Dec 16, 2024 13 min read Lists

Simply the Best — 2024 lists

Best, Top, and Greatest media hits of 2024

Everyone's Spotify Wrapped hit my feeds this week — it's the end of the year. And another year of Spotify using me (and all its users) while giving very little back to the musicians who power the beohemeth.

Don't forget a 21-year-old-Howard-student intern seeded the current iteration behind Wrapped. Her name is Jewel Ham. She now appears to be a kick-ass artist. She is easily forgotten, and not properly credited/compensated when it comes to the story of Wrapped. She had a good time at Spotify, she said to Refinery29. But her experience echoes other interns at such a behemoth company:

The things that I enjoyed the most about Spotify were very perk-related — they have a lot of snacks, they have nap rooms. But I feel like I have to distance myself a bit from all those benefits because that doesn't translate into any type of compensation for such a large idea.

Pay interns, take care of interns — or perhaps reinvent the concept of internships all together. Make next year the best for interns. Get people experience and pay them.

Because often big companies care about profits and using their (and outside) creative labor to create stuff that makes a profit. Hearing Things writer/ founder of the new music publication Hearing Things, Jill Maples said as much in a recent article on the whole end-of-the-year wrap up of lists. She writes that we get overwhelmed with lists like each one is a " 'choose your fighter' moment."

Does this serve readers? I suspect not, but we’ve decided that it’s how the music internet works: The year ends in early December for traffic and SEO reasons. If SZA surprise-releases another album around Christmas, it simply doesn’t count in the official record. And don’t even get me started (again) on the annual Spotify Wrapped thing, which has dominated social feeds for the last few days with its A.I.-powered marketing masquerading as a celebration of individual taste.

Beyond Wrapped, I kind of like end of the year lists, even if some of them are a bit grubby with SEO dollars. Not all are. At their best, The lists are an anthology. (Hearing Thing is releasing their's at the end of the year proper — unranked..I'll be sure to check it out).

A good list — a good anthology — is a reflection of the art, entertainment, information created throughout the year. These lists are forms of joys in the winter months — cozy bits of stuff to catch up on and discover, and if you happen to have read/watched/listened/experienced something on such a list, it's a time to celebrate. You got there first.

Here they are:

My own lists:

Newsletters: I'm keeping my own short here, three each. I read a crap ton of newsletters, a gushing inbox. Partly this is for work, and partly to keep up on stuff, and because I like discovering new ideas, reads, pods, shows, etc.

The roaring in popularity Feedme by Emily Sundberg — some of the most fun you'll have reading a business newsletter.
Molly White's Citation Needed — a voice pushing against the crypto cheerleaders and the inflated tech boosters. It's also, in many ways, a humane support for good tech — tech that serves people. I have very little skin in the game when it comes to crypto and Web3, but I read Molly for the
The Verge's Installer. David Pierce brings something delightful to my inbox every week. I also enjoy his on-going conversation on productivity and all the media bouquets he brings me from the internet.
P.S. bonus: Science journalist Becky Ferreira's The Abstract with 404 Media has been a wondrous ride each week, too. She turns the hard work of scientists and the slush of studies into these sparkling stars — shaking off crust of jaded rhetoric saying science doesn't matter. It does — Becky is here to translate.

And if you want to know what makes a good newsletter in 2025, see this excellent post from One Thing.

Podcasts:

New Yorker's "In the Dark" season 3. Want to know the purpose of investigative journalism? The purpose of finding the truth? The process of making requests, phone calls, on-site visits, emails, interviews, document finding? The art, and pay off, of digging is all here in this excellent, excellent pod about events in Haditha, Iraq when a convoy of Marines killed twenty-four citizens.

Mixed Signals was a constant for me this year — great commentary from journalist stars Ben Smith and Nayeema Raza who help make sense of the crackling media air/stream waves.

Centuries of Sound played in the background and felt like an audio adventure. The creator James Errington does this: "At Centuries of Sound I am making mixes for every year of recorded sound." The mixes get kicked off 1859. Is this a podcast or an audio snack? Unsure, but it's a lovely listen and admirable in the care and curation.

As long as we are on podcasts, shoutout to all the stuff we make at WaitWhat: Rapid Response, Masters of Scale, and Pioneers of AI. We make good stuff every week — check them out if you're the audience for these.

Books/longform:

Filterworld by Kyle Chayka — If you wish to understand how algorithms shape taste, read this. If you wish to reclaim your taste, read this.

Book of Love by Kelly Link — Kelly's writing fully charged — thoughtful escapism, heart felt, and wonderful storytelling.