Despite the somewhat hesitant start of The DPRPoll 2003, this year's poll ran smoother than ever - we even managed to get the evaluation ready within a month!! :-)
We did a few things differently this year, one is that we no longer have the different tables behind this page, instead, we have created one page where you can find the full results of the entire poll, with different ways of sorting the entries. The full poll database can be found here.

Last year, 686 people participated in the DPRPoll 2002, this year the number of participants increased to 791. The huge number of prizes we had this year may actually have encouraged more people to enter the poll. No less than 1 in 22 won a prize this year - if only the lottery could have such winning odds!
All prize winners have been contacted, but if you are curious, have a look here what the prizes and their winners were.

This page contains a summary of the results of the poll. The full tables of the different poll sections can be viewed here.

As mentioned above, 791 people participated in the DPRPoll 2003. As usual, most people came from The Netherlands (25.2%), USA (17.5%) and the UK (11.6%), with Sweden (4.9%), Canada (4.1%) and Germany (4%) following behind. This year, inhabitants from a total number of 51 countries voted in the poll. DPRP welcomes the new readers from Saint Helena, The Republic of Korea and Kenya!!

Once again the average age of the poll participants has gone up a bit, to 34.99 (compared to 34.5 last year). The youngest voter was 10 years old, and the oldest was 61.

This year we provided 10 choices for best album, instead of the regular 5. This was one of the requests we heard last year, and many of you have responded very positive about it. In total 585 different albums were voted for. Below you will find the Top 30.
We have provided links to the DPRP reviews of most of these albums.

Nr	Band	Album	Votes	Percentage	Weighted Points
1	Neal Morse	Testimony	333	42.10%	2491
2	The Tangent	The Music That Died Alone	268	33.88%	1970
3	Dream Theater	Train Of Thought	274	34.64%	1892
4	Arena	Contagion	245	30.97%	1706
5	Spock's Beard	Feel Euphoria	259	32.74%	1471
6	Opeth	Damnation	181	22.88%	1135
7	Porcupine Tree	In Absentia	144	18.20%	1074
8	Kaipa	Keyholder	171	21.62%	1073
9	OSI	Office Of Strategic Influence	182	23.01%	1022
10	King Crimson	The Power To Believe	144	18.20%	986
11	Steve Hackett	To Watch The Storms	156	19.72%	925
12	Transatlantic	Live In Europe	118	14.92%	696
13	Mostly Autumn	Passengers	114	14.41%	679
14	Satellite	A Street Between Sunrise And Sunset	100	12.64%	660
15	Enchant	Tug Of War	104	13.15%	553
16	A.C.T	Last Epic	91	11.50%	547
17	The Flower Kings	Meet The Flower Kings -- @ Live Recording 2003	85	10.75%	544
18	Jadis	Fanatic	97	12.26%	494
19	Pineapple Thief	Variations On A Dream	74	9.36%	473
20	Radiohead	Hail To The Thief	76	9.61%	449
21	Karnataka	Delicate Flame Of Desire	62	7.84%	400
22	The Mars Volta	De-Loused In The Comatorium	64	8.09%	386
23	Rush	Rush In Rio	63	7.96%	376
24	Anekdoten	Gravity	61	7.71%	336
25	Kayak	Merlin, Bard Of The Unseen	42	5.31%	301
26	Gazpacho	Bravo	43	5.44%	291
27	Evergrey	Recreation Day	55	6.95%	284
28	Tomas Bodin	Sonic Boulevard	55	6.95%	284
29	Magellan	Impossible Figures	49	6.19%	284
30	Star One	Live On Earth	47	5.94%	263

Some quick explanations about the calculations. 'Votes' are the number of people who voted for a specific album, regardless if it was their number 1 or number 10. 'Percentage' is the percentage of all participants that voted for an album. The 'Weighted Points' are calculated based on the ranking of the (max) 10 albums the participants voted for; their number 1 got 10 points, number 2 got 9 points, etc. 'Weighted Points' is the sum of these points.

For the fourth year in running we find Neal Morse topping the Album poll - in previous years we saw him in first position with the bands Transatlantic and Spock's Beard, and now he does it on his own. Mind you, you could actually say that Transatlantic tops the charts for the fourth year in running, because, just like last year, Morse's Transatlantic buddies Roine Stolt and Mike Portnoy come in second and third.

As predicted last year, Porcupine Tree can be found in the top 10 once again. It was released stateside in 2002, but didn't hit the shops in Europe until January 2003, therefore it also counts as a 2003 release. With the votes of 2002 and 2003 combined, it would have been in the top 3 for sure. Furthermore, with an average of 7.45 points per vote, it is also the album with the highest average per vote, after Neal Morse.

The DVD medium is rapidly gaining popularity. Last year 56% of the poll participants voted for their favourite music DVD, this year no less than 76% cast their votes. Below you can find the 10 for best prog DVDs of 2003:

Not entirely surprising: Transatlantic's final document was chosen best DVD of 2003. Despite the production problems and the delays nearly 38%% of the voters still voted for this album. Certainly the stunning packaging of the Limited Edition must have helped there.

It is always good to see how relatively low-budget productions like Transatlantic, The Flower Kings and Pallas do so well in comparison to the big budget affairs of Rush and Peter Gabriel, proving again that a good performance is still more important than fancy looking pictures.

In total 103 different DVDs were voted for.

Another thing we changed for 2003 was the number of entry fields for best track. In total 596 different tracks, by 237 different bands, were voted for. The table below shows the 5 bands which got the most votes, regardless of which track.

Pretty much the same as the album poll, with the difference of Dream Theater being second and The Tangent third. However, when looking at the actual tracks, the top 5 looks somewhat different!

As usual epics rule the chart, though this year people seemed to favour the 'slightly' shorter variety as well. After all, the Neal Morse and Spock's Beard songs are well under 10 minutes... Interesting too that this year's Spock's Beard epic didn't get higher than a 22nd position.

Good to see that relatively new artists dominate this chart. Ed Unitsky's brilliant surrealistic designs for The Tangent's first album have put him firmly on the map as a great cover designer.
David Wyatt can hardly be called a newcomer, but Arena's Contagion was in fact his first ever album cover.
It is also good to (finally) see a Mark Wilkinson design appearing in a top 5 again.

In total 125 different albums got voted for in the 'Best Artwork' category.

The participants of the poll voted for 351 different concerts in 2003. To get a clear picture of which bands did best on the stage last year, we'll first have a look at the ones that got the most votes, regardless of which concert.

Now let's have a look at which of these gigs got the most votes for Best Concert 2003.

As always, the sheer number of gigs played all over the world result in rather widespread results. Also, as the largest chunk of the voters comes from The Netherlands, and there are only few different venues played on each tour, the top 3 consists of only Dutch gigs.

As usual, the largest chunk of the newcomers aren't exactly newcomers, but rather new projects by known artists, or artists gone solo. Therefore, it is not surprising that an overwhelming number of voters chose the latest Roine Stolt project as their favourite 'newcomer'.
It is good to see young bands like Gazpacho, Sun Caged, Epica, Chrome Shift and Trion appearing in the Top 10 though.

Many different albums, gigs, incidents, etc received votes for 'biggest disappointment'. We grouped the votes until they referred to a unique album, gig or incident.
The other most often mentioned, and more specific, disappointments can be found below.

As usual, this section is closely related to the best album poll. This year, the top 3 disappointments are at third, fifth and first position in the best album poll respectively.
But who would have thought to see a Metallica album in a prog poll?!?
Also interesting how 12 people still had difficulties with Neal Morse's departure from Spock's Beard and Transatlantic a year ago!!.

Click here if you also want to see how the participants of the poll evaluated DPRP.

Click here if you wish to see the full results of the poll.

Click here if you also want to see the list of prizes and winners.

You can also check out what the DPRP Team voted for themselves.

For comments about the poll, please e-mail The DPRP Team.