Temperatures are dropping in most places, snow is falling somewhere, and folks are getting ready to close the year out with some grand, jolly holidays. In the sphere of roots music discourse, that means the time has come around again for us all to make our lists and check them twice.
I’m talking, of course, about the annual No Depression Year-End Readers Poll. Each year we look to you to determine the Top 50 roots music albums of the year, as chosen by the intrepid band of merry music fans who frequent this site, as well as those who aren’t as frequent and others who are brand new.
This year, voting will take place in a new and (we think) improved way.
Most importantly, you don’t have to know off the top of your head which ten albums you loved the most this year. We’ve compiled a master list of hundreds of roots music albums that have been released this year. You can sort that list by artist or album title if you want, or you can just search it for the disc you know you want to vote for. Click on the plus sign next to an album you want to vote for, and it’ll be automatically added to your ballot. If you want to sit on it a while and make sure you’ve included the ten absolute best options, your ballot will be saved and you can come back any time before December 30 to add to it and re-order it.
Managing your ballot is pretty simple. Once you get into the voting zone, you’ll see a little tag pop up on the left hand of the screen that tells you how many albums you’ve voted for and gives you the option of managing your ballot. Click on that and you’ll be taken to your ballot, where you can drag and drop your votes into a different order, remove albums from your list entirely, title your list, and write a little something about why you love all this music. Feel free to use that space to tell us which albums came this close to making your final list. All of these things will be editable right up until the moment you click “Submit.”
Once you’ve submitted your ballot, it’s final and cannot be edited or changed. You can share it on the socials and discuss or debate it with anyone who chooses to comment on it.
Every album you voted for will be fed into the community tally.
In addition to those updates to the voting process, you’ll be selecting your favorite albums from a rather giant list of all the roots music albums that have been released since January 1, 2015. If you want to vote for an album that’s not on our list, email help@nodepression.com to let us know we missed it, and we’ll make sure it gets added to the list. If you run into any other technical issues while voting, please send those to the same address.
Voting is open until 6 p.m. EST on December 30. The ND Readers’ Top 50 Albums of 2015 will be announced the following day.
Ready to get started? You’ll find the list of releases to pull from here.
