As Bob Boilen, host of All Songs Considered, put it in a text message to me this afternoon, "The [end of the decade] series has been great. Overwhelming, but great."

When we at Monitor Mix and NPR Music began our end-of-the-decade endeavor two weeks ago, I don't think any of us knew that we'd basically be publishing an online magazine. But, hey, we did! We put up 72 posts in 10 days! And we're very proud of it!

So I'd like to personally thank the following people for their time, ideas, input, writing, editing, tech-savvy, dedication, overall contribution, hard work and unending enthusiasm on this project:

Mike Katzif | Lars Gotrich | Patrick Jarenwattananon | Omar Gallega | Meg Biallis
Eyder Peralta | Wright Bryan | Adam Martin | Robert Harris | Bobby Carter
Douglas Wolk | Oliver Wang | Jay Sweet | Eliot Van Buskirk | Michaelangelo Matos
Paulo Lopez | Alyson Hurt | Nelson Hsu | Tom Huizenga | Brian Reardon
Rafeena Ahmad | Jess Gitner | Eric Garland | Everett True | Linda Holmes
Thurston Moore | Laura Sydell | Tobi Vail | Jean Smith | Julie Cafritz | Jace Clayton
Mac McCaughan | Gerard Cosloy | Maggie Vail | Portia Sabin | Chris Swanson | Robb Nansel | Jacob Ganz | Tom Cole | Darius Van Arman | Laura Ballance | Jonathan Poneman | Meg Ruddick | Bob Boilen

Special thanks to:
Anya Grundmann

And a heartfelt, I-want-to-buy-you-a-drink-and-raise-a-glass-in-your-honor, this-couldn't-have-happened-without-you to:
Frannie Kelley, Amy Schriefer, Robin Hilton and Stephen Thompson

Finally, thank you to our readers and to everyone who commented, participated and sent us your photos and songs.

See you after Thanksgiving. I think there is plenty here to read, watch and listen to in the meantime...

This is our gift to you: All of them. Alphabetically. By first name. Band names beginning in 'The' may be found with the T's. If a link isn't working or something holler and we'll fix it.

If you miss the piece on Weekend Edition Saturday morning, the audio for the radio segment will archive at this link.

Now go out and celebrate! You deserve it!

Can you hear it? (amalthya/flickr)

SO MANY JAMS!!!!! Part one is here, part two is here, part three is here and part four is here.

CONGRATULATIONS!

How many of these songs were made with Ableton? (oliverchesler/flickr)

And it don't stop. Part one is here, part two is here and part three is here.

Little preview for you -- tomorrow morning Weekend Edition is airing a short segment about your songs! One lucky musician is going to talk to Scott Simon about the process and another person's song will play out the segment.

And it's naptime. (courtesy of The Patton Veterinary Hospital)

It's hard to believe that we've reached the end. For the past two weeks, all of us -- the NPR Music Team, a handful of outside contributors and myself -- have explored the last 10 years in music. Did we cover everything? No. Did we try? Gleefully.

I feel immensely proud of the sheer amount of writing that we've put out there. So many newspapers and print publications have cut their music sections and critics, and so many music magazines have resorted to the only plausible life raft, which is to ape the Internet (or at least its effect on the attention span) by churning out lists instead of articles, and gossip and news bytes instead of treatises. I can honestly say that it's been a long time since I've seen this much thought, polemic and discourse on a single Web site -- from a variety of voices -- dedicated solely to music and to the music industry.

On the other hand, I also got the sense that some people didn't exactly want to read about or dissect music; they wanted to listen to it. James Blur wrote in the comments section, "I want to hear great music, not the 'reviews' of what other people think is good or bad." Fair enough. I understand that any attempt to summarize a decade in music is cause for unease. Perhaps that's because we each have our own version of the events, and the impact of the events on each of our lives is wholly subjective. Therefore, one person's exploration of the decade might come across as singular, even unnecessary.

Matt Love commented: "I guess it's human nature, at the end of a decade, to try to figure out what the decade was about... well, it's just an arbitrary slice of time, and it wasn't about anything; it was just a bunch of stuff that happened. But I know one thing -- I didn't spend it listening to music I don't like, and nobody else has to, either. They don't need to listen to it; they don't need to worry or complain about it." On a similar note, Matthew Argalas wrote, "Stop worrying about everything! Music allows the listener to recognize or realize things within themselves! As long as the individual enjoys the music, why fret?"

Short of quoting the over-quoted Socrates -- you know, the one about the unexamined life -- I will say that I am a staunch defender of exploration, discussion and participation. For me, participation has always been visceral as much as it's been intellectual. And, while I do enjoy sitting back, letting go and tuning in to music, I have absolutely no desire to tune out. So when someone basically asks, "What's all the fuss about?" or "Why can't we all just get along?" -- while I appreciate their contribution to the discussion -- I disagree with their premise that this decade, in its tearing down of walls and barriers, somehow also ushered in an era of post-criticism. There is a fuss, we don't all agree, and it's in those uncomfortable crevices, the gray areas, that we get to grapple, to search for meaning, or to sit and revel in the unknown. But to simply want out unscathed, or to never get your hands dirty, is not only a privilege, but also a cop-out.

But just as I don't agree with the dismissals of our examinations of this decade ("Stop worrying about everything!"), it's unfair for me to dismiss the reactions to and critiques of our endeavor; reactions that seem, in and of themselves, to be byproducts of the changes that took place in the last 10 years. After all, what was this decade if not an invitation to compile 15,000 songs on our iPods and never have to take the headphones off to listen to anything other than what we wanted to hear, music or otherwise?

In fact, if there's one recurring theme to the end-of-decade coverage and the reader commentary surrounding it, it's that a sense of cohesion has eroded. And what exactly has atomized? The music industry as a whole. The ways we listen to, obtain and discover music. Bands themselves, as they've splintered off into side project after side project because it's so much easier to be in multiple bands, record an album with each member never having to leave his or her individual city, and then release the songs the very next day.

Albums themselves have been broken up into singles, remixed or iPod-shuffled into oblivion. Genres have disappeared, blended and multiplied. The location and context of artists are unknown or obsolete. Labels hardly matter, or so some say, while intention and politics are divorced from the music unless implicit in the lyrics. And, of course, there is more, more, MORE music than ever. For some of us, this unraveling of the structures and the means of exploration we had grown accustomed to is unsettling. For others, it's freeing. Some don't know it any other way. And for most of us, it's a mixture of awe, enthusiasm and at least a little bit of skepticism.

One topic wherein we managed to find common ground pertained to the ways technology contributes to greater accessibility. There are fewer gatekeepers or roadblocks standing in the way of those long-lost musical secrets and gems, and nearly anyone can track down hard-to-find records, singles and artists. Plus, newer musicians and bands -- including the unsigned and unheralded -- can get their music heard. Hooray, no doubt. Furthermore, recording equipment and software make the process of music-making that much easier.

Where we begin to disagree, however, is on whether unfiltered, uncurated, non-contextualized, genre-less, everyman, everywoman music is better. While some celebrate and insist that we're in a post-genre, post-record-label, post-gender, post-music-industry world, not everyone, including myself, thinks that you can keep a knife sharp when it has no edges. I don't want art, specifically music, to become a blunt tool, with no point or purpose other than to be held.

But, like many of you -- and I'm just basing my feeling on a hunch, though there's plenty of evidence on this blog within these past days to support it -- this might have been one of the best decades for music ever. One of my favorite parts of these past two weeks has involved receiving and listening to more than 150 songs that people recorded in a matter of hours, and for no other reason than them wanting to communicate a feeling or an idea. The willingness to share, to participate and to create was inspiring. And the comments people left in regard to the songs were full of generosity and encouragement. Thank you and bravo!

I also loved the fact that on these "pages," via the posts and the subsequent comments and discussion, we seemed to form a genuine -- if temporary -- community. We argued, we supported and we challenged one another. I was honored that so many friends, colleagues and readers contributed time and energy to the project. We talked some about what role community plays in music, now that the notion of community has been expanded to basically mean everywhere. It was reassuring to realize that "everywhere" isn't so diffuse as to render it "nowhere." And, while I prefer the actual and the real to the virtual, the coalescing of so many ideas, opinions and voices on this blog during our end-of-decade coverage felt hefty and tangible. Almost, I dare say, like a modern-day fanzine (minus Kinko's and glue).

So, what now? What's next? And what are my hopes for music in the next decade? They are no different than what I always want: for music to be surprising and unpredictable, and to knock me off my feet.

Here is the final installment of our unscientific, should-not-be-used-for-news-and-reporting-purposes survey results. As you probably know by now, the following answers were culled from a variety of people in the arts, music and entertainments communities.

The last question we asked them was:

How do you think we'll listen to music ten years from now?

Our respondents' answers ranged from silly to philosophical to downright Sci-Fi!
We hope you enjoy reading them. And thanks so much to everyone who took the time to participate.

Douglas Wolk, writer:
I have absolutely no idea, and I can't wait to find out.

Mirah, musician:
My guess is that we'll be listening from shells pressed to our ears and it's gonna sound so nice.

Jon Cohen, co-Founder FADER Media/Cornerstone:
I think music will continue to become more global. Radio stations, editorial properties will become more global brands and expose people to what is going on in that given city. As a result, sonically artists will draw more and more from diverse influences. Bands will continue to interact so much more with their fans through technology. But the bottom line is it will still come down to being able to write great songs and play them live.

Lucy Robinson, publicist, Jajaguwar/Secretly Canadian/Dead Oceans:
Probably not on CD.

Isaac Bess, Business Development, IODA Alliance:
Telepathically.

James Canty,, musician, French Toast, Make Up, Nation of Ulysses:
Unfortunately, I think the Guitar Hero model will continue to take over, with "musical tourists" controlling how labels market their artists. Tours and records will be trivialized and more reality shows will be built on the novelty of putting your heart and soul into artistic collaboration. Having said that, some really great aspects can come with reaching out to a nonexclusive audience. The Internet makes it so that the next kid to be inspired by the next Punk band, could be from the furthest reaches of wherever-the-f---!! And who knows, maybe he/she will be the next Prince!

Hutch Harris, musician, The Thermals:
I think we will be smelling music in the future, and a lot of it will not smell very good.

Chris Lyons, musician, The Carrots:
iPod earrings.

Alyson West, band manager:
MICROCHIP IN THE BRAIN!

Lindsey Parker, Editor, Yahoo! Music:
Probably on chips embedded in our brains.

Andrew Noz, writer:
On tiny speakers and ear buds. Songs will be shorter, more repetitive, less expensive, more trebley, less bassy.

Lance Bangs, director, filmmaker:
I'm writing an iPhone app of 87 new Joy Division recordings, based on programming I've done for vocal ranges and phrasing cadences broken down into BSD based POSIX API. I'm in beta for 39 Velvet Underground circa 1968 recordings with Ike Quebec on tenor.

David Douglas, NPR Music's "A Blog Surpreme:"
One thing is for sure: in ten years we will still be listening to music live, played by humans in one way or another. I believe that is now and will always be the best.

Greg Selkoe, CEO of Karmaloop & Karmaloop TV:
Music will continue to be more creative and more diverse. Similarly to how fashion, streetwear specifically, has become a fusion of eclectic tastes from various sub-cultures - new genres of music will emerge as so many boundaries continue to be smashed. I'm excited to hear what the future holds!

Al Shipley, writer:
I think -- I hope -- we'll still have speakers and headphones pushing around the air inside our ears, and that those of us who care about having a personal library of music we care about will still have those. I think that the music we listen to ten years from now will contain pretty much all the same sounds and instruments that are already available now, but that by then the new odd combinations of them will be made for the sake of sound and creative composition, not just for the cheap thrill of the "mash up" culture that's dominated the past decade.

David Scheid, tour manager:
I think it will definitely be much more about individual songs than records. Things like Pandora and satellite radio and iTunes downloads will get more and more prevalent. None of these things are really based around albums. I think that genres will be blurred more and I think people will be less afraid to say they love that Smashmouth song.

Jean Smith, novelist; singer, Mecca Normal:
Ten years from now everyone between the ages of seventeen and seventy will have written and recorded an album of bonafide hits. The origin of the word "hits" will have faded of course. Hits will refer only to an online tally of clicks per song. Everyone will listen to everyone's songs and the word "star" will be tucked safely back into the night sky where it belongs. Making songs will be like making dinner. Tedious for some -- for others, an opportunity to impress. A completely ordinary behavior.

Ten years from now, we will spend more time listening to our own music than songs written by others, but when we do listen, it will be a different understanding of construction and intention.

Songs will regularly be used by fathers who find speaking difficult, but need to apologize to their children for being jerks. The song will be listened to by the children and the father's strengths and limitations will be further understood. Mothers will use songs to impart knowledge of love and sex to their daughters, thus removing the necessity of those cringe-worthy talks. Popular song encourages both male and female histrionics and should be used like mops and scrub brushes, for tasks around the house -- used on those hard to get out words.

David Lester,graphic artist; guitarist, Mecca Normal:Listening to music ten years from now will ideally reflect the result of our current longing for meaning and purpose in creative expression, regardless of which technology we're using. I anticipate that we will be more inspired and motivated by the sounds of art being made.

Tim Quirk, VP of Music Programming, Rhapsody:
Almost all of us will have devices that give us instant access to anything we want to hear. It will sound even tinnier.

Michele Flannery, Music Manager, You Tube:
I hope it keeps dipping into the past -- mixing up elements from all eras to create something unique. Big band riot grrl dub-step anyone?

Jimi Biron, Executive Director of Booking, Crystal Ballroom:
Same as always, over the stereo, live, or with headphones. I imagine we will catalogue our music on our computers, I can't imagine any reason for CDs or CD players. I think everyone's ipods will have wireless access to the host computer or the computer service you subscribe to allowing more music with less need for storage on the actual device.

Carly Starr, Sub Pop Records:
I'm scared that we're going to turn into one of those countries that only listens to music on our phones. I'm gonna try and hold out as long as I can.

Megan Holmes, photographer:
Hopefully from space.

Chris Sutton, musician, The Gossip:
Humans will master vibrations and be able to transmit music straight into their brainstems without the use of speakers.

Sam Coomes, musician, Quasi:
In caves.

Slim Moon, Shotclock Management; founder, Kill Rockstars:
With our ears!

Andrew Kesin, co-owner, Ecstatic Peace Records:
With our ears.

Past covers of Vibe. Chris Brown will be the cover boy for the relanuched Vibe's first issue. (courtesy of Vibe)

Len Burnett helped launch Vibe, a hip-hop music magazine, back in 1993, and he's just launched it again. NPR Music's Frannie Kelley recently spoke with the founder and Co-CEO of Uptown Media Group about Vibe's dominance then -- and its relevance now -- in the changing landscape of the music industry.

In an exciting time for hip-hop and R&B, the major labels of 1993 were thriving while smaller labels like Bad Boy were just emerging. There was no shortage of hip-hop music and urban culture for Vibe to cover.

But by 1999, the landscape was beginning to change. In spite of hip-hop's popularity, Burnett saw labels cutting back on traditional black-music divisions.

"There was a continued deterioration in the willingness of labels to work artists," he says. "There was a deterioration in the diversity of music within the labels, and there was a sense of getting the most out of a little. Labels were quick to lean on the hardcore hip-hop, the stuff that sold immediately, instead of working the records that had a little more positive energy."

Burnett and Vibe tried to make the best of it, and they succeeded: Vibe held its own as one of the most popular hip-hop magazines on the market. But eventually, the Internet and digital media caught up with them. The traditional models that Vibe, and major record labels, counted on were no longer profitable.

"Record labels not adjusting to and embracing the way people were going to buy music was a signal to me that the industry was not getting it," Burnett says. "Those were signals to me that it was never going to be the same, and that we needed to find ways to adjust and to embrace it rather than fight it."

The job wouldn't be easy, and Vibeexperienced some hiccups. Burnett left and returned to Vibe several times before departing for Uptown Media in 2007. In July 2009, the magazine announced that it was closing its doors. News arrived just before what would be Vibe's 16th anniversary. But Burnett and his company, Uptown Media Group, would not let the Vibe brand die. Instead, they revitalized the product with a new focus on digital media.

"We're looking at our business not like there's a magazine and a Web site. They're one together," he says. "In years past, there were folks that worked on the magazine and folks that worked on the Web site. And rarely did those two meet. We've stripped all those barriers down."

Vibe is back. The first issue will hit newsstands in December. It's been reduced to bi-monthly publication, but Burnett says he isn't worried about the change, and that he's confident the site and magazine will complement one another.

"Let the magazine do what the Web can't do," he says.

Through all the ups and downs, Burnett maintains that Vibe is the one of the most urgent brands in hip-hop today. The music industry is changing, but hip-hop is here to stay. And so, apparently, is Vibe.

Jace Clayton, a.k.a. DJ /rupture (Stefano Giovaninni)

A new mix album of mine was released this week. I'm told it is in stores, Google reveals sites in Romania and the Netherlands who've pirated it already, and you can purchase it online, legally, in a variety of digital formats. We've got options. Ethics -- or is that ease-of-use? -- guide music consumers in the 21st century. Full disclosure: The last CD I bought was in Mexico City. It cost me 25 cents and contained about five hours of music as low-quality MP3s.

I grew up in the '90s. Toward the end of that decade, I upgraded to a PC with a CD burner -- amazing! But, as a DJ, I still coveted vinyl LPs, not because they sounded "warmer" or "better" to my ears, but because I could literally get hands-on with them and use the slabs of wax as raw material in a mix session. Pre-MP3 smorgasbord, I would haunt the record shops and tape the radio, getting cassettes via mail order. I learned obscure paths through music -- pre-Google, pre-Blogosphere, before Ms. Internet and Mr. MP3 got married and made us all their children.

A decade, in music, is a terrifyingly long time. Long enough for genres you love to drift out of fashion; for innovative groups to bloom and then wilt into facsimiles of their younger, brighter selves -- if they survive that long. A night at the club may now require babysitters and earplugs. Music is the province of the young. And, due to the increasingly viral nature of music production and idea dissemination, it's constantly speeding up.

Especially this decade, when everything went haywire: More of everything! More musical memory, more forgetting. More rigorous public discussion, MORE ALL-CAPS SHOUTING MATCHES!!! Music found itself simultaneously compressed and dispersed, zipping around digital networks with unprecedented shareability and access. Sounds now move faster than the speed of context. Value imploded; distribution bottlenecks melted into YouTube streams and file-sharing pools. You like late-1970s vinyl from Central Africa, as hoarded by European obsessives? Chances are, a few bloggers out there do, too.

Music is a social act, a social object. And it's never been healthier -- or more chaotic. It's harder to make generalizations, even about the popularity of pop music; instead, people talk about money.

Music confounds value. It charts a surreal asymptotic curve: At the zero end lie endless amounts of music from artists self-promoting via free downloads and sites like WFMU's Free Music Archive (exactly what the name says). In the Tepitos market of Mexico City, where I nabbed those CDRs, clean bootleg copies of current Hollywood movies don't cost much more, and the seafood ceviche is cheap, too.

At the same time, iTunes asks for 99 cents a song. Streaming that same song on YouTube is free. If you use a peer-to-peer service like Kazaa to download or share a song online, it may feel free, but if the RIAA decides to make an example of you, you could end up paying around $80,000 per song. That's what a federal jury slapped Jammie Thomas-Rasset with in 2007, for a total fine of $1,920,000. The punishment far outstrips the crime, especially for a single mother of four like her. Earlier this year, another federal jury hit college student Joel Tenenbaum with fines of $22,500 per track. (Note: Both culprits shared Aerosmith. Consider yourselves warned.)

And, as we all know, a truly great song is priceless, tapped into something much larger than itself. Deep emotional resonance, the unbuyable sublime. Perhaps you heard it during your first kiss. Or maybe you licensed it for a flavored-beer commercial and got paid six figures to transform a piece of your artistic persona into corporate shill.

Things are wacky now. We know this. I'm interested in what comes next. I don't want control, or "alternative business models." The giants -- the major labels, the indie labels backed by majors, the RIAA on their leash, and so on -- took up a lot of resources. I want the giants to fall even faster so we can see what weird flowers start blooming in the spaces left vacant.

Jace Clayton is a writer and musician based in Brooklyn. He tours internationally as DJ /rupture, hosts a show on WFMU, and blogs at www.negrophonic.com.

This is all Americans get of Spotify. (courtesy of Spotify)

Back in 2001, I sat in a San Francisco federal courtroom and watched a judge order Napster to shut down. The record companies won their battle against the world's first peer-to-peer file sharing service. But, as everyone now knows, it was a Pyrrhic victory; to reference another Greek myth, Napster turned out to be a Hydra. File-sharing services are a multi-headed beast, so every time the record companies cut one off, two more pop up to take its place. Now, 10 years since Napster's peak, the number of songs traded illegally over the Internet amounts to more than 15 billion tracks a year, according to the online media tracking company Big Champagne.

Arguably, the mistake the industry made back then was being tone-deaf to the needs of its customers. Fans wanted singles and were sick of paying $16 to $20 for a CD with one good song. Instead of finding a way to work with the new technology, the industry tried to stick its head in the sand and sue its customers. It took the labels a long time to offer music in a way that fans were willing to pay for, and even then, it took outsider Steve Jobs to get the ball rolling via iTunes.

According to Eric Garland of Big Champagne, an increase in the availability and convenience of legal services is causing the number of illegal downloads to flatten or even decline. But this is a fragile moment. The recording industry needs to keep focusing on what fans want if it's going to survive.

One of the most chatted-about models comes from Spotify, a Swedish company offering access to six million songs from major and independent labels. You can listen for free as long as you're willing to put up with a few ads. It caught on quickly in Europe and now claims to have more than six million users. The company has been trying to make money with a higher-level subscription membership that grants access to the music without the ads and gives access on iPhones and Android phones.

But if you visit Spotify's Web site from any computer in the U.S., a message pops up: "Why is Spotify not available in my country?" If you click on the questionm the answer is that you can't get the service because of "licensing restrictions."

Garland says the labels gave Spotify a shot in Europe as an experiment, but that they were wary of a launch in the much more lucrative U.S. market. Spotify, he says, predicted that it would be able to lure a large percentage of its users into paying for higher-level ad-free service. But that hasn't been the case: The company won't reveal the numbers, but fewer than 10 percent subscribe. Unfortunately, the ad model doesn't generate enough revenue to satisfy the labels.

Spotify executives say they're likely to launch in the U.S. early next year. But Garland says they probably won't offer the free ad-based service. Instead, in all likelihood, only the subscription model will be available, downgrading Spotify to just another Rhapsody or revamped Napster.

Even if the ad-sponsored Spotify were to make it to the U.S., many people -- including this reporter -- might find it unsatisfying. I want to own my music, not rent it. I want to store it online and access it from wherever I am, whether I'm in China, France or Cleveland. But the labels don't like his model; they want to charge customers for both purchasing the MP3 file and storing it in the cloud.

Back in 1999, during the height of the dot.com boom, a company called MP3.com tried to offer that service. But, the record labels sued and won. They said that allowing people to listen to their music from anywhere amounted to letting them broadcast it for free. Essentially owning a MP3 file doesn't mean you have the right to play it over any device.

We have been slowly creeping toward a world in which there are easy options to legally download music. But the emphasis is on the word "creeping." When will we have the ability to buy music, store it online and access it from anywhere? "At the rate we're going," Garland says, "I'd predict 2020 or 2025." The last decade has brought a world of change, but it's sounding like the next one is going to move pretty slowly, at least for new music technology.

We want to know what you think about music during the '00s, so we're posing a question every weekday from Nov. 9 to Nov. 20. Then, we'll post and discuss some of the interesting, fun and ridiculous responses.

Nov. 20: How will we listen to music in the next decade? How will we acquire it? What will it sound like?

It's never easy to map out an entire decade in music. So, in constructing the "Decade in Music" interactive timeline, we sought to shape it with some of the bigger tent-pole trends, news (Elton John performing with Eminem) and groundbreaking changes in the industry, business and technology (Napster, the iPod). We also wanted to highlight albums (Britney Spears, Danger Mouse, Radiohead) that took a snapshot of the era, as well as deaths (Ray Charles, Johnny Cash) that affected everyone. And, of course, we wanted to include the occasional "wardrobe malfunction" controversy or bizarre curiosity ("Trapped in the Closet") that simply served as a funny bit to remember.

However, it was just the tip of the iceberg; a conversation starter. As soon as we posted the timeline, we started to remember more and more that we should have included. Over these past two weeks of discourse about the decade here at Monitor Mix, countless others have continued to come to mind.

We knew we couldn't fill in every news event, musician's death or notable release (sorry, Modest Mouse, Alan Jackson and Whitney Houston's comeback album), so we asked you for help in filling in the blanks.

Here are some other suggestions we received from the comments here at NPR Music and on Facebook:

-- While we briefly touched upon the musical impact of Sept. 11 tragedy with the Concert for New York City (and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by mentioning the Dixie Chicks controversy), there were plenty of other songs we could expand to include. Bruce Springsteen's The Rising was a stunning record that encapsulated the feeling of living in a post-Sept. 11 world, as well as composer John Adams' fitting response to Sept. 11 with his piece On the Transmigration of Souls. Then there was Green Day's rock opera American Idiot, which served as a fiery statement about the United States' status in the world, not to mention the spoof musical Team America: World Police and its tongue-in-cheek "America, F--- Yeah!"

-- We implied many of the changes in music journalism and criticism by mentioning the rise of Internet music sites and blogs, which championed Arcade Fire, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and many others. But the decade also saw the demise of fanzines and print publications like Blender, Harp, Vibe and No Depression, as well as financial troubles at Paste and JazzTimes.

-- While we talked all about the many failures of major labels, we should mention independent label and distributor Touch & Go, which fell into hard times, thanks in part to poor record sales and the flagging economy in early 2009.

-- Thanks to the suggestion of Facebook user Lee Kukkola, we added a story about the return of music to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

More of your suggestions:

-- Michelle Lemire (MishaSF): "January 6, 2000: Birth of the Music Genome Project, and subsequently Pandora internet radio, a music discovery service. Just enter a song or artist, and Pandora launches a streaming station that plays similar artists or song types. I've discovered so much new music thanks to Pandora."

-- Will Cornelsen (cornmeal57): "June 2002: Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival was launched, being one of the first of many new music festivals created this decade."

-- Casey Morris: "You must not forget the influence of electronic artists, most notably Daft Punk, Fat Boy Slim, Chemical Brothers and later Justice, David Guetta and Tiesto (cheese, I know, but necessary)."

-- Michael Hernandez (lpstd): "Sept. 28, 2004: Brian Wilson releases SMiLE, after the album lay dormant and abandoned for 37 years."

-- Dov Rosenberg (darosenb): "Kanye West saying, 'George Bush does not care about black people' during live televised Hurricane Katrina charity event."

-- Duncan Elkins: "May 9, 2006: Illegal Art releases Girl Talk's Night Ripper."

-- Jay Schacht: "You might... and it pains me to point this out... include something about Soulja Boy and the rise of (shudder) AutoTune on the rap scene and its relation to ringtones as singles. I kinda feel dirty now, though. But it's a real trend."

-- Greg Geiger (Grgeiger): "How about Don Omar becomes the first artist to have a Top 10 reggaeton album in the U.S. (in) May 2006."

-- Sara Christensen Ashley: "How about a nod to 'Once'? I think The Swell Season has done well enough to get up there."

-- Sean McKeever: "Though not the first to do so, Nine Inch Nails' free, surprise online release of Ghosts was a pretty big deal."

So, what else should be on a list that helps us now understand the decade? What news events did we miss? What overall cultural or musical trends? What were the notable musician deaths? What important bands broke up? Subsequently, which bands had notable reunions? What were the huge albums? Let us know here.

Spectacular flop #3: Kevin Federline. (Mark Davis/Getty Images)

Schadenfreude never seems as sweet as it does when it's directed at the music industry. We fans understand, of course, that the vast majority of those employed by said industry are passionate about what they do. Which makes it all the more fun to see the boneheads among us flounder in the public embarrassment of their worst decisions.

The chief failure of the recording industry this decade, some have written, was its initial decision to treat digital music as an enemy. Rather than find a way to embrace Napster and its 26 million users, the Recording Industry Association of America took legal action against the company, thus only diffusing and intensifying the methods and rate of piracy. With the genie freed from the bottle, the music business is still reeling.

In the shadow of said genie, many attempts have been made to stuff him back in or deal with his power. Some have changed the way we listen, while others have changed employment situations at record labels. With apologies to Perez Hilton Presents, Carly Hennessey (who?) and dropping the ball on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, here are four of the top music-industry FAILs of the '00s. Please send us more in the comments below.

1. The Sony BMG Rootkit CDs

The copy-prevention software of Sony BMG, now just Sony Music Entertainment, was eventually classified as spyware by Microsoft. (courtesy of Sony)

Limiting the usage of music files with Digital Rights Management proved to be a FAIL at large for the industry -- iTunes, for one, is entirely free of protected music now. But the most infamous of these failures was the copy protection based on "rootkit" technology on more than 100 CD releases. A rootkit is a software program which messes with the basic code in your computer's operating system, thus allowing viruses or spyware to infect your computer undetected. So not only was Sony's bid at DRM short-sighted, but it was also opening up security vulnerabilities in computers worldwide. (And it was hypocritical: Sony's rootkit developers illegally stole code from the LAME MP3-encoding technology.) When programmers discovered this, it led to several class-action lawsuits, not to mention the exact wrong kind of public attention.

The punitive measures enacted by the RIAA were not only ineffective in stemming the illegal downloading tide, but they earned the ill will of many consumers. (coreythrace / Flickr)

The RIAA, which represents record companies, has been justly concerned this decade with the threat of piracy posed by online file-sharing. So, starting in 2003, it began a strategy of... arbitrarily suing people. More than 30,000 people so far have been threatened or pursued with legal action, often resulting in monetary settlements which far exceed the crime, while file-sharing continues unabated. While the RIAA has won some of its cases, it's certainly lost the public relations struggle. It sued a single mother earning $36,000 a year for nearly $2 million, after she allegedly shared 24 songs. It went after a 66-year-old sculptor for supposedly sharing gangsta rap on the Windows-based Kazaa program, even though she uses a Mac. It filed suit against an 83-year-old dead grandmother. Though it remains unclear whether you catch more digital-music customers with honey than vinegar, if the RIAA set out to capture any goodwill from the American consumer, it certainly got the exact opposite.

3. Kevin Federline

I'm just going to let the aspiring rapper -- famously, Britney Spears' ex -- explain himself:

This particular "Brazilian ass-shaker" never made Federline's severely overwrought debut album, which arrived in 2006 to universal scorn and sold fewer than 20,000 copies by the time it went out of print. I wish I could be so self-satisfied about my own epic failures.

4. Payola

Pay-for-play: Illegal in many decades. (iStockPhoto)

The practice of record companies paying radio DJs to play specific records is an old one -- and an illegal one since 1960. So major record-label interests simply employed "independent promoters," complete with scare-quotes, to bribe stations and their employees with vacations, new clothes, illegal drugs -- the usual. A pre-punchline Eliot Spitzer, then New York's attorney general, launched a massive investigation into the issue, eventually winning settlements totaling more than $25 million from three of the four major recording companies. Not only was this a terrible financial and publicity burden, but in today's commercial radio climate, the labels' songs -- especially those from major artists -- likely would have been played anyway.

The writing's on the wall . . . (c r i s/flickr)

OK! Here you will find more songs recorded last weekend, in accordance with a very strict set of rules, namely, that each song must include one of these words: Japan, dog, firecracker, NPR or lampshade. This batch includes some that were mistakenly left out of earlier posts. If you're just joining us, part one is here and part two is here.

You're awesome.

Julie Cafrtiz (right) with bandmate Kim Gordon. (courtesy of Ecstatic Peace)

I asked my friend Julie Cafritz (of Pussy Galore, STP and Free Kitten) if she wanted to write something for our End of the Decade coverage. Her "assignment" was due over the weekend, and when I didn't hear back from her, I figured her work as a teacher, or her kids, or life in general had gotten in the way. Then, today, she sent me this note:

"I decided to take a different tack, intrigued as I was by your song-in-a-day contest. So I recorded a song; actually, Ollie [Julie's son] engineered my session. He decided he didn't like Mommy's music, so he spent most of the time recording me using my iPhone from another room. I then took his recording and recorded my essay over it -- what fit, anyway. It cuts off three-quarters of the way through."

Before I share Julie's song, I wanted to include something else she sent me when I asked her how much time she spends listening to music:

"I have never spent as much time listening to as much music in my entire life as I have in the past six years. I can chalk this up to several factors: 1) Having moved from NYC, I now am part of car culture, which has always been pretty much to my mind the perfect vehicle for listening. I have a good stereo in what is essentially a private soundproof booth on wheels in which to listen to music at ear-splitting volume in a small space -- my preferred listening environment. 2) Yes, music is more available through the Internet; not just to illegally or legally download, which of course I do liberally, but also, I can track down stuff like never before. (I try to patronize my locals, but much of the stuff I'm looking for is early- to mid-'70s English stuff.)

"And, most importantly, although I don't want to minimize the importance of 1 & 2, which are huge, 3) is that, since having my children, I have effectively been under house arrest for the past 11 years, and don't even come up for parole for another 12. As my freedom of movement has been severely limited by the realities of motherhood, I look to music to lift me out of my ennui, connect me to my old life and self, define my identity and generally let me rebel like a bratty teenager locked in her room and listening to her stereo loud. Unlike reading or watching a movie, I can listen to music while doing other stuff. And, yes, I do listen to music with my children. My music, not theirs; well, my music is theirs. They are like Gitmo detainees forced to listen to music all day long, repeated over and over again for months at a time (seriously) at loud volumes. They can take it up with their shrinks later."

And now, for Julie's song essay, "This Is England." As she mentioned, it gets cut off toward the end, so the words at the bottom function as the rest of the essay, in written form.

...after one live show, sometime even before they played their first gig. The NME, Sounds and Melody Maker could hype a different band on a weekly basis, and hype they did. They threw bands big and small at you; so many, you couldn't keep track, and then they would all -- big and small -- disappear, and it didn't matter. After the English press machine were done with you; after everybody owned your record, saw your gig, your face, your T-shirt, they were sick of you, and rightfully so. And it made it almost entirely impossible for a band to remain unscathed, to stay cool.

I still get excited when I get my "hands" on a new record. But I can tell, even while I'm listening and enjoying it that first time, what fatal flaw will relegate it to the dust heap in a week, a month, a year. Things do move quicker now. And it is because of the thing you are listening and reading this on. That computer, this is England.