2010 has been an interesting year at Vortex. We've seen a lot of changes: new vinyl sales are up; Bert retired/Bert un-retired; Classical Music is gone; Blu-Ray inventory increased; new sections for Metal, Soul, and Avante/Odd; we participated in Record Store Day for the first time; we offered some nice exclusives; one new face in/one old face out; we had our most successful Boxing Week Sale ever; we had our busiest non-boxing-sale day ever (April 17, 2010); yadda yadda yadda.

A number of people have asked or emailed about what I think are the best releases of the year. All I can say is my brain doesn't really work that way. If you want to know what music excited me most over the year, you only need to go through the past blog entries. At the same time, I do see the use in such lists so have compiled a bunch of links for you to peruse. Hopefully you find out about some artist/band that you otherwise would never have heard of.

Before I list them all, I'll tell you that NOW Magazine is having its annual Readers' Poll of the "Best of Toronto". If you feel that Vortex deserves your vote(s), please enter our name as Vortex (rather than Vortex Records) to keep the entries consistent.

As far as I can make out, Vortex is eligible in two categories on this page: Best CD/Record Store (third slot from the top) and Best Specialty/Used Record Store (bottom slot) and for Best DVD/Video Store on this page.

Now, onto a list of Best Ofs from around the web:

Boomkat

Numerous Best Of Charts from artists like Grouper, Pete Swanson, and Taylor Deupree

The Perlich Post

Best Reissues of 2010, Part 1: Various Artists Collections
Top Albums of 2010

Pitchfork

Top 50 Albums
Top 100 tracks
Music Videos

Tiny Mix Tapes

Favorite 50 Albums
Favorite 25 Films
Interesting article on the dying / death of EMI

A.V. Club

Best Music of 2010
Least Essential Albums of 2010

Misc.

Egon's Funk Archeology for NPR: 5 Favorite re-releases of 2010
Raven Sings the Blues' Best of 2010
Salon's Best Jazz Albums of 2010
NME's 50 Best Albums of 2010
CultureMob's Top Ten Blues Albums of 2010
Time Out New York's Best (And Worst) of 2010
The Morning News' Top 10 Albums of 2010
Entertainment Weekly's 10 Best Albums of 2010
SPIN's 40 Best Albums of 2010
Analogue Adventures' Favorite New Albums of 2010
Gorilla vs. Bear's Albums of 2010
Flavorwire's Best Album Reissues of 2010
New York Magazine's Year in Pop
NPR's 50 Favorite Albums of 2010
Village Voice's 20 Worst Songs of 2010
Music Vagabond's Best of 2010
Stereogum's Top 50 Albums of 2010