2012 in Music

A short film from Compton A twenty-five-year-old rapper from Compton releases his major-label debut in October as a concept album structured like a movie, complete with skits voiced by his parents. The record tells the story of a single day: peer pressure, violence, a stolen van, a prayer. It debuts at number two with 242,000 first-week copies, the highest opening for a male rapper all year. Over the next decade, it never leaves the Billboard 200, spending more than 520 consecutive weeks on the chart.

A letter on the Fourth of July On July 4, a singer-songwriter from New Orleans posts an open letter on Tumblr. Four summers ago, I met somebody, it begins. I was 19 years old. He was too. The letter collects ninety thousand notes in days. Six days later, his debut album arrives: ten tracks of R&B built on vintage synthesizers and software emulations because his producer could not afford hardware keyboards. The album is recorded across half a dozen studios in Los Angeles and New York, vocals tracked alone over nine months through vintage condenser microphones into tube preamps. It enters the chart at number two and reshapes what R&B is allowed to sound like.

Recorded in a free audio editor A twenty-three-year-old in Montreal locks herself in her apartment for two weeks with a consumer keyboard and a copy of GarageBand. She records until sleep deprivation sets in, layering pitch-shifted vocals over synth-pop hooks that sound like transmissions from a parallel dimension. The finished album comes out on a venerable British indie label in February and lands on nearly every year-end list. It becomes proof of concept: the most acclaimed pop record of the year was made with software that comes free on every laptop.

The horse dance hits a billion A Korean rapper releases a single in July satirizing the wealthy Gangnam district of Seoul. By August, the music video is gaining three million YouTube views per day. On December 21, it becomes the first video in the platform's history to reach one billion views. The song tops charts in more than thirty countries. It is the year's clearest demonstration that a viral video can bypass every traditional gatekeeper, radio, label, language barrier, and still produce a global hit.

A ghost in the desert At Coachella in April, a rapper who has been dead for sixteen years appears onstage alongside his former collaborator. The figure is not a hologram but a Pepper's Ghost illusion, created over four months by an Oscar-winning visual effects studio using angled glass and projection. It performs two songs to a stunned festival crowd. The stunt costs somewhere between one hundred thousand and four hundred thousand dollars and ignites a worldwide debate about posthumous performance and digital resurrection.

Six hundred thousand banjos A London folk-rock band releases its second album in September. It debuts at number one in both the US and UK, moving 600,000 copies in its first American week, the biggest opening of the year. The following February, it wins the Grammy for Album of the Year. The record sounds almost identical to the band's first: acoustic guitars, banjos, stomping rhythms, anthemic choruses. Critics are divided. The audience is not.

The best-selling vinyl of the year A guitarist from Detroit releases his first solo album in April on his own label. He records and produces the entire thing himself in his Nashville studio. It debuts at number one on the Billboard 200 and sells 33,000 copies on vinyl in its first year, making it 2012's best-selling vinyl record. Total vinyl sales hit 177 million dollars that year, an eighteen percent jump and the highest figure in fifteen years. The format that was supposed to be dead keeps growing.

The peak and the cliff Digital track sales reach 1.34 billion units, an all-time high. Digital album sales hit 117.7 million, also a record. Combined digital revenue crosses 2.9 billion dollars. None of these numbers will ever be reached again. Streaming subscription revenue, still modest at 571 million, is climbing fast. A Swedish company that launched in the US just a year earlier now has twenty million active users worldwide. The download era is peaking at the exact moment its replacement arrives.

Two independents crash the party A Seattle rapper and his producer release an album in October on their own label, no major-label deal, no radio push. One single, a novelty track about secondhand clothing, reaches number one on the Hot 100, only the second independent song to do so in nearly twenty years. Meanwhile, in Carson, California, a small entertainment company run out of a house puts out the year's most acclaimed hip-hop album through a distribution deal. The major-label system is still standing, but the walls have holes.

From Perth with portamento A multi-instrumentalist in Perth, Australia, writes and records his second album mostly alone in a home studio. He discovers a vintage analog synthesizer at a friend's place in Sydney and is transfixed by its gliding portamento sound. He buys the same model on eBay, pairs it with a Japanese polysynth, and layers them over drums and guitars into something that sounds like late-1960s psychedelia rebuilt with early-1980s synthesizer technology. The album is mixed at a studio in upstate New York by a producer known for making quiet songs sound enormous.

Mail carriers and nuclear watchmen A band from Athens, Alabama, funds its debut album with day jobs: the singer delivers mail, the guitarist works the night shift at a nuclear power plant. They record at a Nashville studio built around analog equipment, tape machines and tube preamps. The finished album peaks at number six on the Billboard 200. The band receives three Grammy nominations including Best New Artist. The record sounds like it was made in 1971, and in 2012 that turns out to be exactly what people want.