Hello and welcome to the invitation-only Record Culture Albums of 2022 . You have been chosen to be a part of this year’s quest to find the definitive top 50 albums of the year.
Under the Completing Your Entry section a little further down this page, you will find the link that takes you to the form you need to complete to submit your entry. BUT, before doing so, please ensure you read all of the information contained on this page. It contains information, some of which is guidance, some are straight-up rules, which are important to know before submitting anything.
Eligibility
Note that this is not an open invite. This is an invitation only exercise, specifically aimed at established customers, supporters and other people we have chosen to take part for their music know-how (people in the industry, and so on). Please do not share the link around.
Submissions Guidelines [IMPORTANT]
1. Your Top 20 is what we really want. But the minimum requirement for your entry to count is a Top 10
2. A Top 20 is perfect. But a solid Top 10 is preferred to a half-arsed Top 20. I.e. if you really feel like you’re just “making the numbers up”, 10 is better than 20.
3. It's either a Top 10 or a Top 20. Any number in between is an invalid entry.
4. IMPORTANT. Please note the below requirements for any entry that you include:
a. An album must have been released between December 3rd 2021 - December 2nd 2022. Please double check before submitting if you’re not sure. In these times of unprecedented vinyl delays, we may find that an album was released in 2022, but the vinyl is delayed until 2023. In these cases, the album DOES count for 2022 as it has officially been released by the label. If the full album is on streaming services, YouTube, etc, then it counts as a released album.
b. Albums must be new music. No reissues, best-ofs, live albums or compilations allowed
c. No EP’s or singles allowed
d. So-called “mini albums” (at least 7 tracks) are allowed
Scoring
You'll be pleased to know you don’t need to do anything whatsoever regarding how we score this thing. But you might be interested to know how it works all the same. Points are awarded for each position, as follows:
Bonus Points
Additional points are awarded for recurring entries.
For example, Album X appears in someone’s Top 5. That same album then appears in someone else’s Top 5. For this, the album receives 2 bonus points. It will subsequently receive 2 bonus points every time it appears in another person’s Top 5.
If Album X appears in someone’s Top 10 and then that same album appears in someone else’s Top 10, the album receives 1 bonus point. It will subsequently receive 1 bonus point every time it appears in another person’s Top 10.
Lost Points
If someone includes an album in their Top 20 that no other participant nominates by the end of the voting, the points for that nomination are halved. For example, Person A submits Album X as their 1st favourite album. By default, the album receives 40 points. When all votes are counted, no one else has submitted Album X in their Top 20. Album X loses half its points, reducing to a total of 20 points.
This is to counterbalance what would be an over-inflated appearance of that album as a best-of-the-year album. Continuing the example, Album X is nominated just once - as above - and receives a total of 40 points. A different album, Album Y, is nominated a total of 5 times across the board by 5 different people, in positions 8, 12, 15, 18, 20. It accumulates a total of 38 points. With the frequency of nomination for Album Y, it is fair to assume it is objectively the more popular album as a group. Therefore reducing points on single nomination albums levels out that imbalance.
Completing Your Entry
Head to this link to start completing your entry:
https://form.jotform.com/223115171257347
To complete the online form, you need to add the ARTIST and ALBUM TITLE in the empty fields. You’ll find a space under each listing where you can enter a small piece of text regarding the album if you wish. We may be able to use some of these in the graphics during our live countdown.
Some guidance for completing your list:
1. Have a good think about it. There’s no rush.
2. Please ensure both the Artist and Title are correct and in full. If we can’t easily decipher who or what it is, it might very well be scrapped.
Click on the submit link when you’re done. Note that once it’s submitted, that’s it. If you decide you made a terrible mistake, drop us an e-mail and we’ll see what we can do.
Deadline
The deadline for submissions is Sunday, December 4th. Due to getting the final results ready we cannot allow any stray from that. The results will be revealed live at Claptrap on Thursday, December 15th.
Tickets for the live event can still be purchased here: https://recordculture.com/products/albums-of-2022
Thank you
That's it! Thanks for taking part and supporting what we're doing. Go ahead and get submitting and have fun!