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music feature
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| Best Albums of 2002 |
| It was a year for sliding record sales and soaring triumphs above ground and below. Choler finds the high notes from the year that was. |
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By Eric Solomon, Joseph McCombs and Sean Flinn | January 3, 2003
The sob stories began well before 2002, but hit a fever pitch this past year: record sales are sliding! The world is ending! Pirates are, as Britney Spear lamented in an ill-advised "public service" shill for the big 5 record companies, "going into the computers" to steal music. Boo f'ing hoo. Here at Choler, we know the score: the reason sales are sliding is because the best music is being made below the radar of major labels, payola-dominated radio and eMpTyV. The best evidence of this? Indie labels -- true indie labels, not boutiques for the majors -- are enjoying some of their best sales successes ever, aided by the burgeoning Internet mail-order market and the viral expansion of peer-to-peer file sharing applications like LimeWire and KaZaa.
Choler's round up of the best albums of 2002 reflects this trend. Almost none of our picks -- and with 3 critics chiming in, we've got a truckload of 'em -- scored megahits. But they all reflected successes (even if only critical) for each of the artists. Sales may be sliding, but the tide of underground and left-of-center success is rising.
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