www.rateyourmusic.com C/D?

Nope. I only started a couple of years ago and have deliberately excluded all classical music from it because RYM is just awful for contemporary composition. If a given work isn't part of their puny database, you have to post it – along with the requisite academic references – to a specific forum, whereupon some dude will bless or curse your submission. Then, and only then, may you add a new release consisting of said compositions, by which point non-remuneration for services rendered becomes tantamount to slavery.

xp

I don’t know what like “3 and a half” stars means so I would always just rate my favorite stuff 5 stars and not rate anything else..

stuff that's good but not great

plus I don't like to read things by people trying to explain why something is subjectively good

― ilm jive mind (FlopsyDuck), Tuesday, September 10, 2019 8:56 AM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

you might like that kind of shit but I don't

― ilm jive mind (FlopsyDuck)

Well I was already leaning towards it but you've persuaded me to clean up my review of the new Octo Octa album from 77 and post it to RYM, just because I know how much you'd fuckin' hate it if you read it.

I'm having perhaps a bout of hypomanic logorrhea of late so I am gonna try to go on at length about what RYM has meant to me.

When I first got on the site it was mostly a non-judgemental space for me to type in where people would actually read what I had to say. I liked the low editorial standards and that I could say any old shit I liked, as long as it was at least theoretically about music.

The consequence of this was was that I did wind up writing a lot of shit, and that shit was influenced by the wider site environment. I did the pithy putdowns of albums I'd never actually listened to, I did aimless and tangential rambles, I did shit jokes. People really seemed to like the shit jokes. I gave out all sorts of spurious and binary ratings. The site recommended I listen to a Smiths album, and I didn't want to listen to a Smiths album, so I rated all the Smiths albums 0.5. That would teach them. I wanted it to recommend me an album I would actually like.

Over time I figured out how to do that on the site. Over time the site admins changed things to make it easier for me to find music I wanted to hear. I stopped caring about which record was #12 for a given year vs. #13. It reached the point where RYM could recommend more good music to listen to than I had time to hear, and I had no shortage of free time in those days. The genre charts, the yearly charts, and especially the lists became indispensible to me.

Over time as well, the admins started instituting reasonable standards. I started on the site as one of those pig-headed absolutists who thought, in practice if not in theory, that "free speech" was my God-given right to bellow whatever ignorant bullshit I felt like on whatever site I wanted. You want quality writing? Fuck you, I'm doing this for _free_! The fact that some of my worse writing might be, in fact, worth less than nothing took some time to occur to me.

So when the admins started "unpublishing" some of my more obnoxious reviews, I was a little offended at first. What was wrong with that review? It was _funny_! And what was wrong with it was that the site had instituted standards that said, among other things, that reviewing music on RYM was not a matter of making one-liner jokes about records, no matter how "funny" they were. Dave Marsh would have a good chunk of his reviews "unpublished" by the site's standards, and I can't help but consider that a good thing.

Of course there were also the carrots. Occasionally a site admin would feature one of my reviews on the front page, which tended to make me feel good, even if those reviews weren't always the ones I considered "best". At one point, when I was still lurking here, RYM frontpaged my mediocre hot take on Pomplamoose, which in turn spurred some discussion on this site, though once I realized this I went out of my way to avoid that thread.

I hadn't really spent any time there since the end of May. I cut back on listening to a lot of music at all. I said that this was because I listened to too much music anyway, and it's kind of true, my 2018 end-of-year list was pathologically obsessive and unmanageably large, my 2019 new year's resolution was to listen to less music and I'm keeping it. I said I had other shit to worry about and deal with, and that is also obviously true. It's also true that one of the longtime users whose reviews I most respect has the unfortunate habit of saying casually transphobic shit. That's not on the site admins - they do not put up with transphobia and anytime he says something like that the review is fairly quickly "unpublished" - but since we're friends on the site I see it anyway.

Anyway yesterday after a three month break I did polish up that Octo Octa review and post it to the site like I threatened, and I changed my name and pronouns. There were a couple other reviews of the record out there already, which both of which said something like "Solid mix of deep house and breakbeat" and gave it a gentleman's 3.5. These reviews are probably more useful and accurate than what I wrote, which was slightly esoteric and deeply personal, but - and I'm obviously biased here - I like it when people write the sort of review that I wrote.

The way I feel about that album... most people feel that way about some album. I find that feeling contagious, _want_ it to be contagious. I'm on the site not just to hear people talk about the Canon but to hear them talk, in their own way, about the records that are important to them. There's a sizeable subcommunity there, for instance, of people who absolutely and completely love AOR records. Now, as far as I'm concerned, AOR is some of the most terrible music ever made, but these people, who as far as I can tell seem like reasonably decent human beings, really love it, so I listen to some of it, as an exercise in radical intersectionalism. A lot of it I have too much history with to ever love. REO Speedwagon is not going to be my thing, ever. But the stuff I don't have preconceived notions about - records like _In For the Count_ by Balance and Fortune's S/T - I think I can hear what the people who love these records hear.

Long story short, good site with some nice lists and writing that's occasionally better than you'd expect it to be. 3.5.

As far as that review, nobody's faved it so far, but an old friend - who I think is an admin, or was an admin - sent me a private message to say how much they appreciated it. So it was worth doing, I think. The casually transphobic friend, maybe they'll quit being so casually transphobic, or maybe they'll quit being my friend, and I guess I'm OK with either outcome, though obviously I'd prefer the former. It's not really up to me. Either way I may get back to spending more time on that site. Maybe update my ridiculously overambitious, skeletal, fallow List of All The Good Classical Music, which is where most of my faves seem to come from these days.

Pat yourself on the back. Again. And again. And again. And again. and again...

✊💙rush💙✊

This yeah, as a lurker/user/non-contributor I find RYM a surprisingly positive & constructive place on the internet. A lot of the flak it gets seems to be a variation of “the rest of the world doesn’t think genre X is as important as I do” and “Jesus fuckin christ the intersection between prog and metal attracts a lot of dumbasses” which is satisfying and not wrong but also not very productive.

Also, it's ok not to be in love with all musical genres.

I've never used rym, but little has bummed me out as much as looking up my own music on there (although the cure is looking at the reviewer's profile and seeing that they're casually trawling through a huge amount of music and actually love jam bands or whatever).

i don't like patting myself on the back but if it'll goad flopsyduck into trash talking me it's worth it, man that shit is validating

and those little hearts and stuff right back at you austin, thanks :)

I've been meaning to get back into reviewing there but just never do.

I still refer to the number of ratings per album in a band's discography to help decide which I get next. Sometimes that's not helpful at all and sometimes it is a fair gauge.

My ratings on there started with giving 5/5 to my favourite LPs and ended a few hours later with my giving 0.5/5 to a few things I hate. Engaging with it further in an era when I won't buy music until I've heard it and already like it, that just doesn't make sense to me and I can't understand listening to music just to rate it - either your judgement would be premature or you'd waste ages listening to stuff you don't really like, and for what?
I use the site as a directory quite a bit, but that's enough for me.

'Note: This user has not visited Rate Your Music in the past 60 days'

https://rateyourmusic.com/~77ships

Are the rating edgelords slowly going extinct?

I think it's different from that. 77ships' profile reminds me a lot of how I rated and reviewed back in '08 and '09. I think if they were still around they'd probably have more interesting things to contribute than this image of 2008 RYM in amber.

I only started using RYM a couple of years ago so I'm still a little taken aback when I come across these kinds of profiles. I guess it does have museum-like value.

just registered and went through and rated some things.

this is fucking boring jesus christ.

we all go through that stage

As long as you don't grant full marks to the most banal recording of Beethoven's 9th imaginable whilst sneering at everything else, you're golden.

xp

this is probably pretty obvious to all of you, but i legitimately don't think i "get it."

You don't have to rate anything, you can just check out people's lists and discover cool new stuff.

but, like. . . that's what i do here.

and you guys are much more fun.

I suppose there is some community in rym forums but it’s pretty much just a tool.

Yeah there's no lack of tedious admin in my life. And how I rate stuff changes every day anyway, I could never keep up.

it’s pretty much just a tool

i know what you meant here, but i like my interpretation better.

As long as you don't grant full marks to the most banal recording of Beethoven's 9th imaginable whilst sneering at everything else, you're golden.

xp

― pomenitul

i mean i dig the fricsay over the karajan but you know, it's not actually _wrong_ for "kind of blue" to be your favorite jazz album

i love this place for discussing music but for finding new stuff, honestly, i don't find a lot of stuff from the rolling threads compared to rym lists. and even though the relative inaccessibility of 2009-era ilx spares us a lot of unpleasant bullshit, i bet there were some good recommendations in some of those threads.

Can't say I agree with the comparison. Kind of Blue mops the floor with Karajan's Beethoven 9, and I don't even hate Karajan (his Bruckner was nonpareil).

And re:

honestly, i don't find a lot of stuff from the rolling threads compared to rym lists

This is true for me as well. There's just so much more to pick from on RYM due to the sheer numbers.

how I rate stuff changes every day anyway, I could never keep up.

I've made peace with that. It's not perfect, but there's some underlying consistency (when I revisit an album I rated a year ago, I'll be in tune with my initial assessment 8 times out of 10).

I pretty much only use it to keep track of stuff I like, so usually the only thing I have to decide is whether to rate it 4 or 5 stars. Generally I reserve 5 stars for things I’ve liked for a long time.

randomly ran across lovelyanimal's rym page again, they use spotify a lot and i don't so much of what they listen to is mysterious and inaccessible to me but such an amazing listener, have no idea how they manage (well ok they use spotify and i don't that probably helps)

For someone who's rated that many albums (26,431 as of this writing), his *15* five star picks are not quite what I expected:

https://rateyourmusic.com/collection/Vadim_Whitefish/r5.0

Black Holes and Revelations only gets 3.5 stars!? he may have rated 26,000+ albums, but I'm willing to bet that he's never ~heard~ a single note of music in his life

And while recording all of Liszt's music for solo piano is an imposing achievement in its own right, Leslie Howard's performances are some of the most cursory I've ever heard.

I'm consistently astounded and more than a little worried by my inability to even so much as vaguely recall some of the albums I've rated, especially those that didn't make it to 3 stars.

been too busy to check out much new music lately - my default site for seeing what people are listening to now is still rym, though

looks like the #1 album right now is the new black dresses, which i feel like i'm _supposed_ to like because, well, you know, but i've honestly never related to their stuff. much respect to the both of them of course. the rest of it is i just don't even know. the new black curse record sounds nice? but then there's all this other blehhhh metal and records by 40 year old neo-prog bands and "wacky" people like igorrr who play every musical genre SIMULTANEOUSLY, i mean i'm not opposed in theory to a combination of baroque music and breakcore but just saying "hey on this record mash up baroque music and breakcore" doesn't automatically make it GOOD, you know?

and then at #19 rym is arguing about whether black magick ss are nazis or not. they have a fucking swastika on the cover and the "SS" in the logo is, yes, twin lightning bolts. fuck off. seriously, it's 2020, if you can't get your modern music fix out of the considerable pool of musicians who _don't_ put multiple nazi-related symbols on their album cover i don't think i want to talk to you.

A couple of months ago I went ahead and deleted all the ratings I'd dished out on RYM over the years. Listening in terms of stars and half-stars, no matter how noncommittally, lessened my appreciation for music in that it subconsciously compelled me to mimic the would-be equanimous stance of the Ideal Professional Music Critic – an amusing intellectual exercice, provided it doesn't overstay its welcome, which it very much had. I am now back at the point where I simply have no interest in engaging with large swathes of new music touted as worthwhile by the RYM hivemind (among others…). 19 times out of 20 my initial intuition turns out to be a foregone conclusion, and I no longer have to patience to wade through recent flotsam and jetsam only to extract a pearl here and there, or to feel like I'm tuned into The (Small-Fry) Discourse.

As far as the current top 40 is concerned, the Ulcerate, the Spectral Lore / Mare Cognitum split, the Nicolas Jaar and the Fluisteraars are the only 2020 LPs I will undoubtedly revisit. The rest, which consists of ostentatiously 'artsy' pop/rock/metal/r&b/rap, etc. RYM catnip, makes me feel like the smug old coot that I am. It's almost always music by young 'creatives' who are far more conventional than they believe themselves to be or elder statesmen à la NIN who have certainly not made some of the most remarkable ambient music of 2020. And yeah, I too am quite tired of '"wacky" people like igorrr who play every musical genre SIMULTANEOUSLY' – so fucking what, Gautier? All that being said, RYM is still a better place to go trawling for new music than most.

Igorrr is absolute crap tbf, the kind of band people erroneously think I'd like

Anyway, if we're talking the current top 40, before next week's fairly dramatic chartbump-to-be, Slift is absolutely amazing and there's also at least one ilxor you're snubbing :P

Oh yeah, Slift is indeed the shiznit, I missed it somehow.

It's funny, because I do have the opposite stance; I go to RYM because I am an old lady and because I do want to engage with the hivemind, to find out what "the kids" are listening to. Which isn't something I feel like I could necessarily get from Pitchfork? And certainly isn't something I'm ever going to get from fucking Fantano. RYM has certain... flaws in its userbase (psychedelic nazis: #19), but it did also expose me to certain points of view that weren't common among people my age. I honestly do believe there are more trans women on that site than there are cis women, and that's not a situation that I think is ideal, but I'll take it over a site populated entirely by cis dudes.

Most of the stuff that makes my eyes glaze over on the list is music by people I've already heard and dismissed, the elder statesmen of rock music. Maybe the new Strokes album is great - people change over time, it's probably not fair to them that I hear their name and roll my eyes at the insufferable hype train for "Is This It?" and its cod-Mapplethorpe album cover - seriously, how could I ever be expected to have the slightest amount of respect for a heterosexual spin on Mapplethorpe? - and maybe I will eventually check the album out and love it. I will probably not check out either of the Nine Inch Nails "dark ambient" records or the DOOM Eternal video game soundtrack.

Some of the metal I do occasionally check out. Some of it I genuinely do like. There's just this whole crew of people who listen to metal and only metal and the records are everywhere in the ratings, and honestly, the TRVE CVLT METAL people are the opposite of what I'm looking for in music. I'm not looking for darkness or evil or _purity_ any more than I'm necessarily looking for "wacky" joke metal where they play klezmer and sing about hot dogs. I'm not opposed to either of those things. I am uncommonly fond of the Chunktrade demo, which is pure joke metal with song titles like "Zoophilic Prosthetic Rectum Masturbation" and a cover of the "Popeye" theme.

What I like in music is not so easily categorized in terms of genre or style, not so easily put into words. That's why I like the lists, which are sort of a manual way of Glenn's "deep learning" made-up genres, because it's a way of grouping music that doesn't require rational or analytic explanation. I can learn more about a song by listening to the first three seconds of it, in most cases, than I can by reading long paragraphs about it.

The criticism I most like is someone whose taste I trust to be interesting saying "Hey, listen to this!" - and nothing more. The RYM charts are hundreds or thousands of people echo-chambering, but a lot of a time the thing they're sitting in a room and amplifying is worth hearing. I can see why some people roll their eyes at the R.A.P. Ferriera record, but it's the sort of thing I will probably always have a sentimental fondness for, for instance. And even when it's not, even when what those kids are hype about sounds like edgelord bullshit to me... well, it's a good antidote to FOMO if nothing else!

I'm used to snubbing ilxors! I know there are ilxors who make really acclaimed music, ilxors who I like a lot as people, and the music has just never grabbed me. I don't necessarily correlate how I feel about someone with how I feel about their work, though I do try to avoid listening to music made by living human beings if I have seen persuasive evidence that they are awful.

This Slift... and maybe I should take this to your thread LJ, lol, but it leaves me cold. I actually managed to listen to a whole song, and it's not bad, I've just heard what seems like thousands of other records that are indistinguishable from this. Specifically, I'd much rather listen to some old Litmus records.

Au contraire, I think RYM, when used well, offers an escape from certain hiveminds (as well as an overview of the ones that do exist). Witness, as I said elsewhere yesterday, the Pitchfork-industrial complex:

U guys can survey the reviews here - https://www.metacritic.com/music/fetch-the-bolt-cutters/fiona-apple/critic-reviews

― I eat fast foods (morrisp), Sunday, 19 April 2020 16:35 (seventeen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

That's why I use RYM. Everything (more or less) is covered, and every opinion is catered for. Not that many people are making a good fist of critiquing the Fiona Apple. (You think my liveblog yesterday was bad? You should read the RYM comment-box and negative reviews, lol)

an escape from certain hiveminds

Emphasis on 'certain'. Still, it's better than (almost) nothing.

the mere presence of negative reviews is pretty fuckin value-neutral to me if those negative reviews refuse to engage with the material cf. those people calling the fiona record "the ultimate karen album"

also there are way more people in that comment box talking about anthony fucking fantano, speaking of catered-for opinions

"thank god there's some difference of opinion here, even if the writing is garbage and no one knows what they're talking about"

Specifically, I'd much rather listen to some old Litmus records.

Lol I played with this band, unless it's a different one (there seem to be several)

btw if you're constantly railing against certain hiveminds i'd argue you haven't escaped them at all

With all due respect, Brad, sometimes I get the feeling that ‘engaging with the material’ means hearing it the way you do. Which is fair in some sense – our value judgments about art are never entirely subjective... to ourselves.

i mean, specifically concerning lj's liveblog, it was like he was hearing it through the pitchfork score instead of listening to the record or having any real engagement with the artist or what she's been trying to do. fair to hear it and feel unaffected or even annoyed by it but it trips into reactionary when you make it all about this self-satisfied striking against the dominant narrative

also you'll all find this unsurprising but i agree that our value judgments about art are never entirely subjective!