I am into a lot of indie rock, I shoot a lot of indie concerts in Brooklyn and Manhattan, but a lot of the stuff on this list, that the indie bloggers rave about, I just don't get. Animal Collective in the top 10? I tried a few times to get through that records. It is as irritating to me as nails on chalkboard.

Fans of hip-hop should check out the mixtape scene. Artists, both upcoming and established, put out a lot of good stuff on mixtapes for free.

P.S. Let's not do the "rap is crap" debate today. Thanks.

My condolences to any talent that appears before the decade ends and misses out on the (early) listing.

@ReverendBrown: Seeing as how we have not seen any talent appear in this decade yet, I dont think thats something to worry about.

Too bad most of my music is from the 70s... (19' and 17')

Someone will create a Torrent out of the list in less than a week and I will keep $1K out of the greedy, evil hands of the RIAA.

@Haggie1:

Already done...

[isohunt.com]

Odd. The playlists are broken out into groups of fifty per page (1-50, 51-100, etc) but when I go to each group of fifty page, I only see 45 (and no "next page" link, if there were more to show.)

Lala doesn't have rights to sell all of the songs at each interval. You'll see on the main page "Track 1-50 (44 available for purchase)."

@MostlyHarmless: You just haven't been looking in the right places!

@Haggie1: Don't hurt yourself there, Che.

Okay, I know everyone has different tastes and no one is ever going to agree completely with any of these lists, but some of the songs they included are downright offensive to my musical sensibilities. Seriously, Milkshake? Hollaback Girl? I thought those were supposed to be joke songs. In a similar list for the nineties, would we include the Macarena, or Ice Ice Baby or Who Let the Dogs Out? Maybe I'm just getting old, but seriously, I don't get it.

@dohtem: There's nothing to debate.

@Clobberella: Whoa whoa, look, i know youre a futurama fan, and i respect you a lot for that, but dont be talking trash about Who Let the Dogs Out, alright! NO ONE talks trash about who let the dogs out. Dont make me hurt another futurama fan.

@suburbancowboy: I'm with you to some extent. Some of Animal Collective's stuff goes way over my head I guess. That being said, "My Girls" is a dang good song, one of the best I've heard in recent memory.

I think that's the thing about a list like this, it doesn't really matter what the band is like as a whole, it's all about the individual song. I'm not saying it's the list I would make, but I respect the methodology, I suppose.

@dohtem: 90% of everything is crap

@Clobberella:
I'm not into most of that type of music, but I really like Hollaback Girl. It's Bananas.

looking at the list of 100 songs from 2008, i haven't heard 90% of the songs.

@tbax929: B-A-N-A-N-A-S

@ReverendBrown: i'd like to be the first to say "holy shit, the decade is almost over!" i thought there were still a good 18 months to go, until i read this:

We hope our list was as fun to read (and listen to) as it was to put together. We had a ball with this thing, and there's much more to come. Our Decade in Music page lays out the schedule for the rest of our 2000s coverage, and in early 2010, we'll add an addendum to this list with a few of our favorite songs from the next few months.

ok, finished looking at the whole 500, and i haven't heard of easily 65% of these groups. the rest of them are rappers whose "music" i don't enjoy. Outkast was listed 3-4 times, and i didn't see a mention for Hey Ya.

@gStein: It was on there, top 20 I think.

1. Go to the mall with an MP3 recorder
2. Press record.
3. Wait.

LCD sound system? I have no clue who that is, but what I do know is that they suck and so does their list.

$15 for a Zune pass - listen to them for a month, get over them. I think I just saved even more. On the chance I want the songs forever, I get 10 a month. And really, who doesn't want to hear Pokerface when you're 70? Amirite?

@dohtem: I used to think "Rap is crap!"... Then I grew up and eventually realized that every genre had mostly bad music but you have to look to find some of that good music. Its out there in every genre.

@Clobberella: Lack of talent aside, Vanilla Ice would be included on that list because of his cultural impact. Beastie Boys were much too raucous for the younger, straight laced crowd. He took a style of rap to the (mostly white) mainstream. Would Eminem have been quite as exciting if there weren't doubts about white boys who can't rap (Beastie Boys aside)?

And Macarena would definitely be included - how many people still remember how to do that dance?

What I get most from the list is that it's not just a list of what editors think was good music - it was what the music did to the people who listened it. No, "Milkshake" is not a classic, but how many jokes did it spawn (including one of the funniest parts of Dodgeball) and how many cultural references did it create?

Thanks to this list, my productivity for the morning has mostly slowed to a crawl and my head is going to be an endless playlist. The dun dun dun dun dun dun of "Seven Nation Army" is in my head now.

@gStein: "Hey Ya" is number 12.

@G00MAN: Original.

@gStein: OH yay, quotes around "Music" to imply you are better than rap/hip-hop! *yawn*

All this discussion of music and not once do I hear anything about gomusic.ru? Wow.

50 x 500 = $250.00 for 500 songs..You think I can afford to pull 250 dollars out of my ear to support some record label? It's old news now that the bands don't make a cent from online sales. I can barely eat as it is..This article sucks.