Another week, another Mercury music section that didn't really have room for this bit of clarifying news: Spotify streams, while still paltry, pay out a reported $.005—that's DOLLARS, not cents, as was erroneously reported and retweeted by lots of musicians. That is a huge difference (of a hundred!). So does this mean that if I stream all nine songs from Thin Lizzy's Jailbreak album 1,000 times (believe me, I am very close to doing so), that's $45 in revenue? That's nothing to sneeze at.

Onward! But! We had an unusual music section this week, with the entirety of the section being taken over by vast armies of top five lists. We asked lots and lots and lots of people what their top five records of 2012 were. And they responded. Oh, how they responded. We had far too many responses to fit into the newsprint edition, but the internet has an infinite amount of space*, so we were able to cram 'em all in online. Give your mouse's scroll wheel a good workout and read all the top five lists, then add your own! (Unfortunately, Thin Lizzy's Jailbreak did not come out in 2012.)

* not really true

Also! The usual roundup of Up & Coming shows.