iTunes Rewind 2011 goes live: top apps, movies, and music listed

This week Apple has released their annual best of the year list titled "iTunes Rewind 2011" this year showing off the best selling and best performing apps, games, movies, and music over the past 12 months. Top places for sales are separate from voted categories like Game of the Year, App of the Year, and more classic categories for media usually categorized as such, like Best Comedy, Best Romance, and Best Breakout Comedy. Can you guess which shows won what? How about which apps sold the most for the iPhone — how about for the iPad? Discover a lovely sampling here and now!

What we're going to look at primarily here on SlashGear is the apps pieces as well as the top winners for movies, TV Shows, and Music. The rest you'll have to find by heading straight to the portal: www.itunes.com/itunesrewind. From there you'll get the whole pizazz complete with links to all the pages where you can buy the winning media bits. Of course this means that the rich get richer, and good for them! We'll gladly see the Best Breakout Comedy win in its 4th season – seem strange to you?

It's no less strange than the winner of that funny gold metal: Parks and Recreation. Leslie Knope and Ron Swanson take command of the airways in this perfectly awesome show that your humble narrator watches regularly – be there! Then there's Most Quotable with Saturday Night Live, top selling episode "What Lies Ahead" from the show The Walking Dead and best selling season with season 6, part 2 of the newest edition of Doctor Who. For movies there's Bridesmaids for Best Comedy, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 for Best Blockbuster, and little known actor Alex Shaffer winning Breakout Performance for the movie Win Win — a movie that's pretty darn good if I do say so myself. Best selling movie of the year was The Social Network – imagine that!

For music there's Adele as Artist of the Year, Wasting Light by the Foo Fighters as Album of the Year, and Nicki Minaj as Breaktrough Artist of the Year. The rest I'm sure you'll be able to guess as it's pop, pop, and more pop for best selling songs. Then it's time for the good stuff, the apps, the pieces of software we use day in and day out, the newness!

There are two categories that really matter for Apple-voted winners, that's App of the Year and Game of the Year, 2 awards each for iPhone and for iPad-based apps. For iPhone App of the Year, Instagram won for its photography prowess. For Game of the Year on iPhone it was Tiny Tower – ironic! iPad App of the Year was Snapseed, while Game of the Year for iPad was Dead Space. As far as sellers go, iPad had Angry Birds HD Free for its top FREE apps and Angry Birds HD for it's top PAID apps – how about that! I wonder if Angry Birds will EVER stop being up there at the top?

It's a bit different for the iPhone side of things, on the other hand, with Facebook, Pandora, and Words with Friends heading up the Free Apps. Paid apps for iPhone were similar to the iPad, showing iPhone's Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, and Angry Birds Seasons to lead the pack. Notable iPad apps in the top ten for free are Netflix, The Weather Channel, and CNN. For paid iPad apps, some mention-worthy top-10 winners are Pages, Penultimate, and Cut the Rope HD. Check out all the rest on the www.itunes.com/itunesrewind portal right this second – or find the same page in iTunes by heading to the iTunes Store.