New additions and technical updates

26th July 2010
A New Update

All tracks now show rankings by ARTIST, YEAR and ALL-TIME on their individual track pages.

You can see these three separate rankings by clicking on an individual track and looking at the top right-hand corner of the screen.

This is an important and much needed update because it helps you to easily evaluate individual rankings across the site. At a glance you can now determine that track X is number 1 by The Beatles, number 2 from 1968 (for example) and number 16 of All-time.

This means that you don't have to click on an individual year and scour down until you find where a song might rank, if you manage to find it at all. The same goes for the Artist pages.

I find this update really useful in determining where a song 'ranks' across the site at a glance.


24th July 2010
40,000 songs on the site
This is only a statistical figure, but it's something that I want to commemorate.

VINYLSURRENDER NOW HAS 40 THOUSAND SONGS.

There's something pompously glorious about the expression "40 thousand", which sounds BIG and super-achieving. In reality it's just a tiny little number which reflects just a fraction of the millions and millions of songs available for purchase and download on the web, but that's what VinylSurrender has achieved and I think it's worth SHOUTING a few words about. Next, it's on to 50 thousand and then maybe the ton and, you never know, VS might even list it's first ever MILLION songs by this time next century.

It's been great getting this far, being alive, still enjoying it - determined as ever.

Thanks for all your support and suggestions.


7th June 2010
THE 1950's Decade
The 1950's Decade has been 'fully' updated and now includes all years from 1950 to 1959. This includes all the best songs and hits from this era including album/single covers and artist photos. To be honest, I had to dig deep and open my mind to the 1950's because I'd largely dismissed it as rubbish doo-wop poop and silly country ditties, which isn't true - there's some great stuff out there. I felt it was very important to completely cover this period as it's an extremely important part of rock and roll history... it's an ongoing process and more and more songs are being regularly added, especially from the very early part - 1950-1953. It's nowhere near as strong as the 60's or 70's, but at least it's now fairly represented.


15th April 2010
VINYLSURRENDER LOGIN
Well, this is a happy moment; Vinylsurrender now has its very own login feature.
It's been on the cards for ages because of the indiscriminate voting nonsense that's being going on for a while. Now it's here, so please LOGIN.

If you don't want to login then fine, you can still vote up and down the charts, but you can only have +/-2 votes per track. For most people, that's fine, but if you don't like it please kindly take your ass away or please use the login feature to boost your voting power.

Right, you get 300 votes per month to do as you like. That's an average of about 10 votes per day. You can spend three hundred votes just on Patti Smith (for example) if you like, it's up to you, but then your votes run out until next month.

On your login page you will see a list of your top 40 tracks, top 20 albums and top 10 artists. That's it for the moment. I'm working on getting this much more user-friendly so you can do other things too, but it's early draws at the moment...

Mostly, I hope this new feature gives you, the visitor, something extra to 'do' on Vinylsurrender.
From my point of view it helps me to get some sort of sanity in order. Let's see how it goes.

By the way; you still have to send an email to admin AT vinylsurrender DOT com in order to get your loginID and password. Sorry 'bout that. Hopefully it'll be automated very soon.

Richard.

 

24th March 2010
NEGATIVE VOTING HAS TO STOP
A very small number of site visitors are abusing the site by spending hours and hours every day negatively voting against everything in sight. It's a serious administrative headache - trying to work out how to limit or even stop this abuse so that small groups of individuals don't end up controlling the structure of the site. I've tried various tactics over the last few months but it's not working.

Let me be clear. There are site visitors who spend several hours (three consecutive hours or more per day) voting negatively. Here's today's statistics:

From 03:00 to 06:00 - 100 positive votes
From 02:30 to 06:00 - 750 NEGATIVE votes

This isn't just random spamming abuse, but TARGETED negative voting against everything not liked or unknown from particular artists/albums/years. You're having a lovely time and I'm glad you enjoy the site so much, really, but I just want it to stop because it expresses human nature at it's very worst, e.g. I like 10, 20 or 30 artists, but I hate everything else that I don't know - 100, 200, 1000 artists and therefore I'm going to vote against it all. It's a very sad type of mentality.

I have already decided to put a ban on voting below 0.00 points for ANY track. A track cannot be rated lower than zero.

If abusive negative voting continues it will be banned outright until a site login system can be implemented.

Let me point out that I have nothing against POSITIVE voting - you can vote for whoever you like.


28th December 2009
Site Updates
I've managed to get a few updates sorted out:

# The 'BOOST Charts' now show the most popular and the least popular songs instead of just the most voted 'for' and 'against'. E.g. 'Imagine' by John Lennon has won 139 positive votes, but gained 159 negative votes and therefore has a vote score of -20 (not very good). Click to see.

# All of the 'DECADE Charts' now show full graphic images of the Top 40 albums of each decade.

# The VS Homepage now shows the latest positive votes as well as the latest negative votes. If you vote for a track and then look at the individual track page / album page / artist page you'll see a little Green or Red arrow indicating that that track has been voted for or against. No arrows, of course, if no votes allocated.


27th December 2009
MusicOMH votes for Fuck Button's 'Tarot Sport' as the number 2 album of the year. Great Choice!


27th December 2009
MusicOMH = rather plagiarised end of year list.
Vinylsurrender exists on the basis of amassing other people's opinions and trying to come to some sort of 'best of' consensus. In other words, VS is not an authority or an important voice in the music industry because the opinions are not it's own. I should be careful not to throw stones at excellent music publications such as MusicOMH.com because of this 'greenhouse' status, especially as I've come to like and respect the MOMH site over the last couple of years, but their end of year best album list left me thinking 'same-old'. I don't believe that they really consulted ten music critics and asked them to nominate their best albums of the year and that they came up with, surprise, surprise, 'Merriweather Post Pavilion' by the Beach Boys, sorry Animal Collective. Sorry guys, but that's sad - you've assessed the format of that list based on a cautious, calculated gauge on what OTHER people are saying, i.e. what 'should' be voted as the best. The top ten list shows ten albums that are on every other list, fully boosted on the VS site, but doesn't show any real personality. OK, the exception could be the 'Hidden Cameras' album - that's actually quite an innovative selection, so perhaps I'll forgive you. Yeah, sure, it's rather heavey criticism, but your pants have been firmly pulled down and the would-be emperor definitely has no clothes this year.


24th December 2009
Rolling Stone Top 25 Tracks of 2009 Added
I've now added Rolling Stone's Top 25 Tracks of 2009. This is another nice update because of the worldwide respect for the magazine and corresponding site, but it's probably the least consistent and worst thought out list so far this year. Number 1 on their list is a track by U2. Um, no comment. No. 3 is a track by Bruce Springsteen. No comment. Number 4 is a track by Miley Cyrus. Miley-fucking-Cyrus? Miley-fucking-Cyyyyyrus!! Don't get me wrong; I think the list is really good, just take a look down it and you'll see all of this year's most popular choices, but the top 4 is inexplicable. Needless to say I'm amazed that Bob Dylan didn't make it into the singles chart as well because of RS's sentimentality towards certian big names from the past, but how can they explain Miley Cyrus? Oh, of course, with the same justification that voted for that Black Eyed Peas track, so it must be ok then. Give me a break. RS spent less than five minutes considering and compiling that list. Some clever dick went round the sites and spotchecked all the best albums already listed instead of actually LISTENING to the stuff throughout the year. Anyway, the way Jay-Z jostles for top spot with the grandaddy's of rock and then the Miley song whacks you in the face, WHAM!, is stunning. Come on guys, are you sure this is number FOUR?

Note that sometimes it takes a little while to complete these lists because it's necessary to make sure that all album tracks, album images and artist photos are included in the site.


22nd December 2009
NME Best Songs of 2009 List Added
This is the NME's end of year list. It continues to be Britain's premier music publication, focused on mostly independent and up-and-coming artists. Click here: NME TOP 50 Tracks of 2009.

Criticism. The NME has showed an increasingly sloppy approach to album reviews which often gives me the feeling that an inexperienced music writer spent the whole of half-an-hour deciding to condemn a piece of work to eternal damnation or simply looked at all the hype behind, let's say 'La Roux', and said 'yes' that's the best music out there at the moment - give it a 10. I laughed out loud at the 9/10 for Lily Allen's 'The Fear' album as well as the Arctic Monkey's album, Little Boots and Lady Gaga - but it's popular stuff and on the 'cusp' of 'cutting edge' pop, although shallow crap it may be.

On the up side, NME hits the nail on the head with some artists; the Horrors, Kasabian, The Big Pink, The XX, Wild Beasts, Fuck Buttons (see 'Tarot Sport' for some truly intensely excellent music), Manic Street Preachers, etc - so all is well down at NME Wallows, great stuff guys, keep it up.

Let's hope that 2010 is just as good.

15th December 2009
Spin.com and Spinner.com - very different lists added
Two very relevant lists have been added to the site; the Spin Top 20 of 2009 and the Spinner Top 25 of 2009. Even though these sites have very similar names the lists are completely independent. Spin bases its choices on indie and rock and more 'alternative' types of music, sometimes missing out on some of the biggest and better cuts of the year. Spinner, on the other hand, chooses a wider range of music from various genres and is a bit more varied.

However, some of the 'best' choices are baffling, to say the least. Tracks from Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Neko Case - cool as hell, but not gripping. And there are so many obviously cool yet extremely dreary selections from artists such as Animal Collective, Camera Obscura, Anthony & The Johnsons, Florence And The Machine, Atlas Sound - come on guys!

The music industry will always be this way - obsessed with cool and 'art' and less with sonic enjoyment, sigh.

9th December 2009
Village Voice Best of the 1990's Added
I have now finally, finally added and COMPLETED the Village Voice Top 100 Tracks of the 1990's list. Just like the 1980's equivalent, it's an essential addition to the site because of the quality of the music. I just hope it doesn't take another month before the next update.


10th November 2009
More New Charts Added
I've now added and completed the Village Voice Top 100 Tracks of the 1980's.
It's an excellent chart because it highlights the importance of some existing tracks such as 'When Doves Cry' and 'Kiss' by Prince, but also showcases a number of largely forgotton classics such as 'Electric Avenue' by Eddy Grant, 'Pass The Dutchie' by Musical Youth, 'La Bamba' by Los Lobos - really popular stuff in its day.

I'm now going ahead with the Village Voice 1990's equivalent.


27th October 2009
New Charts Added
The following independent charts have now been incorporated into the site:
- Q Magazine Top 100 of All-Time, published in 2006. This is a well-balanced chart with lots of well known songs from the 1960's to the 1990's. There are a number of tracks from the 2000's as well and a few from the 1950's.
- Mojo Top 100 of All-Time, published in 2000. This is also a very interesting list but it hasn't been reproduced because of its inconsistency. Some very strange choices appear such as Judy Garland's "Over The Rainbow" at number 3; I think it comes from the film 'The Wizard of Oz', a truly legendary film but it goes beyond my widest resources in producing charts from the 1940's and before. I draw the line at the 1950's. There are also other very old tracks such as 'Every Time We Say Goodbye' by Ella Fitzgerald (which appears on John Coltrane's 'My Favorite Things' album) and 'As Time Goes By' by Dick Haymes (I think this comes from the film 'Casablanca') and 'Goodnight Irene' by Leadbelly - an even more vague gem from the 1920's. There are all sorts of other obscure tracks from even obscurer artists such as, 'Walking In Memphis' by Marc Cohn; and 'Guantanamera' by Perez Prado; and 'Ne Me Quitte Pas' by Jacques Brel; and 'Different Drum' by Linda Ronstadt, etc... I don't think that these tracks should be part of the 100 best tracks of all-time, but I respect the compiler's choices because music is merely subjective, i.e. subject to personal taste. I think Mojo were truly trying to compile a greatest 100 of ALL-TIME, even old, old pre-WW2 times, but have missed so many fantastic classics in the process.
 

14th October 2009
Three Is Better Than One
I've modified the voting system so that three votes are allowed per session instead of just one.
You can vote for a single track three times or vote for three different tracks, positively or negatively, or whatever combination you wish.

I'd like the site to work a lot better than it does, sure, but in the meantime it's nice to have a bit more freedom, unless the damned abuse voting comes back and I'll have to scrub the voting process altogether or hire a professional programmer on about US$ 0.65 per day (just kidding) so that VS can compete with sites like Last.fm or Rateyourmusic.com.
 

7th October, 2009
I'm a huge fan of both Air and Zero 7, both of them having very similar downbeat chillout type sounds, both of them having released new albums recently. The difference is that the new Air album - Love 2 - is pretty much on form, whereas the new Zero 7 album - Yeah Ghost - is pretty patchy. I think that Zero 7 have lost their direction a bit. Maybe they're getting older and think that it's time to up the ante and inject some new ideas, experiment a bit - who knows. The album doesn't work as well as it should and I found it irritating in places.  On the other hand, the new Air album is pretty much what you'd expect from Air - it's pretty spectacular and may even be one of their best or memorable moments; the music is exactly what I like about the band - stark, atmospheric, eerie, emotional and spiritual. 'Love 2' reminds me of all sorts of things, including Vangelis' work and his Blade Runner and Chariots of Fire albums. Air have stuck to what they know and do best and have delivered a lovely piece of ambient prog electronica. Zero 7 are getting progressively worse - I kinda cringed at various intervals during 'Yeah Ghost' - not a disaster, not by any means - 2nd, 3rd listens reveal a LOT, but Air win this comparison 2-0 in normal time.

30th September, 2009
I've now added all the songs from PitchforksTop 100 of the 1960's.
There are some great songs on this list and it really enhances the quality of the site. Great update. Thanks Pitchfork for a great chart.

And thanks for alerting me to this - the Original Doctor Who Theme from 1962. Check out the amazing electronics. (listen to the clip by clicking on the orange speaker in the top left corner of the link)
 

24th September, 2009
Update finished - Pitchfork's Top 100 of the 00's decade (2000-2009).
All tracks fully listed, with artist pictures, album covers, reviews, ranking points etc...
 

23rd September, 2009
Another 'Official Chart' list
I'm now updating the site with Pitchfork's Top 100 of the 00's decade (2000-2009).
Many of these songs are already listed on the site from previous years but it's a worthwhile update nonetheless. There are some really interesting choices and some real clangers (as you'd expect). One thing I've learned in my life is there's no accounting for musical taste. Everyone's got their own opinion, sometimes a collective opinion, which you just have to accept and respect - there's no point arguing or trying to convince someone that their musical tastes are bad, it just doesn't work. Anyhow, I can't understand how three rather dodgy tracks from Radiohead - their 'Kid A' and 'Amnesiac' albums - managed to get into the top 60 tracks over the ENTIRE 00's decade. None of the the tracks that I personally rate from these albums even get a mention and NONE of the tracks from 'In Rainbows' - oh well. As I said, taste is a funny thing. I can't believe that two 'Robyn' tracks made it onto this list either, for example, but I'm going off on one again...

Billboard LIST completed
I've finally finished the update of the:
 'All-time HOT 100 best tracks over the last 50 years'. from Billboard.com.
All 100 songs are now included in the site, together with corresponding Artist and Album pages.
 

11th September, 2009
NEW LIST!
I've now added the Billboard.com 'All-time HOT 100 best tracks over the last 50 years'. This list was released in 2008 and shows all the best number 1's and most popular sales and radio play tracks that have come out since 1958. You can see this list in the 'LIST Charts' section of the site - just use the Flash buttons. It's an interesting list with some very good songs but also some damn awful sugary 'how the hell did that get to number one' type material - many of the tracks are new to me or had been ignored in the past; I mean, I'm not a Mariah Carey fan for example, at all. She's a terrific looking lady, but what the hell does she sing and what are the names of the songs that she's done - I can't name one. However, she's MASSIVELY popular, so these songs are getting included in these charts so that site visitors can vote for them if they wish. At the time of this post - 11th September, the List is still 'In Progress'.

10th September, 2009
MP3's now Play! And 'Forms' now Work!
I've managed to solve the following two tiny site problems:

1. MP3's now play in a pop-up window using Quicktime or any equivalent flash installed music player. Just click on an orange speaker symbol to listen to an MP3 clip. Internet Explorer simply didn't work - it just opened up a blank pop-up and then a new large, white screen - very horrible. MP3's can now be played in any browser. I'm happy about this.

2. The 'Nominations' form has been FIXED, so now you can use it to nominate any album for inclusion in the site. About a year ago or so, iPowerweb (my service provider) decided to cock-up their entire service whilst installling 'upgrades'. It meant changing practically all parameters on the site so it would continue working, including forms. I suppose they could have told me that the database login name would be different and that form names would have different code numbers, etc, but they don't do that sort of thing, they just 'do it' and let you discover that your site doesn't work at a later date - bloody great, the cocks. Oh well, there's some good things to iPowerweb I suppose. Anyway - The Nominations page now WORKS, so please nominate albums if you think they deserve to be in the site. Thanks.

30th August, 2009
The Artist 'Blondie' has been reinstated.


23rd August, 2009
BLONDIE SUCKS!
Voting abuse has finally gone too far. Let me explain: I've no idea who you are, but the person who loves 'Blondie' above all else thinks that he/she can vote endlessly for Blondie tracks several hundred times a day so that their favourite songs and albums rise up the charts at an exaggerated rate. Basically, there's nothing wrong with supporting your favourite band, but the idea behind VinylSurrender's voting system is that you should vote once, and once only, but can come back later or the next day and vote again if you like, but NOT vote and vote and vote over the space of an hour or more using sneaky methods - it's abuse, please stop it. What is especially frustrating is that EVERY track that competes with Blondie over any particular period has been voted indiscriminately against, 10, 20, 30, maybe 50 times or more, dropping these tracks down the charts. The only thing that matters to this vote-abusing person is that Blondie gets to the top of the charts at the expense of all other tracks from all other artists.

Result: - ALL Blondie tracks have been reduced by 50 points (-0.50) for an undetermined, temporary period. Parity will be restored over time, but only when I'm sure that vote abuse has stopped. This is a shame because I really like Blondie.


6th March, 2009
Updated the All-time Artists page - http://www.vinylsurrender.com/Music/ARTISTCharts.php - to show full pictures and also to give clearer information on the top 100 artists. Pictures get smaller as they go down the page making it more obvious which artists are better than others.

Also fixed the six 'Decade' pages (1950's - 00's) to show images, names and rankings for the top five artists of each decade, plus the next 10 artists below in smaller graphics.
The top albums of each decade also now show the amount of 'new' votes given for and against each album, making it clearer which albums are currently popular (still being listened to, etc).


30th January, 2009
Leonard Cohen (and other artists) song parity partly restored.
Looking back now, I realise that allowing site visitors to vote "all you like" was a real mistake. The artist 'Leonard Cohen', for example, had been 'vote-abused' over time, with many of his songs having very high ratings and others having very low ratings. How can you have two songs on an album at +2 (excellent), let's say, and eight songs at -1 (completely rubbish). It makes no sense at all - LC's albums are pretty good and not just top-heavy on a few good songs with loads of other trash-filler songs.

This is an on-going process for me now - trying to get some form of parity restored to the most abused artists....Normal service WILL BE RESUMED.


15th January, 2009
I'm very glad to report that that every artist listed on the site now has an artist image on their individual 'artist' page and, subsequently, on the individual 'track' page too, except in the case of around 50 or so artists where no images could be found; artists like 'Prince Moonie' and 'Nina Soul', etc... This has been a labour of love...and now I've got to figure out what to do with all these artist images. Anyway, I just wanted to present an image of each musician or band for visitor pleasure and also to make the site look a bit more stylish.

You should also find that all albums, EPs and singles now have associated images too.
 

New Year Update:
Only one vote allowed per session from now on.
To protect the integrity of Vinylsurrender's track ratings and overall chart structure it has been decided to limit voting to a single vote per day. This works on session variables, so you need to close down your browser and come back to the site in order to vote again. Simplistic programming, if truth be told, but quite effective. I got sick to death of people bombing a track to hell, clicking on an album and consequently finding the best track with a negative 10 or 20 rating (or more). The same goes for the top songs too; it just got out of hand. See the comments below for more info on this....
 

Vote all you like, but please take note:
Recently, individual users have discovered mechanisms (or lots of free time) on how to artificially boost the popularity of certain artists and albums. A while back, this occurred with the artist 'Deep Purple'; a non-acceptable amount of track boosting occurred, resulting in the subsequent 'zero-ing' of the artist's overall scores and ratings. This is a shame, as I quite like Deep Purple, but it had to be done as it got too out of hand. This sort of abuse has happened in the past with artists such as T-Rex, Elton John, Genesis etc....and has been occurring recently with an artist called 'OS MUTANTES', from Brazil. I have decided not to 'zero' the scores of 'The Mutants' yet because I believe the voting to be genuine, but I'm not far from it. Please stop click abuse voting! Thanks. I do not have the resources or time to make VS into the site I would really wish, but you're killing the site because of your 'determination' that a certain artist is going to get 1000 clicks or...whatever.

End of gripe one...now for some further information.
VS has recently undergone a slight change in focus, based on the realisation that albums and album listings are not dead AT ALL! I believed, a while back, that the album format was a thing of the past and that in the future we would only buy individual songs or playlists. Not true. I thought that the original LP format (tapes and CDs too) originally existed because of physical restrictions and an age-old lack of technology, but that's not the real case at all. In reality, these formats exist(ed) because people (we / us) like to listen to about an hour's worth of music from our preferred band or artist. In this sense, the 'album' or 'collection of similarly grouped songs' will always exist, because that's just the way we like to get hold of our music - by the block, the hour's worth. It's much easier and less time consuming to go buy an album or 'collection' than a bundle of individual songs. SO, the album still firmly exists and I've therefore re-emphasised site focus on album listings and positions. Hope it suits.

Spam Issues:
Yukkk, ruddy SPAM. Yes, some idiot of a 'king idiot' deciding that he/she would use VS as the outlet for the mother of all penis enlargement and viagra pill spam advertising campaigns. What happened? Well, you may have clicked on an individual track and suddenly been presented with some idiotic, irrelevant information on how to buy the aforementioned medications and re-invigorate times gone by when a hard-on was a reality. No one is interested in this RUBBBBISH, no-one. Not VS users. All this means is that the Track Reviews and Comments sections have been temporarily disabled until I can get it sorted out and stop this spam abuse. Sorry for any offence or inconvenience caused.

 

SOME SOMETIMES ASKED QUESTIONS AND SOME OCCASIONALLY WITTY ANSWERS:

• What is www.VinylSurrender.com?
  Listings of all the most popular music tracks since the 50's, votable by you.
   
• Yeahhh, but what can I actually DO?
  The idea is, by voting, that you will be able to influence the best songs of all time. Do a search and then vote FOR or AGAINST your favourite music. This will be reflected across the site.
   
• Why the name Vinyl Surrender?
  The Final Surrender of Vinyl Records - a play on words, a name.
  It's not supposed to represent the 'death' of the vinyl format, just an indication of the shift in trends over the years. Today we tend to listen to digital material.
  However, people are still buying vinyl records and always will do because of the look, feel, the physical aspect. It's the notion that if you can touch and hold your music it has more worth and more memory attached to it. If truth be told, music isn't something that you can hold or grasp or 'own' as such because once the needle touches the vinyl the sound leaves the surface and disappears from the visual becoming audio waves. Most of us like to associate music with something seeable though, and if you're a DJ for example, you'll no doubt prefer physically cutting into the grooves, mixing from one disc to the other rather than engineering music as digital MP3's or WAV files. Your choice. VinylSurrender says it's not about the physical or visual aspect, it's about the sound. So, if you've recently bought a vinyl record and wanted to listen to it on the way home, on the bus, in the car, on the toilet (with the door shut).....you get the gist.
   
• Do you have anything against vinyl?
  No, nothing remotely against vinyl, in fact some of my favourite vinyl records are tucked away in boxes, gathering dust; they're treasured items, but when I want to listen to those albums I use my media player or MP3 player, or perhaps even a CD; something that's accessible and portable, easy to find and not cumbersome. This site is simply a list of 'best' and 'worst' tracks, as voted by site visitors.
   
• Do you provide a download service?
  No, sorry, that would be breaching copyrights and be totally illegal! At the moment it's just free information for the love of music plus MP3 samples of many of the top tracks. If you like a track and want a full copy you'll have to find your own download sources. Appologies for that as it would be lovely to give a free download link for the top 100 MP3's or so.
   
• Are there music or MP3 samples to listen to?
  YES! I'm extremely happy to say that you can listen to a 20-40 second sample where you see this icon . Simply click on it and let Vinyl Surrender do the rest. If there's no clip you'll see the negative icon. The 1669 samples are generally recorded at 56Kbps (and 200kb+ in size) so you won't find the sound of professional quality, but your click-to-hear ratio should be pretty quick.
   
• What are Protection Points?
  Tracks with the a speaker symbol are PROTECTED and earn that respective song, artist and album a 'protection point'. More info here. Protection points are a way of ensuring the integrity of classic or very good songs and albums. You may notice an album with 6 or 7 (or more) protection points - this means that the album is very good and will always have a special place in music history (at least as far as VS is concerned). At last count, The Beatles had around 45 protection points - you can perhaps understand why.
   
• Can I buy albums from VinylSurrender?
  The answer is a most emphatic NO - you can't but ANYTHING. There's a bit of Google Adsense smattered around the site, showing sponsor advertising, and I've considered incorporating links to Amazon Associates, but the plan isn't to sell actual products. VS exists for a whole lot more reason than simply making sales.
   
• Tell me about the 'Boosting' and 'Bombing' System.
  Well, it's one thing to look at a list or chart and pick a favourite tune from it, but it's another to have your say and get that track into a better or worse position. Now you can help things along a little bit by boosting or bombing a track's score (and hence its ranking) simply by clicking on the or icon next to any track. You can only vote once per browser session, but you can vote various times throughout the day, if you wish - no problem.
   
• Why organise music into lists and charts at all?
  That was the original concept; to try and gauge the best tunes over a specific period of time. The music from the 70's is very different from the 80's, for example. I just wanted to reflect that.
   
• Why aren't all the Tracks reviewed?
  No time. You can contribute by sending a track review to me at Richard AT Vinylsurrender.com.
   


Richard
VinylSurrender.com