POO: AMG vs Pitchfork vs RYM

AMG - too much javascript
Pitchfork - reviews are way too long
RYM - some fun lists but way too much garbage to wade through

My least favorite thing about RYM is that they added those weird little comments sections for each release which sort of pulls back the curtain and lets you see all the shitlords (stealing imago's word) in action.

Speaking of the Ardittis, RYM is godawful for contemporary classical. You have to submit referenced data re: uncatalogued works to a specific thread where they get approved 24h+ later by select moderators. And adding the albums said works appear on is an ordeal in and of itself as you have to link each track to its respective movement or whatever. I only use it for non-classical music as a result.

― pomenitul

i figure it's just a culture thing. rym is also shit for electronic music, which is much better represented on discogs.

re: shit ratings for more recent records - i do find that more recent records have way more ratings than the older "canon" stuff. and there are a _lot_ of people who are just following /mu/p4k/fantano in their ratings, and a _lot_ of people who treat music like some sort of game theory exercise (which i used to do back when i first got on the site so i can't complain too much). mind you a couple years back i more or less gave up on ratings entirely (i still throw one in occasionally just for shits) and do all my aggregation via lists.

the thing i like most about rym is that for whatever reason it's packed to the gills with trans people. that's cool.

I mainly use it for randomness—like, Hey what’s the 791st highest rated album of 1978? Why don’t I listen to that? (It’s Robert Palmer- Double Fun btw)

I don’t really mind the comment box...it’s easy to ignore and it cuts down on the number of jokey one-liner reviews. Some of which are pretty funny mind you.

i figure it's just a culture thing

For sure, I just wish there was a database to rule them all. AMG isn't half bad for classical music but every now and then they'll be missing something like Grumiaux/Gendron/Bourdin/etc.'s set of Debussy's late sonatas and it makes my inner documentalist despair.

I haven't been on AMG in a while but one thing I clearly remember is how odd it is to page through an artist's catalogue (as the site is set up to do) and read a bunch of reviews that were written by very different people, at least one of whom was clearly not a fan and was just assigned to clean up loose ends or whatever. Not to mention the fact that their star ratings are seemingly pulled out of a hat. Don't know if it's still like that though

never forgive, never forget

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/cardiacs-mn0000531346

idk those Dean Carlson reviews read like a pretty strong endorsement to me

lol

I don’t really mind the comment box...it’s easy to ignore and it cuts down on the number of jokey one-liner reviews. Some of which are pretty funny mind you.

I wish it was easy for me to ignore! But I can't help but get myself worked up over reading these people petitioning to put certain releases in bold even though the ratings aren't particularly high, or insisting that a 90 second demo of fucking around with a synth posted to a Soundcloud counts as an Aphex Twin release. One for the IA thread I guess.

The real reason I hate those fuckers is for Lulu's rating, who am I kidding

justice 4 lulu

:)

i have a hard time ranking these bc a significant difference between rym and the other two is that the writing is almost completely worthless as opposed to marginally/mostly worthless

rym and amg are v useful when approaching completely discographies and weirdly ime tend to pick up each other's slack? what's received wisdom at one isn't always received wisdom at the other. pfork is useless for this but it's not built that way

but then i use rym exclusively for personal use and cannot even imagine using it socially

i have a hard time ranking these bc a significant difference between rym and the other two is that the writing is almost completely worthless as opposed to marginally/mostly worthless

― flamenco drop (BradNelson)

the great thing about writing for free is that i don't need to give a shit about whether or not my writing is "worthless"