2006 in Music

Three days after his birthday A producer who changed the way hip-hop drums feel releases his final album on his thirty-second birthday, February 7. He made it from a hospital bed using a portable sampler, too weak to stand, cutting thirty-one instrumental tracks into a continuous loop where the last song feeds back into the first. Three days later he is dead. The album contains no rapping, no hooks, no verses, just samples chopped and reassembled into something that sounds like memory dissolving. The distributor had initially doubted it would sell ten thousand copies.

Fastest debut in British history Four teenagers from Sheffield release their first album in January. It sells 363,735 copies in its first week, more than the rest of the Top 20 combined on its first day alone. No label promoted them. Fans had been passing around demo CDs and sharing songs on a social networking site for over a year before a record company got involved. The album is recorded in two weeks on analog tape. The songs are about taxi ranks, chip shops, and bouncers, sung in an accent no one had bothered putting on a record before.

Two weeks between films An R&B singer records her second solo album in two weeks during a break from filming a musical. The sessions happen in April at a New York studio, the entire album cut in a concentrated sprint. It debuts at number one with 541,000 first-week copies. One single sits at number one on the Hot 100 for ten consecutive weeks. The production is fiercer and less polished than her debut, the vocals recorded quickly and left raw, the beats built from syncopated percussion and horn stabs that hit like punches.

The producer takes the microphone A former boy-band singer releases his second solo album in September, produced almost entirely by a single producer whose sonic fingerprint is all over it: stuttering programmed drums, distorted synthesizer bass, handclaps processed into percussion weapons, falsetto vocals treated with vocoders. The album debuts at number one with 684,000 first-week copies and produces three consecutive number-one singles. The lead single introduces a level of electronic aggression into mainstream pop that would have been unrecognizable on pop radio twelve months earlier.

Number one on downloads alone A collaboration between a producer and a soul singer releases a single that reaches number one on the UK chart purely on download sales, a week before the CD single is even available. It holds the top spot for nine consecutive weeks. The song is built on a sample from a 1960s Italian film score, a beat that moves like Motown played by machines, and a vocal performance that oscillates between elation and desperation. It becomes the year's proof that physical formats are no longer required to dominate a chart.

A voice from South London, anonymous An anonymous producer releases his debut album on a small London label. The tracks are built from crackle, rain recordings, spectral vocal samples, and sub-bass frequencies that barely register as pitch. The rhythms come from UK garage and jungle slowed to a crawl, two-step patterns stretched until they feel like sleepwalking. A BBC Radio 1 DJ had broadcast the first major dubstep showcase in January, pulling the genre out of pirate radio and South London club nights into national consciousness. The album sounds less like dance music than like an elegy for a city heard through concrete walls.

The cocaine minimalists A Virginia duo releases their second album after years of legal battles with their label. Every track is produced by a single producer whose beats are stripped to almost nothing: a kick drum, a clap, a single synthesizer line, negative space where other producers would stack layers. The rappers fill that space with intricate, deadpan wordplay about drug dealing so precise it reads like accounting set to music. The album scores 89 on Metacritic and is almost universally acclaimed, despite the fact that its subject matter is relentlessly, unapologetically narrow.

Written in math class A sixteen-year-old releases her debut single to country radio in June. She co-wrote it in fifteen minutes during math class, thinking about a boyfriend who was moving away. The song peaks at number six on the country chart. Her debut album follows in October on a newly founded independent label that launched with her as its flagship artist. She had signed a songwriting contract at fourteen, the youngest person ever hired by the publisher. The country establishment barely notices.

Google buys the video site In October, a search engine company pays 1.65 billion dollars for a video-sharing website that is less than two years old. The site had been co-founded by three former employees of an online payment company. A social networking site that peaked as the most visited website in America over the summer is already losing cultural momentum to newer platforms. A microblogging service launches in July. A Swedish entrepreneur founds a streaming company that will not launch for another two years. The infrastructure that will replace the record store is being assembled in real time, but no one has figured out how to make it pay for music yet.

2,700 stores closed Between 2003 and 2006, 2,700 record stores close across the United States. Global recorded music sales drop nearly five percent in a single year. Digital single sales surge sixty-five percent. Revenue from portable music players has grown from 344 million dollars to 7.6 billion in three years. The CD is in structural decline, but the streaming model does not exist yet. The industry is caught between a format that is dying and a replacement that has not been built.

The concept album about dying A rock band releases a concept album structured as a rock opera about a cancer patient's final days. It debuts at number two with 240,000 first-week copies. The lead single premieres on a social networking site ten days before its official release, drawing millions of plays before radio has a chance to break it. The band's theatrical ambition, marching-band drumlines layered over distorted guitars, owes more to arena rock than to the punk scene that raised them. The producer had guided another band's concept album to sixteen million copies two years earlier.

Five songs, each one a world A harpist releases her second album in November: five tracks, none shorter than seven minutes, the longest running past sixteen. The orchestral arrangements are written by a composer who once made records with a band whose harmonies redefined California pop in the 1960s. The vocals and harp are recorded by an engineer known for capturing punk bands in raw, unadorned takes. The songs are about death, illness, and love, and they unfold with the patience of novels. Nothing about the record fits any category the industry has available for it.