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Like most people, I grew up listening to a lot of new, contemporary music. I was maybe fourteen, the bands I listened to were probably in their twenties and made music influenced by what they used to listen to: eighties and nineties rock, punk and britpop. With a bit of a fresh attitude added to that it became the music that meant so much to me at the time. I went to countless gigs and discovered new music via MySpace. I used to be the one liking things before they were hyped, I was a young music snob before the word “hipster” existed and now I usually miss the hype and catch up on it half a year later.

There’s dubstep for instance which I completely missed out on for some reason. Former emo heroes with sidecuts and MacBooks “dropping the bass” in front of thousands and and young boys in skinny jeans with wool hats making hip hop catchy, fashionable and most of all, socially exceptable for the alternative young crowd. The new upcoming and hyped artists nowadays are my age or even younger, like me they grew up with the internet, they probably never bought vinyls either and some of them have probably forgotten what it feels like to pay for music.

I never thought about this too much until recently when I listened to a German hip hop song sampling a huge part of “Banquet” by Bloc Party and started asking myself why on earth I found it a bit disturbing to listen to. Because it was the first time I realised how time flies? Because I realised that if I made music, things like this would be my influence, too? Because that regardless of the genre, there’s almost something like a new generation of bands out there who I can relate to in a weird way because we were influenced by the same things? Instead of just looking up to somebody?

I’ve had a very interesting experience the other day when my friend sent me a link to a song by a band I had known for a long time who had just released their new single. Available for 99 cents on Bandcamp. Of course I instantly bought it, paid with PayPal and the whole process took me less than two seconds. I had the song as an mp3 file in decent quality, plus I had supported a band I care about through a platform that’s not ripping them off. 99 cents, that’s a cheeseburger or a litre of my beer of choice, a tiny amount I’d spend on anything without even thinking about it. So why would it be different when it comes to music?

Go ahead and judge me but it was one of the first times in my life I had actually bought an mp3 online. And as cheesy as it may sound, it made me realise I do have the money and I’m willing to pay it. Preferably for a service, for the access to it whenever and wherever I want and not only a product (which has been discussed a lot in the past and I couldn’t agree more). I’m not a malicious music pirate and I’m sure most people who have ever downloaded music illegally are not the evil bastards that the media and certain politicians make them out to be. And that’s probably not a secret either.

Most upcoming bands don’t make their money from the few per cent they get off the iTunes Store but from shows, merchandise and other deals. And there’s our young and hyped musicians again who may not have sold a single record yet but already count a few hundred thousand fans on Facebook and sell out any show they play. There’s so many enthusiastic people out there and a bunch of young artists and their very smart mentors who haven’t just grumpily adapted to the music industry crisis trying to squeeze money out of it under the guise of copyright laws. They simply grew into it like their potential audience did.

We don’t need to change the way we see music, that’s bullshit – because we already have, whether we want it or not. As much as I enjoy listening to The Libertines, drinking gin in teacups and dreaming about the faith in love in music which we’re eventually all going to lose, I’m excited to see what’s next. And I want to be a part of it again.

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You’re probably sick of reading about the best music of 2011 already but I got so inspired by Sara and decided to do yet another post which turned out a lot bigger than I’d originally planned. To be honest, this year I mostly kept losing track of new music. I was incredibly slow and uninformed, didn’t have enough patience to listen to all the new songs and on top of it all there weren’t any releases that totally blew my mind – or maybe I just didn’t let them grow on me. However, here’s my selection of 100 songs from the past year.

Disclaimer: I found it incredibly hard to remember which records actually came out this year so I had to trust Google and Wikipedia with it, and if a song is included in my list it means the record it is on came out in 2011 (even though the song might have been released earlier). And of course these tracks are not necessarily my all time favourite songs ever, I mean, it’s one hundred songs, but I tried to put together a nice compilation.

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Christmas is over, presents are exchanged, all food is eaten, most of the cookies are gone. And I’m so glad I still have a week left here which I am going to spend sleeping and being productive. When I’m here I usually stay up until around 6am which massively fucks up my sleeping pattern but for some reason I never get to sleep earlier. The fridge is full of weird fizzy drinks, all these bottles of liquids by fancy brands and in the evening I’m sitting in the living room in my pyjamas, stuffing myself with a box of Ferrero Rondnoirs, helping helping my brother with his website and playing around with mine, installing a new archive for instance and then going back to reading gossip communities on Livejournal. And this is the soundtrack:

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December 17, Saturday night and I’m staying in for a change, drinking hot chocolate in bed, watching videos, unable to sleep. One more week and I literally can’t wait to get on my flight and get out of the city, sleep in everyday, eat the most amazing food, sit in front of the fireplace, read, write, listen to music, go for walks and be in the city that now feels far away and still so very familiar. I need to recharge my batteries so badly. In the meantime, I put together another mixtape of songs I listen to at the moment, some dark, distorted and calm, yet pretty energetic tunes.

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This is probably the most random mixtape I ever put together but it’s one of my favourites so far. Inspired by long nights, escaping the summer, rainy days and lots of random thoughts. I’m having the whole month of July off which gives me time for some thinking, getting important things done, reading, tidying up the place & just sleeping. I’m exhausted and I have no idea why, I feel like packing my bags again and running away – not travelling in a discovering-new-places kinda way, just going away for a while. Luckily I’m off to London on Wednesday to escape the big city for an even bigger one.

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Spring is the right time for a mixtape because the good weather is still all fresh and makes you feel like going out and doing things, it reminds you of the good times you had outside, in parks, summer open airs with music and then there’s all these evenings at home when someone puts on music. Nostalgic and anticipating at the same time. No matter how old or new the songs are, whether they’re acoustic or electronic, I just love collecting music to capture the feel of a certain time.

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Dirty Doering – I Would. The Dø – Slippery Slope. Solomun – The Way Back. Lykke Li – I Follow Rivers (The Magician Remix). Oliver Koletzki feat. Mieze Katz – This Is Leasure. Dapayk & Padberg feat. Caro – Island (Noze Remix). YUCK – Get Away. Bibio – Light Sleep. Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros – Home. Xiu Xiu – Chocolate Makes You Happy. The Maccabees – No Kind Words. Die Piratenbraut – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 und 20. James Blake – Limit To Your Love. David Bowie – Changes. Metronomy – She Wants. Tocotronic – Explosion. Burial & Four Tet – Moth. Kleerup – Thank You For Nothing. Jamie T – Earth, Wind & Fire. The Grand Spectacular – Being A Dickhead’s Cool.