This year, we teamed up with Blogfresh Radio, imeem, Musebin and Tuneup Media to make our overview of music in 2008 even better than last year’s!

Here’s what we have for you:

1) Best 50 Albums of 2008 - We compiled data from over 700 year-end blog posts, analyzed it, and released it into the wild so everyone can see what bloggers were excited about in 2008.  You can listen to full previews of the albums via imeem and browse bite-sized reviews via Musebin. We’ve also shared the data we used to compile this list under a CC license so people can see what we are working with.  Check out last year’s post to see how we arrived at our numbers.

2) Zeitgeist 2008 Radio Show - Blogfresh Radio produced a kickass podcast series featuring the 50 albums in our Zeitgeist.  The shows include interviews with prominent music bloggers and plenty of music, so tune in every day for the next segment as we count down to the best album of 2008.

3) Best 50 Artists - We looked at what bands were written about most frequently in the past year and built a list of the top 50.  Then we mixed it with the most recent tracks for each of those artists to create a vibrant overview of the year in artists.

4) Best 50 Songs - We looked through our users’ favoriting activity and picked out the most loved songs of each month of 2008. We’ll release more data throughout the week, so keep checking back to see if one of your favorite songs made the list.

Enjoy, and let us know what you’re remembering/rediscovering/finding out about for the first time!

1) I Installed the app on my desktop (PC) and laptop (Mac).
2) I deleted my music collection from my laptop (the lesser up to date version of the two)
3) I setup a shared folder called Music within my Dropbox
4) I moved all my music on my PC into this folder
5) A few days later I had my entire music collection on my PC, Mac, and a copy backed up to the Web!

Best part is there is no more effort after this. When I download a new album from eMusic on my laptop, it instantly copies over to my desktop and visa versa. And the tragic day when both machines die a horrible death, I’ll still have a copy backed up to the web. Viva la Dropbox!

You can try it out with 2GB of storage for free, or pay $10/month for 50GB of storage. To me this is a small price to pay to never have to worry about losing my precious music collection again.

I’d love to hear what you guys think of this or what methods you’ve concocted to keep your treasures safe

We’ll be launching another fantastic Music Blog Zeitgeist later this month capturing the best artists, albums and songs of 2008 (with a few extra surprises!).

Want to participate? Here’s how:
1) You need to have a blog (doesn’t matter if you aren’t listed on The Hype Machine, we want your opinions too!)
2) You need to post your Top 10 Albums of 2008 list
3) Head over to the Top 10 Album Submission Form and submit your data.

That’s it! You’re votes will be included in and will be presented on our site (check out last year’s listings for an example). Help us spread the word, as the form will close on December 15th.

The winners:
Allanah’s comment got our attention because we’re looking forward to seeing her term paper about the experience
Andrei’s comment because he seems really passionate and excited about the scene.
Zhang’s comment won because we want him to enjoy some epic chiptunes and the idea of USK waving around a Gameboy like a weapon of mass destruction makes us giggle.

If you’re one of the winners, look for an email soon! The rest of you should still check it out, it’s only $50 for the entire festival or $15/day.

We’re giving away 3 pairs of tickets to the event so you and a friend can rock out to pixel pop all weekend. Simply check out the full list of performing artists on the site, and let us know in the comments who are you most looking forward to seeing and why. Is it their circuit bending skills or the way they use lo-fi electronic synthesis to create polyphonic, rhythm-driven electronic music? Explore the artists fall in love!

We’ll select 3 winners with the best comments on Friday November 28th. Good luck!

Video preview of the festival:

When: Tuesday, October 28th @ 8:30pm to Midnight
Where: Bloomsbury Bowling
(We’ll have a few lanes reserved, but it wouldn’t hurt to call and get one yourself just in case)

More info on Topspin’s blog

In other news, I just got an iPhone last weekend. I know I’m behind times but it’s pretty freakin’ cool. What are your favorite iPhone music apps and what do you like about them? We’re thinking about putting together a Hype Machine app as an early Christmas present

I’m also obsessed with Photoswap, the app that lets you exchange photos with strangers. I was swapping with people in Japan and Amsterdam last night!

So there are hundreds of music startups showing up everyday. Three of my favorites released new features this week that are worth letting you guys know about!

Amie Street launches updated site

Amie Streets a digital music store that has variable pricing. Everything starts off free, and the price slowly goes up as it gains popularity, eventually hitting 99 cents. You literally get rewarded for taking a chance on new and undiscovered music!

Hobnox Audiotool relaunches

I won’t begin to pretend like I know a thing about audio production or making music, but this in-browser tool lets you create complex setups of real-life looking synthesizers, tools, and effects to edit and record digital mixes. Did I say in-browser already? It’s insanely impressive and should be very useful for musicians. We hung out with part of the team while we were in Berlin, and are excited things are moving fast for them!

Grooveshark launches playlist sharing, and widgets

Grooveshark shut down its old beta site today (buying music through p2p sharing), to concentrate on their Grooveshark Lite product that’s been getting a lot of attention. Check out the above tour (created by my roommate Ben Westermann-Clark) or see for yourself at listen.grooveshark.com

Here’s the CMJ Marathon 2008 widget I put together:

Run into any really cool music startups lately? Let us know in the comments!

Enter the contest now! We’ll be giving away another pair of badges Thursday and Friday this week.

My side project SCHED* launched the official CMJ Marathon Schedule today where you can easily browse over 1200 events and create your own custom schedule. Check out mine here: http://cmj08.sched.org/gtmcknight

Now the really exciting part! If you have a Hype Machine or Last.FM account, you can get show recommendations based on your favorite artists here: http://cmj08.sched.org/suggest!