couple of Top music list compiled by 
Apartment Therapy
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Buzzfeed's Ultimate 2012 Playlist: 11 hours of pop, rock, indie, and hip-hop jams. 
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Spotify playlist compiled by Sasha Frere-Jones: A music critic for 
The New Yorker, SFJ has tastes that run the gamut. 
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Rolling Stone's 50 Best Albums of 2012: An old stand-by for music news and information. 
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SPIN Magazine's 50 Best Albums of 2012:  In their words, these 50 albums range "from the biggest-selling pop  sensation (and pizza ad) of the year to anonymous Afro-psych from the  wintry expanses of rural Sweden; from ground-breaking hip-hop IMAX  cinema to garage-punk gnashing still being recorded by Steve Albini."
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Stereogum's Top 50 Albums of 2012:  Stereogum, founded in 2002, was one of the first MP3 blogs, and it  continues as a key source of indie music news, downloads, and videos.
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Pitchfork's Staff Lists: The Top 100 Tracks of 2012:  Pitchfork is an online publication focusing primarily on indie rock,  but with an additional interest in electronic, hip hop, dance,  experimental, folk, and pop music.  
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Gorilla vs. Bear's Albums of 2012: Texas-based music blog Gorilla vs. Bear is one of my personal favorites, and is always a great source for new indie bands. 
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Said the Gramphone's Best Songs of 2012: Sean, a Montreal-based writer for Said the Gramphone, pairs his favorite songs of the year with poetic descriptions.
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KCRW DJs Present Top 10 Music Albums of 2012: 22 DJs from KCRW, Southern California's leading NPR affiliate, list their top picks.
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Top of the Tops by Over the Nights and Through the Fires:  This list appears courtesy of my friend, who's a statistics-savvy  graduate student. She took 131 year-end music lists and figured out the  top 10 albums that made their top-10. A similar round-up with some  different results appears on 
MetaCritic.