So here we are once more. The results of the eighth annual DPRP Readers Poll. The following pages will be an evaluation of the poll, if you want to go straight to the results tables, click here.

Last year, 791 people participated in the DPRPoll 2003, this year the number of participants increased to 869. As always we had a number of great prizes which we raffled among the entrants. All prize winners have been contacted, but if you are curious, have a look here what the prizes and their winners were.

As mentioned above, 869 people participated in the DPRPoll 2004. As usual, most people came from The Netherlands (26.2%), USA (13.4%) and the UK (12.0%), with Germany (5.6%) and Canada (5.3%) following behind. This year, inhabitants from a total number of 62 countries voted in the poll, including Antigua and Barbuda, Mongolia and Uzbekistan!

It seems we're getting younger again, as the average age of the poll participants went down a whopping 0.05 years, to 34.94 years. It still may seem we are a dying breed, but let's take comfort in the fact that 132 participants were under 25. The youngest voter was 15, and the oldest was 60.

You can see how the participants rated DPRP by clicking here.

In total 650 different albums were voted for. Below you will find the Top 30.
We have provided links to the DPRP reviews of these albums.

Nr	Band	Album	Votes	Percentage	Weighted Points
1	IQ	Dark Matter	477	54.89%	3531
2	Marillion	Marbles	419	48.22%	3092
3	Ayreon	The Human Equation	409	47.07%	2932
4	The Flower Kings	Adam & Eve	333	38.32%	2029
5	Neal Morse	One	270	31.07%	1751
6	Pain Of Salvation	Be	264	30.38%	1713
7	Blackfield	Blackfield	212	24.40%	1393
8	Threshold	Subsurface	194	22.32%	1375
9	The Tangent	The World That We Drive Through	225	25.89%	1299
10	Riverside	Out Of Myself	154	17.72%	1030
11	Magenta	Seven	132	15.19%	784
12	Pain Of Salvation	12:05	117	13.46%	652
13	Fish	Field Of Crows	124	14.27%	644
14	Knight Area	The Sun Also Rises	90	10.36%	522
15	Karmakanic	Wheel Of Life	79	9.09%	520
16	Fates Warning	FWX	88	10.13%	509
17	Dream Theater	Live At Budokan	75	8.63%	471
18	Nightwish	Once	70	8.06%	447
19	Evergrey	The Inner Circle	80	9.21%	437
20	Glass Hammer	Shadowlands	79	9.09%	430
21	Proto-kaw	Before Became After	77	8.86%	421
22	Paatos	Kallocain	67	7.71%	348
23	Asia	Silent Nation	70	8.06%	341
24	Happy The Man	The Muse Awakens	58	6.67%	329
25	Dead Soul Tribe	The January Tree	65	7.48%	295
26	The Watch	Vacuum	51	5.87%	295
27	Saga	Network	52	5.98%	291
28	White Willow	Storm Season	46	5.29%	286
29	Sylvan	X-rayed	55	6.33%	282
30	Moongarden	Round Midnight	41	4.72%	233

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.

It seems the mighty reign of TransAtlantic has finally passed. For four years the supergroup and the bands of its individual members dominated the upper regions of the poll, but this year the gauntlet has been taken over by British prog rockers IQ, who already once topped the DPRPoll with Subterranea in 1997.

The rest of the top 10 holds few surprises with all the usual suspects present - solid performances all around for the likes of Marillion, Ayreon, The Flower Kings and Neal Morse.
Special compliments must be given to newcomers Riverside from Poland and Knight Area from Holland, on 10th and 14th position respectively, well ahead of well-established bands like Dream Theater or Fates Warning.

Click here for the entire list of results.

Nr	Band	DVD	Votes	Percentage	Weighted Points
1	Dream Theater	Live At Budokan	196	32.94%	482
2	Marillion	Marbles On The Road	179	30.08%	433
3	Neal Morse	Testimony Live	157	26.39%	367
4	IQ	IQ20: The Twentieth Anniversary Show	135	22.69%	322
5	Threshold	Critical Energy	83	13.95%	199
6	Steve Hackett	Once Above A Time	52	8.74%	107
7	Glass Hammer	Lex Live	39	6.55%	83
8	Gentle Giant	Giant On The Box	29	4.87%	64
9	Echolyn	Stars And Gardens	29	4.87%	63
10	Peter Gabriel	Play: The Videos	24	4.03%	49

Dream Theater followed in the footsteps of The Beatles, Ozzy Osbourne, Cheap Trick and Yngwie Malmsteen -to name but a few- and recorded a live-album at the legendary Budokan Theatre in Tokyo, Japan. While the triple CD version of Live At Budokan did not get higher than a 17th position in the best album poll, the DVD edition tops the DVD poll square and fair.

In total 123 different DVDs were voted for.

Before we go to the list of best individual tracks, let's see which 5 bands got the most votes, regardless of which track.

As always, this is pretty much the same as the album poll, with only IQ and Marillion swapping places. However, when looking at the actual tracks, the top 5 looks somewhat different!

Who would ever have thought IQ and Marillion would be battling in a poll for best album track? The entire top 5 is taken up by just these two bands, while the positions 6 to 10 are taken up by five different bands.
As always, epics rule the chart and with the total time clocking in at 122 minutes, this top 10 would make an interesting compilation double album.

For the full list of all 476 different tracks, click here.

The stunning surreal images by Belgian painter Jef Bertels have graced the covers of Ayreon albums ever since 1998's Into The Electric Castle, and justly so, judging from the 109 votes his cover for The Human Equation received.

In total 98 different albums got voted for in the 'Best Artwork' category.

The participants of the poll voted for 315 different concerts in 2004. 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 2004.

The results of the best concert poll are always widespread, due to the sheer number of gigs played all over the globe. However, never before in the history of the DPRPoll has one gig received so many votes as the Rush gig in Rotterdam. Then again, never in the history of the DPRPoll has Rush actually toured outside of the Americas... Their first tour to mainland Europe in over a decade resulted in many happy poll participants. As did the first American tour in 7 years that Marillion undertook in 2004: No less than 39 different gigs from their Marbles tour received votes, resulting in a well-deserved election of Best Live Band of 2004.

Again a great feat for the Polish prog rockers, who took the Best Newcomer poll by a storm, well ahead of the Steve Wilson/Aviv Geffen collaboration Blackfield.

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.

Once again, no real surprises here, in terms of albums featured. With the possible exception of Fish all these albums have been the subject of many a forum thread on the various prog forums around the net (including our own).
However, the final outcome of the biggest disappointment of 2004 poll had us baffled. To see Neal Morse and Roine Stolt, the two people who had their albums on number 1 and 2 positions in the best album poll for four consecutive years, sharing a joint first place in the biggest disappointment poll exceeds everyone's most pessimistic ideas.

As always though, the results of this poll has to be taken with a healthy pinch of salt, as -apart from Ayreon's Human Equation- the entire top 5 of the best albums poll are also in the top 6 of the biggest disappointment poll.

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.