So last year when I was trying to comb through all of the year end Album of the Year (AOTY) lists I found the process a bit tedious. I had to jump from list to list trying to remember how each album ranked. Unfortunately, some lists weren't widely available or they didn't link directly to music.

My solution for YE 2012 was to create a dashboard (less about art and more about function) intended to help you to discover albums from 2012 using a combination of average review scores, top review lists, and sales data. Having everything in one screen lets you click on albums you might want to listen to and do your own discovery from there. My suggestion is to pick a genre or a top ten list as a filter, then hover over the albums and use the links to listen for yourself.

Visualization was done in Tableau 7 and Tableau 8(currently in beta).
All data was retrieved within December. Please see the links at the bottom for all sources.

If you have any questions or see any omitted releases please feel free to contact me at @trendtransp

NOTE: If you aren't seeing the album tooltips when you hover over the album, please go to the full screen version (link in footer)

Couldn't end the post without a song! Heres a great mashup of 50+ big songs from the year..