Here’s how I make my best-of playlists.

1) Make a playlist of every song added to my iTunes library in the past year. (3,000-5,000 songs)

2) Make a second playlist of only the songs that were released in the past year. (500-2,000 songs)

3) Choose one song per artist to put into the best-of playlist. (150-350 songs)

4) Organize the songs from favorites to least favorite.

The end result is a playlist of songs that were released in the past year, limited to one song per artist. If a musician is featured on another artist’s song, it’s possible that they’ll show up more than once. For example, there will only be one Jean Grae song on the list, but there could also be a song by Talib Kweli featuring Jean Grae.

I get that my lists are super long, but I figure it’s better to have more songs and people can take from it what they want. If you’re interested in my top 20 tracks of the year, check out 1-20. You can do that for the top 10, 100, 300, etc.

Here are my best-of lists by year:

2014
2013
2012
2011
2010