a bunch of albums that shaped and defined the musical landscape in 2006.

But a music list is, if anything, based purely on personal preference. And how can one really sum up an entire year of brilliant music, that included everything from My Chemical Romance's stunning return with The Black Parade to Kailasa's awe-inspiring debut album, in a few hundred words? The fact is, it was a fruitful year for music all around and a list wouldn't do justice.

As popular music is being increasingly reduced to monotonic (possibly polyphonic) beeps on your mobile phone, you know that great music has a way of reaching the critical masses.

More interestingly, some of last year's biggest hits were created by the music masses themselves. Even if you were half tuned in to what was happening last year, you couldn't have missed the social networking phenomenon (read MySpace.com in this case) and the online video streaming revolution that was YouTube.com. Both fledgling enterprises were instrumental in the creation of the term, "user-generated content".

While the Arctic Monkeys were the best example of how fans through MySpace.com could make their favourite band one of the most successful in UK music history, YouTube.com succeeded in making music channels switch formats the world over and reconsider whether there was yet space for straight-up music videos on music television at all, or would people rather watch videos online.

And so 2006 among other things can be remembered as being the year of music audiences staking their claim and truly taking the power into their own hands.

On the purely business side of things, 2006 was spent in speculation as to whether the world's largest independent music company EMI Music would buy out Warner Music.

Talks ended when the European Commission rebuffed the 2004 merger of Sony Music-BMG. Warner Music then went ahead and offered to buy out EMI Music for an amount that EMI Music said was too small to be taken seriously. With all these billions of dollars and who knows how many jobs at stake, work quietly went back to normal and all merger talks shelved for the time being.

But while the major music companies were head-locked in the business of buying each other out, the Barenaked Ladies podcasted the making of their entire album Barenaked Ladies Are Me.

The album was released independently and through these podcasts the band were able to open yet another door of interaction between them and their fans.

Word has it that many bands including the UK's Radiohead plan to have the doors open to their private professional life by way of podcasts and live studio cameras. And to music fans that spells only one thing: More power to the people.

Digital music downloads continued to be a hot topic in 2006. Last April, the Gnarls Barley song "Crazy" went to the top of UK singles charts, creating history by becoming the first song to reach #1 based on digital downloads alone. Digital music sales accounted for 11 per cent of all music sales this year, up from 5.5 per cent in December 2005.

With the number of MP3 players being used increasing, the growth potential has not gone unnoticed by music companies who have been busy cracking deals with the increasing number of digital distributors the world over.

On the Indian music front, sitarist Anoushka Shankar became the first Indian woman to perform at the Grammy Awards. She performed during the pre-telecast ceremony last year. The latest album from Slayer, Christ Illusion, was forced out of music stores due to protests led by the Catholic Secular Forum who took offense to an amputated image of Christ on their album cover.

Back home, Asha Bhosle teamed up with Sanjay Dutt and Brett Lee, among others, to release a highly perplexing album.

What's been mentioned above is not even the tip of the iceberg and so it's not hard to see the world of music as one hotbed of activity. But as always there's no reason not to believe that above all, good music will prevail.