Now that our "Best of 2011" feature is up on the website, over the next week or so we will be highlighting some of the lists from our friends in bands, the industry, etc. Today, I want to take a moment to call attention to American Dream Records' list. You may know him as "anamericangod," one of the most prolific posters in AP.net history. His new label has been focusing on vinyl records, and their list is sure to be a Charlie Simpson hypefest. Check it out. ...[read more]

Here we are at the end of 2011. And that means it's time to unveil our "best of 2011" feature. The feature contains a staff compiled list of our favorite records of 2011, as well as all of our individual lists. Then, we have a whole batch of lists from bands, industry folk, and friends of the website for you to browse through. This is one of my favorite times of the year: so much new music to learn about, all in one place. Check it out, leave some comments, and don't forget you can leave your own lists in read more]

We're in the middle of tallying up all of our End of the Year lists from staff and band/industry friends -- and we will be launching our feature tomorrow. Who do you think is ending up as our staff compiled number one? It was a bitter battle to the end.

Why is this news!!? Why did you post that? Who is this band? Who cares. I've been running some variation of a "news posting" website for over 10 years now (side-bar: holy balls, I can't believe it's been that long). I've seen just about every incarnation of the above questions, statements, and borderline accusations. Most of the time I just roll my eyes at it. I've answered the question "why" so many times I just don't have the energy to copy and paste anymore. However, I think it's worth putting on the record a few statements about just how and why we post the news that we post. I'm...[read more]

The AP.net staff put together a playlist of some of our favorite songs of 2011 for rdio. Looking to discover some of the best stuff you may have missed this year? Check it out.

Just wanted to remind readers that they can submit news to us. See a hot tip that we haven't posted? Let us know. At a show and a band says something on stage? Use the mobile website to drop us a line (this will be much improved in APv3). If you're a long time reader and have thoughts on how this feature could be improved, or newbie with a good idea, hit up the replies with suggestions.

Bored? In desperate need of new tunes? I'm starting up the AP.net Turntable room, so come chat and enjoy the music! Get a seat now or else you'll be waiting all night!

As we're preparing our end of the year lists (note: band and label peeps, check here), a user pointed out to me on twitter a list from NPR that showcases the 20 "unhappiest people you will find in the comment sections of end of the year lists." We've done this...[read more]

For those that rarely venture past the news feed, I wanted to give a quick shout-out to the entertainment forum. If you're looking for a place to talk about new movies, TV shows, or video games -- this is the place to be. The best thread currently has got to be The Dark Knight Rises thread. The first 6 minutes of the movie were shown to fans the other night - and now it's just fanboydom all over the place. It rules.

Calling all bands, record label peeps, and industry folk. We're building up our "end of the year" database, as we've done each year, and we want your lists! If you're in a band, work for a label, or are involved in the industry - we want to feature your favorite albums of the year in our end of the year extravaganza We've made it super easy this year: just fill out this form. Don't want to fill out a form? Fine. You can email us your lists here - just make sure you make it clear who...[read more]

We're getting closer to the launch of the next version of AP.net. Currently being dubbed APv3 even though it's got to be the 15th or so version over the entire history of the website. However, it's the third iteration since I moved to our current platform, and I really lost count ages ago. As we move forward toward this giant change -- I want to make sure to include you, the readers, in on the entire process. I know change is hard. However, those beta testing the new website have been some of our oldest members - and they have had some read more]

As we do most years, we've put together a thread to talk about Christmas songs and albums that fit into the broad definition of the genres we cover. Check it out here.

Calling all bands, record label peeps, and industry folk. We're building up our "end of the year" database, as we've done each year, and we want your lists! If you're in a band, work for a label, or are involved in the industry - we want to feature your favorite albums of the year in our end of the year extravaganza We've made it super easy this year: just fill out this form. Don't want to fill out a form? Fine. You can email us your lists here - just make sure you make it clear who the...[read more]

Let it snow! It's December 1st, which means we like to get into the festive season around here. I've changed the default theme on the website to our holiday blue. If it's not showing up for you, you can click here, or change your default options (at the very bottom). Also, this is the time of the year where users usually change up their avatars to something holiday themed, feel free to join...[read more]

You can check out a trailer for the upcoming Muppets Movie Soundtrack in the replies. The trailer features clips from the soundtrack, and for the eagle-eyed: an AP.net reference in there as well.

According to our last.fm group, the top listened to artists from AP.net members last week were as follows. You can check out the full charts here. Feel free to post your top listened to artists in the replies and check out other user's listening habits -- you may find something new you'll love.

The Top 20

1)...[read more]

Need some tunes to make this Thursday fly by? We're hanging out in the AP.net Turntable room right now, so come in and teach me how to listen to not bad music.

According to our last.fm group, the top listened to artists from AP.net members last week were as follows. You can check out the full charts here. Feel free to post your top listened to artists in the replies and check out other user's listening habits -- you may find something new you'll love.

The Top 20

1)...[read more]

We'll be performing maintenance on our servers Thursday, September 8th beginning at 9pm PDT and (hopefully) ending at 11pm PDT. Hopefully we'll be back in no time. Speaking of maintenance and whatnot; I'm almost done with what will become the completely redesigned AbsolutePunk.net. Ohhhh boy. Hopefully we can put together a staff chat in the next few weeks to talk with users about the changes and all that. We'll definitely let you know before we do any switching over. Still a few months off. Time to optimize.

A few weeks back I posed a question to my twitter followers: how long do you usually spin a new album? This was something I was thinking about one night - and while I had my own guesses - I was curious what others were thinking. We live in a day and age where music is just accessible. And it comes at us practically when we want it, most of the time in virtually unlimited quantities. And there's a whole lot of new bands coming out weekly. Grandpa Jason remembers buying one CD and spinning it for what seemed like months in my room. Until grooves wore in the disc and I couldn't find the...[read more]

"Let's take the next hour and talk about me ..." So we've decided to hold a little staff chat here on the website this fine Friday. Hope everyone is enjoying an early start to their weekend. Feel free to join us in the replies to talk about, well, anything you'd like. Staff will be hanging out and checking out band recommendations (but please don't get bent out of shape if we don't like it), answering questions, dealing out personal life tips, talking about the future of music, talking about AP.net ... uh, really just talking about anything you'd like to talk about.

The staff and I will be chatting with users in a thread on the homepage next Friday. If you're interested, stop by. We'll be answering questions, listening to band recommendations, making sarcastic comments, and probably annoying one or two people. Good times are sure to be had. We're aiming for a 3pm (PST) start time. And no, this isn't all that different from our regular forays into the forums -- but it's a dedicated time and thread to talk about different things and hopefully discuss music and check out some new bands.

We teamed up with purevolume to launch a playlist of a bunch of bands we think you should check out that are playing this year's Bamboozle. Check out the tunes and make sure you check out all the bands at the festival this year.

This is a pretty interesting thread: What are the top 5 albums that changed your life?

The best two days in sports (yea, I said it) have begun. Talk about the NCAA games in this thread with all of us.

It's March Madness time! We've got our bracket challenge again. Go team. Score a goal unit.

At the beginning of the year we asked what you, the AP.net reader, were anticipating listening to in the upcoming months. We put up a poll and thousands of you voted. Now we are ready to unveil the results. We posted the first 60 right here. Check them out, see if there's anything others are looking forward to you may have forgotten. 2011 is going to be a great year for music and we hope to be right here covering all of these artists and more. Seems like the vast majority of you still love that good 'ol pop-punk sound.

We know about the weird ad pop-up issue at the moment on the website, we're working to fix it as soon as possible. Really sorry about that.

Don't forget to vote in our reader poll for your most anticipated of 2011. We'll be closing the poll and putting together the final feature in a week or so!

We've updated the music player on the homepage. Check out the new tunes.