(Sorry if this page load time is slow, just give it a minute while all the Soundcloud embeds load!)

The first quarter of this year has delivered a shit-tonne of brilliant new releases. We've seen comebacks spiral in unforeseen new directions and met new acts that have charmed, bewildered and blimmin' well blown us away. We are aware however, that things are a bit overwhelming and thought - rather than wait for our end of year list - it might be handy to have all of this marvelous music digested.

Over the coming days, as we head into the long Easter Weekend (otherwise known as hot cross bun-mas, or tea-cake-mas if you are a truly dedicated atheist), DiS' editor is going to try to reduce down the best of the year so far. Tomorrow we will share our most read editorial, as well as our album picks, and on Friday we'll share the videos of the year so far, but before any of that, how about a quick 'humble-brag' with our year-to-date stats (saves us replying to people asking for them) and a Spotify playlist? And yes, you can have a hot cross bun with that!

1st Quarter stats:

• 2,269,508 Visits
• 1,113,519 Unique Visitors
• 8,488,695 Pageviews

Q1 Spotify

This playlist of 50 songs was compiled as a sort of sprawling mixtape of the best bits of the year so far. It mixes our editor's most played, with staff picks and some of our community member's favourite songs (from this brilliant thread). So you can listen to this playlist by clicking here and you can complain about what's missing, and link to your own playlists, and generally have a bit of banter in the comments section, if you so wish.

Playlist: DiS' 50-song Guide to Q1 2012

Check back tomorrow for our albums of the first quarter of the year, and on Good Friday we'll have our videos of Q1 for you to gawp at.

For those of you without Spotify, here are a few of the tracks via Soundcloud (which should cleverly play due a little Ex.Fm widget I've embedded. Look down in the bottom right corner of your screen):