It seems barely a few months ago I did this exercise last - and we mostly have new runners and riders for the occasion. For some reason we have a lot of repeat entries this year - where I covered many of those BBC Sound of 2023 artists in previous years.

In fact I think I mentioned Fred Again as an outlier back in 2017 - while he’s certainly come a long way since then - and so a fair call that this will be his breakthrough year.

Similar to last year it doesn’t look like it’s going to be...

Beats are back! Along with Hope, Optimism and Worldwide Eclecticism. I’ve long said that every melody there could be has already been recorded - meaning that new music has to come by way of fusion - merging together a variety of genres and influences.

In times of adversity, humanity resorts to dance, and reports to the dance floor! - and club-wise we seem to be moving back to the peak time rave era of circa 1990 - with lots of familiar flavours including polyrhythms from then doing the ...

We find ourselves in strange times, almost surreal at some points - with the Covid situation and strange political happenings around the world. This time has been typified by resorting to various home-comforts - including comfort-eating, and comfort-listening to a large degree.

This makes for a healthy does of Nostalgia with lots of flavours of the 80’s and 90’s harkening back to gentler times. We’ve see the continued growth of all kinds of sub-genres - with Twilight ...

So I’ve changed the title once more - away from Online and Digital specifically to just Music in general. And the focus here is wider and more eclectic than ever before - touching on different countries and continents even - different dialects and languages.

If I were to name just one overarching trend it would be the continued growth/proliferation of the ’street’ forms of hip-hop - Grime and Trap in particular, and there are quite a few new up-and-comers in those ...

First things first - I used to call these features ’The Future of Music Online’ but feel said moniker is a little bit old-fashioned and probably has been for a while. I’m really talking about Digital Music - and to break it down further could go as far as to say just digital music streaming and playback - or ’Spotify’. I actually used to be subscribed to Apple Music, Spotify and Tidal. I subscribed to the last one named to access Prince’s full catalogue back in the day when it was exclusive to ...

As I said for the 2017 round-up, I did not find last year to be particularly vintage - there was no one album or song that totally blew me away, although there was still much to be admired. As posted recently - I came across heavy metal band ’In This Moment’ over Christmas and their music dominated the tail-end of the year for me and continues to reign now - considering how little metal I listen to that is surely significant in some way.

There were some obvious trends that ...

2016 was quite the mixed up / messed up year. I spent the first probably 2/3rds of the year listening to Bowie and Prince back-catalogs - every recording made, over and over - to reminisce and celebrate their greatness. The remaining months were occupied mainly by Icelandic Hip Hop and American Hip Hop inspired by the American Honey movie soundtrack.

I don’t think there were any main themes last year, most of my predictions failed to materialise, although we did see another music...

Solo women ruled 2015 as far as I was concerned - occupying 8 of my top 10 album spots and topping my tracks chart. Despite ongoing rumblings about the value and viability of streaming services and a strange and disruptive year on SoundCloud, music is very much in rude health. Vinyl sales - supported by humongous Christmas sales of vinyl players are still on the rise (just when I’m buying less and less).

Looking at the longlists for new artists for 2016, there is no shortage of ...

NOTE - this blog post will be updated throughout the year, particularly the Album Release Schedule ...

2014 was an excellent year for music all in. Not much rock really, but plenty to get excited about. There are not as many big releases forthcoming in 2015, which seems destined to be the year of the blockbuster movie. Nevertheless there are lots of minor music industry intrigues happening - especially Apple’s imminent launch of iTunes Streaming. There are also a number of new ...