Spin Magazine made an interesting announcement this morning regarding it’s reinvented views on their core business. Spin is a 26 year veteran of music journalism, a large portion of which revolves around music reviews and criticism. Today, they introduced a new Twitter feed, @SpinReviews, which represents their new outlook on music discussion and gatekeeping in the modern music space.

Everyone is about to release their picks for 2011 and looking back I'd like to say it was a good year for new music, but it really wasn't. There were, however, a few notable records worthy of your attention in the past year.

Just a quick note...I'm borrowing a page from the Grammies, who push late arrivals from the previous year into subsequent awards ceremonies, by including a few late arrival picks of my own from 2010 for this top 2011 album list...especially in terms of their impact being primarily felt in 2011.

Here's my list.

There’s been a lot of press about a joint NPD Group/NARM study dealing with music discovery. The headline was that traditional radio still leads the way in music discovery. According to the survey, FM radio was the #1 way that respondents discover new music. Word of mouth came in second. YouTube was moving up fast, coming in 3^rd, but other digital platforms lagged behind.

While traditional radio can be proud of its continuing leadership in this area, what does it really mean? Does this really surprise anyone? If so, that reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the state of media. Despite the growth of various digital forms of entertainment and media, most traditional media continue to show enormous reach. In the US, over 93% of all people over the age of 12 listen to the radio each week. According to Arbitron, in the most recent period surveyed, that translates to a weekly reach of 241.2 million people.

Now compare traditional radio’s reach to that of some of the other, newer ways for people to experience music:

I tend to write these pieces about a single event or festival, but I also tend to break my own rules... For November, I decided to simply write about three great shows going on Thanksgiving Weekend, one you don't even have to leave your house for! Sting and Vince Gill are the two very talented artists featured on the latest CMT Crossroads, premiering on Thanksgiving night. My other two picks put on amazing, high-energy shows for every performance. Mac Miller is a rapper who's been at it for years releasing mixtapes and creating viral videos and his hard work is really paying off. The Ting Tings put on such a good live show that they haven't been able to stop touring for the past four years. So here is more on my picks for three great shows to help you celebrate Thanksgiving:

Check out the full story at The Huffington Post!