You'll have seen the doom-mongering headlines on the state of the music industry this year - the same apocalyptic rhetoric we've been suffering for decades.
"Will 2014 be the year the album business fell apart?" asked the Guardian in June. Admittedly, there's still 28 days of 2014 left, but we're fairly sure the answer to that is a firm "No."
Granted, no one bar Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran can become million sellers this year but we like to think that's because the sheer number of brilliant albums released has simply shared out the sales more evenly. So good, in fact, were this year's crop of album releases, that it took a great deal of heated arguments and late nights to narrow them down to our top 50.
Have a look back on a wonderful 12 months in music, as we count down our top 50 albums of 2014.
Compiled by Andy Morris, Andrew Trendell, Ed Keeble, Alexandra Pollard and Elliot Mitchell.
Check out our albums of the year countdown below
