TS: RYM vs. Metacritic

Sick Mouthy wrote a pretty great blog post taking off from the very same observation.

great post. he mentions that the "criticism-topography" of video game criticism also differs from that of music and film, although he doesn't go into more detail. the reality of that situation is that the vast majority of reviews of video games is what metacritic would call "generally positive," with a smaller number of games receiving a mild reception and an astonishingly small number of them being received outright poorly. about a month ago tevis thompson wrote an excellent piece about this, if anyone happens to be interested in how this phenonemon plays into newer forms of media criticism.

How many media outlets does Metacritic go to for music?

Have we done pizza vs curry?

Mod response to an image upload I just did: "Your square image is not the correct shape for a digipak which is more rectangular by design."

This fuckin site, man

"I tried to join the diarrhea drinkers club but they told me the amount of corn in my cup actually made it closer to poop"

ew

at least i'm not uploading to genius huh

Whiney OTM.

"This will have to wait until a proper scan of the digipak artwork can be uploaded."

"Hi, I do understand your frustration, but we really do want to be as accurate as possible. Imagine you went to the zoo and the lion enclosure was full of leopards. You mention it to the zoo keeper and he says "well, they're both cats, near enough". It's not really satisfactory when the goal is to present accurate information."

This is, to be clear, about an image being 'too square' to be a CD cover

the petty shits have revoked my upload privileges, lol

have swallowed my pride and sent a feedback form explaining and apologising for what i did wrong, and asking ever so nicely if i can be allowed to upload again. let's see what they have in store. probably a site ban

BAN LJ

post the image here so we can rightfully shame it

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a3859399155_16.jpg

if you look closely, you will notice that this is a leopard, rather than a lion

What you have to understand, imago, is that RYM always had an inferiority complex relative to discogs. In the early days, serious music fans would pick on RYM for laughable mistakes, inconsistencies, missing information and the likes. It got to them, RYM was like: "our survival is at stake".
I limit my contributions to adding singles from itunes and suggesting merges, and some of the time I don't even bother about adding a random digital single cover for an entry that will be rated by 5 people in the next 8 years.

Have you ever seen Wiki edits talk pages ? Contributing there is probably making the Devil go pale and embarrassed. And yet what a beautiful internet creation... you need the devil you see (sorry, I've just read Doctor Faustus)

See this is why I only add primarily digital releases if any

I don't use RYM for classical music at all because their catalogue is glaringly incomplete and manually adding each work, which requires that you post the details to a specific subforum where it will take at least 24h for your submission to be approved by Cerberus-like mods – not to mention the fact that the performers' entries are routinely lacking as well – is a full-time unpaid internship. For non-classical music, however, I've never had much trouble adding new bands/releases/album covers, perhaps because they were all on Bandcamp.

yeah that's what I did here, but the image from Bandcamp - the only image online, pretty much - was the 'wrong shape', I despair tbh

I suppose you can save it to your computer and resize it before uploading it right back. I've had to do that before, now that I think of it.

all sorted now thankfully - key to my restored privileges being my politeness and calm, apologetic response. 2007 LJ is looking on at me in envy

and yeah I do understand the need for a precise database. there is an element of preserving history to all this which I get

even so that sounds awfully pedantic. like I've added tracklistings and times to albums and had them held up because I put I "owned" the release which meant I had a CD with a catalogue # and label and they wouldn't approve until I had that, when the reality is I lost the CD long ago

that said as a general resource I think RYM is pretty nice - I've discovered a lot of great stuff through there

well yeah it's absolutely key to my listening habits

on consideration i am impressed at how much rym has improved over the past decade, especially considering the constant influx of 4chan users. to deal with that while consistently improving the quality of the reviews and the ratings is an accomplishment imo. i think the comparison to wikipedia is a good one, but unlike wikipedia rym doesn't have the "npov" fig leaf. adapting the wikipedia model to a site that is pretty much nothing _but_ subjective opinions... again, an accomplishment imo.

IMDB is pretty much the model here I guess.

Just discovered this 'Best of Rate Your Music' twitter & am loving it:

pic.twitter.com/0MtnqR1UCA

— Best of RateYourMusic (@Rateyrmusic) April 27, 2019

*nervously scans twitter feed*

might have a few good review submissions for there, notably

https://rateyourmusic.com/review?id=44402954

and

https://rateyourmusic.com/review?id=4612007

also this which I suspect might be too *good* for that feed

https://rateyourmusic.com/review?id=26968079

lol those are all incredible

Yeah one of my first thoughts was “please don’t let me be on this feed”, but I don’t think I posted any true fuckwittery during my brief affair with RYM long ago

off the current topic but i enjoy being an asshole in the album comment boxes rym added a few years ago

yeah i have tons of shitty rym meme reviews from when i was old enough that i should have known better. i'm very grateful because some mods are going through and "unpublishing" all of them so unless you're my friend there you won't know what a bozo i was

nowadays of course i'm much better and write essays analyzing old genesis bootlegs from a trans perspective

rym comment boxes are one step above youtube comments and should go away but i occasionally post the shit that would've gone in my meme reviews there

my real vice is the message boards, which is 90% teenage canon-builders talking about which radiohead record is best and 10% people recommending serbian punk records nobody outside of serbia has ever heard of, i love this board but it alone can't feed my jones

hah yeah I've had a number of my reviews 'unpublished', including a lot of my best ones

I understand why the comment boxes are there, it's kind of nice that every album gets its own discussion thread now, and it keeps a lot of the shit out of the reviews. wish they were a bit more interactive though

nowadays of course i'm much better and write essays analyzing old genesis bootlegs from a trans perspective

yeah see this is why I love RYM actually

i've had some of my most _popular_ reviews unpublished. initially i was a little put out by it, but in the long run it does make the site better, because back when they would host any old shit the stuff that got "liked" most were the dumb joke reviews rather than anything that had any kind of actual thought or effort put into it. not only is "publishing any old shit" a really bad idea for an internet site in 2019, but establishing some sort of editorial control goes a long way towards making the site better

nowadays the stuff that gets "liked" the most are long lists of random records three people have heard, and i'm ok with that, except insofar as we tend to "like" the lists without actually listening to any of the records

the other thing i find really interesting, because it's as far as i can tell deliberately obscure, is that they do have some fairly advanced anti-brigading features in their ranking algorithms. it's complicated, but in practical terms it seems like basically only ratings between 2.5 and 4 are counted towards the overall score of a record

that twitter feed accepted my Hulk Hogan suggestion and found...so much more

The guitar riffs here are some of the coolest I've heard. I spent a whole summer smoking pot in my parents garage learning to play this album on the guitar and I would be a shitty person if I had not done that. You'd probably agree that you are lame compared to me, while reading this. I'd agree, and then add that Possessed should thank me for writing this review. You're welcome!

this five star review of possessed's seven churches is easily the best thing i've ever read on rym and one of the greatest pieces of music writing of all time

pic.twitter.com/0GMbUMqkkW

— Best of RateYourMusic (@Rateyrmusic) May 19, 2019

that LOL in the end kills me

Fine melodic rock album. Well done, Alias guys. I am an AOR lover and a grunge hater. Unfortunately, no one can change a history, I mean a lot of great bands were blown away in 90s by the ugly form of music as grunge is. Well, it happened with the band of question. Alias debut offering the almost perfect AOR material with the strong Curci's vocals as the distinctive feature. To be quite honest, tracks of second half of the release are not so great as the first part, so I can give them about 3,75 stars.

letmetrythisname 09 Aug 2017 02:37 GMT

Mambo No. 0.5

https://i.imgur.com/Kk1QV2x.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/4611xsk.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/CoSKkAQ.jpg

I’m sure people have listened to the stuff they rate on Rate Your Music

a horrible website

RYM's ratings and forums are dominated by metal fans and pompous The Wire readers. Bit I still like the lists thing, the ones made by single users not generated from ratings.

And filtering down to single genres, even the ratings lists are useful. For instance they have helped me disover some nice 2000s synthpop gems. Johan Bäckström, for instance.

And not just metal fans, the worst kind: progressive metal fans.

But yes the genre charts are absolutely fantastic for discovering new (old) stuff, infinitely better than any Spotify AI suggestion algorithm.

https://theshfl.com

ha the first recommendation I got was from a Lex review

RYM is by nature of its yearly charts something of a consensus engine and it is populated by, shall we say, those of an impressionable age. It tends to fetishise that which its impressionable users unconsciously deem makes themselves more cool and current - coronations are preordained (watch OUT for next year's Black Country, New Road album!) but why,say, this and Little Simz uber alles I don't actually know. Maybe these albums are particularly clear in what they're doing - ambiguity tends to vex consensus

RAM was a gigantically hyped comeback album from a beloved act that hadn't put anything out in a while & had pretty wide critical buy-in (much more than this one), but i'm not sure it was like, beloved to this degree by RYM. even if it was it's not a great comparison point.

mars' schtick for the last decade has been well-crafted-but-shallow pastiches of pop from decades gone by & there's not some huge improvement in quality here, so why have they suddenly bought into this album? it's ranked at something like #16 all time in soul albums which is obviously absurd & will surely go down, but still lol.

the little simz album being overrated there (it's solid but not a masterpiece like they rate it as) is much less of a surprise though, she was already an established favourite there & RYM is fairly sympathetic to lushly-produced conscious hip-hop overall, it's very in the community's wheelhouse.

Definitely there's a sense that artists have arcs, and if they release a killer breakthrough (Simz' Grey Area, Weyes Blood's FRSTE) then it's likely that the next album will come out to much hype, and if that album is more grandly-realised (as both of those artists' follow-ups were) then it'll do very well indeed

That's the story with Injury Reserve, black midi...most of the top ten in fact. But then...yeah, why Bruno Mars lol

Lol I had the same thought as ufo today as I saw its rating on rym. It's a solid album for sure but very surprised rym would rate it so high. But some albums start high and then tend downward as a wider base check them out, no?

yea it doesn't really compare to Daft Punk because even HAA and the Tron soundtrack were defended pretty vigorously by people who knew they sucked and spent half the reviews apologizing, it was kind of predictable that the next halfway decent Daft Punk album was gonna be lionized. RYM doesn't like Bruno Mars at all. Maybe it just is that good

oh wait I just saw the album was released only 6 days ago, yeah that rating's gonna come down. seems to happen a lot on RYM where something gets a lot of early bandwagon hype which encourages a lot of people to check out something they wouldn't be into otherwise and surprise a lot of them won't like it. its kinda shitty but that's how RYM works

it's wacky it's this high after a week though

ugh why do i care rym sucks

human after all >>>>> rym

RYM is people, I mean that's just how popularity works.

I guess it works the same way how "Back To Basics" is by far the highest rated Xtina album.

thanks for the revive, ufo. i thought i was the only one who felt like that re:the new bruno thing. it's fine, but like 3.5 stars on the absolute best day.

i still haven't developed the patience required for rym. i gave it a big try this past summer after some prompting here, but i think it's just not meant for people like me.

anyway, brad otm:

ugh why do i care rym sucks

wrt Mars, as mentioned upthread this isn't a Bruno Mars album it's Bruno AND Anderson Paak, who I think has a lot more uh "cred" or whatever you want to call it, I'd bet money that's a big part in how it's being received

Part of it could also be that the weirdos that live in the rym comment boxes just aren't familiar with the source material that is being pastiched here? Too busy listening to Bull of Heaven to be bothered.

Part of it could also be that the weirdos that live in the rym comment boxes just aren't familiar with the source material that is being pastiched here

lol idk how true this is, but that's similar to what i'm pondering. i've tried with anderson paak as well and have had a similar reaction: this is decent, but i don't think i like it as much as the rest of you seem to.

that being said, i really wanted to like it because i do feel like bruno and anderson are genuinely talented dudes. but i've found them underwhelming on record so far.

I love Malibu but that's the only album I've heard of Paak's that I would rate highly

ugh why do i care rym sucks

― STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson), Thursday, November 18, 2021 7:31 AM (nine months ago) bookmarkflaglink

damn i gotta keep returning to this post, especially after this happened:

https://i.imgur.com/ti4uOoK.png

not that it's apparent that i'm a woman i guess (i think i refused to declare my gender on rym for my entire time there? wow, must've been a sign)

rym def the worst place on the internet i inhabit and i think it's gotta end

be careful declaring someone's assumed pronouns on the internet you may ruin some trans person's day lol

oh my god i can't believe a person with pronouns misgendered me

yeesh sorry. tbf RYM is about as trans-friendly (and trans-populated) an internet space as I can think of and the moderation staff will absolutely take your side here

ugh the user who said that to you is an idiot with abysmal taste

it's ok! i don't care! it's a horrible website!

:( it is better for having you drop by into shoutboxes of unfancied albums and declaring them the best thing ever, cheered me no end to see you doing your thing in the LTTP box

yeesh sorry. tbf RYM is about as trans-friendly (and trans-populated) an internet space as I can think of and the moderation staff will absolutely take your side here

― imago

lotta overspill from /tttt/ though, lotta fucked up people with some fucked up bullshit going on who take it out on other folks :( the staff do the best they can but there is a _lot_ of bullshit and assholery for them to deal with.

Anybody else getting nearly constant phishing warnings when using RYM the past few days? Seems like it’s some issue with the autoplay ads, because it only seems to be when I click on artist and album pages with those.

anyone using albumoftheyear.org ? looks like rym but has critic reviews like metacritic.

https://rateyourmusic.com/rdescriptor/set?album_id=257953

six members of the RateYourMusic.com (RYM) community don't believe Sisqó's Y2K sex jam "Thong Song" is humorous (i.e. "uses comedy to reflect a sense of humor towards the relevant subject matter", not "I personally find this song amusing") and accordingly voted against the "humorous" descriptor on the single's release page. of the seventeen descriptors the community voted on, "humorous" is the only one that got rejected due to an accumulation of downvotes. even "epic" passed muster! if properly publicized, this revelation will trigger the death of RYM, the cancellation of Sharifi, and the termination of Project Sonemic.

We have every reason to believe that Sisqó treated the subject of thongs with the utmost seriousness

I don't doubt that Sisqó is sincere in his horniness! but that's exactly what makes it comedic: the fact that he sings about buttfloss with a passion that singers normally reserve for their soulmates, or Jesus, or world peace. also "dumps like a truck (uh), truck (uh), truck (uh)". it's pure OTT heterosexual camp, and it would be a huge stretch to say the humor wasn't intentional. those rymers are insane