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Albums of 2023 Guidance

Welcome to the invitation-only Record Culture Albums of 2023 poll; our annual 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 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. Some is guidance only but some are rules that are important to know before you submit anything.

Eligibility

This is an invitation only exercise, where we seek submissions from groups of established customers, supporters of the shop and other people we have chosen to take part for their involvement in the world of new music (people in the industry, and so on). Please do not share the link.

Submissions Guidelines [IMPORTANT]

1. You can submit your Top 20 or Top 10 albums of the year, depending on which you feel is a more confident list. The minimum requirement for your entry to count is a Top 10

2. A Top 20 is ideal where possible. But a solid Top 10 is preferred to an unsure Top 20. I.e. if you feel like you’re just “making up the numbers”, 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. A nominated album must have been released between December 5th 2022 - December 1st 2023. Please double check before submitting if you’re not sure.

b. Albums must be new music. No reissues, best-ofs, live albums or compilations allowed

**Specifically where 2023 is concerned, the following are some that do not count: Khruangbin's live LP series, Taylor Swift 'Taylor's Versions' editions, Black Country New Road 'Live At Bush Hall' - a bit of a grey area live LP that one but we've judged that it shouldn't count.**


c. No EP’s or singles allowed


d. So-called “mini albums” (at least 7 tracks) are allowed

Scoring

Happily you don’t need to do anything whatsoever regarding scoring this thing - we take care of that. 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/233092949213357

To complete the online form, you need to add the ARTIST and ALBUM TITLE in the empty fields.

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 you mean, it might well be scrapped.


Click on the submit link when you’re done. Note that once it’s submitted, that’s it. No going back.

Deadline

The deadline for submissions is Sunday, December 3rd. Due to getting the final results ready we cannot allow any stray from that so any results not in by then will not count. The results will be revealed at our live event on Thursday, December 14th and on social media the following day.

Tickets are available here: https://recordculture.com/products/albums-of-2023-the-live-countdown

Thank you

That's it! Thanks to everyone who takes part and for supporting us through another year x