2011 was a good year for music for me. I don’t think I’ve expe­ri­enced this much musi­cal growth in years, and it was thanks in large part to every­one I reached out to with my musi­cal cry for help nearly a year ago. Another boon to my music-listening reper­toire was the avail­abil­ity of Spo­tify, a free music stream­ing ser­vice opened to Amer­i­can lis­ten­ers for the first time this year.

What this pro­duced was a line-up of highly rec­om­mended music from trust­wor­thy friends and a huge library of penalty– and cost-free music to sam­ple from any com­puter with power. These two forces com­bined to bring you: (2011) The Best of Last Year.