As long as people continue to make music, other people will make year end lists chronicling it. Artist of the year? Song of the year? Album of the year? Depending on how much you care about these things, there are literally dozens of different places for you to find out who and what, in very esteemed professionals’ opinions, have taken these top honors (Spin, Rolling Stone and Pitchfork being the most notable).

But have you ever wondered what other people who care lots about music but don’t necessarily make their livings criticizing it think the best music of the year is? Hype Machine, the indispensable music blog aggregation portal, is sure hoping that you have, and they’ve decided to make yet another list of the top 50 artists, songs and albums of 2008. This list, which they’re calling Blog Music Zeitgeist, is compiled by the people, for the people. Instead of lame old professional music critics calling the shots, they’ve reached out to some of the coolest, most prominent music bloggers on the net and asked them to capture the defining musical spirit of ‘08 in list form.

The results are… well, they’re kind of the same as all the other lists. Santogold, Wolf Parade, No Age, Deerhunter, Girl Talk, Hot Chip, Lil Wayne and Coldplay are there, just like every other list. However, their 50 songs of the year, which lists songs in order of release date instead of best-ness, has very little in common with the other lists, and has lots of excellent, easy to download tunes and remixes.

If there is one thing we love more than hot women here at COED, it’s hot women who rock.  From Katy Perry to Lykke Li, a new generation of sexy song girls has emerged and are redefining what it means to be a woman who rocks.

Attention aspiring musicians, bands, and people with nothing better to do: Right now, our friends at Converse, Journey’s and Downtown Records are having a huge “Get Out of the Garage” music contest which gives entrants the chance to win a free trip to New York City and four days, three nights of recording time in a professional studio. To enter, just check out GetOutofTheGarageMusicContest.com, upload one of your songs to their Website, and wait to see if you’re track made the cut! The contest ends September 15.

To promote the contest, and give you a second chance to win free stuff, we at COED are holding our own “Show Us Your Kicks” contest, which has nothing to do with “recording time” at all! All you have to do is send us a picture of your dirtiest, filithiest, most F’ed-up shoes and the person to send in the worst pair of the bunch gets a gift certificate for a brand new pair of Converse sneakers to replace the ones you screwed up to win a contest, plus swag from Downtown Records (home of Cold War Kids, Justice, Gnarls Barkley, Santogold, and more!)

Send all your grossest shoe pics to kicks@coedmagazine.com