Yahoo! Music Blog, Back In Action

Hello out there. Apologies for this blog being mostly dark as of late. We’ve been busy. But I hereby commit to you that we will be stepping up our game at ymusicblog.com, posting more often as we bring you more and more of the unbelievable newness at Yahoo! Music. Subscribe to ymusicblog.com, and don’t miss out on any of the goings on.

Soon our good friend and early 90s hip hop connossieur Brian Marshall will be doing a post about the new Music Videos player, but for now I’ll simply leave you with a couple of playlists from UK’s Mojo Magazine. I’m happy to report that my in-depth catalog analyses aren’t necessary anymore, the Yahoo! Music Unlimited catalog is very much to parity with all of the competition. Still, I discovered a fair amount of music through those exercises so I’m still trying to make it my business to check out new music through Mojo’s review section each month. Below are two playlists from the January issue of Mojo (yes, I’m two behind): their “50 Best Albums of 2006″ listing as well as the record reviews section.  Enjoy.
Mojo Magazine’s 50 Best Albums of 2006

Not the strongest year in memory, but plenty of audible fun to be had in 2006. While I don’t back Mojo’s top 50 as my personal 2006 best-of (mine would also include The Drones, Jay Reatard, The Melvins, Mission of Burma, and Neko Case), it’s still a great list of things-not-to-have-missed. Definitely don’t pass over the Midlake track “Roscoe”, or the gorgeous Bert Jansch record that Beth Orton is all over. Click here for the playlist.

Mojo Filter (New Music Reviews), January, 2007

Each month the back of Mojo Magazine features 40+ pages of reviews. The reviews span all forms of popular music, from rock to urban to jazz to americana to underground. I try to drag/drop all the new music albums into a playlist each month.

These Mojo playlists are a great way to do a bit of discovery. Sure, the playlist features some crap as even the two star reviews make it into the list. But the amount of great music I’ve stumbled upon this way in the past two years has made this a worthwhile exercise. Even knowing what’s crap is worthwhile knowledge, and since with Yahoo! Music telling us what you don’t like allows us to do better personalization for you, knowledge of what you don’t like breeds a better Yahoo! Music experience!

So stay tuned to a revived Yahoo! Music Blog, snuggle up with the Mojo playlist each month, rate on Yahoo! Music, and post a comment on the blog letting us know your favorites for each month. It’s about the music, after all.

ian c rogers
Yahoo! Music