December is my favorite time for music discovery because that is when everyone makes their lists of favorite music released during the past year.

Traditionally, few new records are released in January and February, but that never bothers me because I am always busy catching up on what I missed the previous year.

How best to take advantage of this deluge of music recommendations? Well, I start by searching out best-of lists that have titles on them I am already familiar with and then check out the albums on those same lists that I have never heard.

Also, you might want to check out albums that are getting lots of buzz from many different critics. Metacritic is a particularly good place to start. Metacritic is a site that compiles lists of music reviewed by major online and offline publications.

Once I find an album I am interested in checking out I often go first to the artist’s myspace site to listen to a few songs. Often the artist’s web site will also have tracks to download or listen to. In fact, you would be surprised at how many artist web sites stream an entire album so you can check it out.

Once I find an album I want to listen to more often and buy, I usually check eMusic
to see if it is available there. I have a monthly subscription at eMusic that allows me to download many more albums each month than I would be able to afford otherwise. One of the great things about eMusic is the tunes are all in mp3 format and will play on any computer or digital music player.

If an album is not on eMusic I will often check out Amazon to see if it is available at a good price as a used music CD. You would be surprised at how many great new releases are priced at less than $5.00 on Amazon if you search the used merchandise. This happens because many albums don’t get airplay and are not well-known, but there are still hundreds of discs distributed by the record companies as promos. A lot of these end up saturating the used market the first few months after the release of an album.

In the coming days I will link to as many best albums of 2006 lists as I can and label them according to style or preference of the reviewer to help you navigate them.

Also, later this week I will list my favorite albums of the year too.