www.rateyourmusic.com C/D?

True. Literally takes one to know one.

this is all making rym seem more endearing than I assumed it was just a few minutes ago tbh

― the quar on drugs (Simon H.)

it is incredibly endearing! seriously i've found so much rad music through that site. much as i'll bitch about the site, it's not like i actually hate "egyptian shumba" or anything.

my current take is that "zolo" is a retroactively constructed and arbitrary genre - but that's not, honestly, the crux of my discomfort. none of the '80s artists who are currently classified as "zolo" would have identified themselves as such at the time. that makes me uncomfortable to a certain extent, there's an element of appropriation to retroactively canonize, say, kate bush as a "zolo goddess" or whatever, _particularly_ given the demographics of the people who are doing so. it's... the framing, the genres rym praise and uplift and in some cases basically _create_ - the same sort of thing that's been happening with RA of late.

― Kate (rushomancy), Wednesday, August 5, 2020 12:11 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is my take, too, only far better articulated than it would have been coming from me. I like a lot of the stuff that gets lumped into this category, but the reason for my opposition to it existing as a "genre" is pretty well summed up by Kate's post. I love to go through the lists on there where people obviously put a lot of thought into it (not the "I will out-obscure you now!" ones), and if "zolo" was just one of those lists, then I'd probably be able to live with it. Probably shouldn't have brought it up in the first place ha.

score another one for 'zolo is a nonsense, yours, a fan of lots of 'zolo''

imo It's extremely dumb for them to go through every single release and tag "female vocals" or "male vocals."

However I definitely agree with those upthread who found it extremely helpful that they now embed every Bandcamp release on its own page.

imo It's extremely dumb for them to go through every single release and tag "female vocals" or "male vocals."

― billstevejim

well at least it seems to be done right - records featuring trans women on vocals are tagged as "female vocals". so i approve!

I'm in the mood for some "male vocals" tonight

There's also an 'androgynous vocals' tag. The overall guiding principle is anal, sure, but it seems pretty inclusive to me.

So this Sonemic thing? (Sonic + anemic?) Are they mining the RYM site to make list articles and Spotify playlists?

https://rateyourmusic.com/feature/sonemic-selects-black-sounds/

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2XLwpm5AHRIgSUotLss175

2020 | Sonemic Selects

A curated selection of tracks from the top-charting singles, EPs, and albums of 2020 on Rate Your Music / Sonemic.

A few weeks ago I reported a French black metal album for fash lyrics (the speaker describes himself as an 'eternally wandering Aryan' who worries that Spain will be overrun by 'Berber scum'). Still no acknowledgement to this day.

I don't think it ought to be removed from RYM's catalogue outright, but adding the usual disclaimer does, I think, make a difference:

This page has been marked by our userbase as describing content that contains Nazi/National Socialist material.

RYM does not host, sell, or distribute this material, and we do not agree with the opinions expressed by those who created/recorded it.

We have included these works in the RYM database for reference. It's our goal to document the existence of all film and music recordings, whether or not we agree with the content. We do not believe that an effective strategy in fighting these ideologies is to pretend that these recordings don't exist; in fact, it hinders those who want to speak against it by denying them a forum to educate others about the hateful content contained within the recordings.

If you are involved in recording a project marked by our users as Nazi/NSBM material and wish to refute this claim, then please submit a feedback (bottom of the page) with your contact information or an explanation and we will get in touch with you.

Major site update with tons of new features. The charts are wild and there are new subscription modes.

looks way better than that horrible beta site update i looked at a few months ago, musonic or whatever

Agreed, it's much nicer. Lots of cool touches like easily setting listening, genre tag clouds, a much better organised split between the main chart and esoteric.

one thing I'm not seeing is upcoming releases - my 'new releases' page only has stuff that's been released in the last month or so, nothing coming up in the future. that was my primary way of finding out when artists I liked were releasing new music. did it just move somewhere?

yeah they've improved a lot from last time i looked at the beta, i'm impressed

it seems like the upcoming releases section is gone but there's a lot of people complaining about it in the feedback thread so maybe they'll add it back?

it was really nice b/c basically every artist I'm interested in I've rated on that site, whereas the "upcoming" on Discogs is pretty much all reissues and comps, mostly by bands that are only in my collection because I bought one of their records for a dollar

otherwise new design is pretty nice

oh cool, it's back. guess they listened

It still looks pretty awful on mobile.

oh cool, it's back. guess they listened

Where? In the 'my new releases' section I'm still only seeing like two upcoming releases.

Oh, ignore me. It's in it's usual place. Would be nice if they integrate the two though.

*its...

Not only is RYM woefully lacking in the classical department (loads of missing releases + extra gatekeeping before you can add them yourself – basically a full time job), it’s in the throes of a tiny cabal of pseudo enthusiasts who rate everything between 0.5 and 1.5 and I can’t imagine a more joyless, detestable bunch (their overall taste is usually shit, to boot, as their precious few 4.5s tend to demonstrate).

I was listening to Younghi Pagh-Paan’s Silken Thread (Wergo, 2020) last night and thinking about what a stupidly underrated composer she is and how much I enjoy this particular album, only to check, out of idle curiosity, whether it had been added to the database. Sure enough, the usual suspects slapped a 1 and a 0.5 on it, respectively, and I just can’t imagine keeping up one’s edgelord act for this long.

It’s also trivially easy to correct for, RYM can just silently drop all ratings from people who rate 3000+ albums.

Yeah the different cabals out to ruin most genres are obnoxious, see basically any mainstream pop record too. Not sure I agree with Siegbran's fix though, I mean I myself have more than 3,000 records in my collection and all rated. I'd hate to lose those.

I mean, don't get me wrong. That site is filled with awful people and I'm very happy that I've never even set foot into the forums over there. But I long ago started tracking my collection there and I find it useful for that.

the site does deweight negative ratings from people who give a lot of negative ratings

those classical edgelords need to be uh yeeted into the sun (i believe that's the au courant terminology) tho

Modern Icaruses, truly.

whereas i tend to give positive ratings, so if i rate something low, it fucking means something

looking at you, cigarettes after sex, the worst band in the world

I’m pretty much the same. I don’t actively seek out music I’m unlikely to enjoy so most of my negative ratings are for hyped releases I want to dis numerically (‘cause I can’t help but check some of them out) and disappointments. I also only recently resumed rating stuff after deleting all of my stars a while back so the overall grading scheme skews even more heavily than usual toward the upper end, since I started by re-adding almost every single 4.0+ album I can think of. A couple of years should correct that tendency, though.

I don’t actively seek out music I’m unlikely to enjoy

yeah i put my time in on RYM and one of the main life lessons i learned was that its pretty easy to avoid hearing a lot of music that you hate. anyone with a significant amount of 1 or .5 ratings is automatically suspect imo. i also made a point to not rate anything without posting a review as well, so a lot of stuff that i didnt have a coherent opinion on other than realizing right away that i hated it or it was Not For Me, i wouldnt bother rating it, just move on, so after thousands of ratings i feel like i probably had vanishingly small amounts of 1s and .5s.

Yeah, that’s a solid policy. I only rate something 3.0+ if I’ve heard it at least twice. For lower ratings, life’s just too short, so I don’t bother giving them another spin in most cases, unless it very clearly feels like I’m missing something essential that I could grasp some day.

For instance, if we stick to last year’s chart toppers, I generally like Fiona Apple and clipping. so I felt the need to hear their latest at least twice before giving them a middling rating but I don’t care enough for Lianne La Havas’s blandcore to revise my opinion.

Lianne La Havas’s blandcore

this marks the official opening of EOY hostilities and I am so here for it

I’m sad to report that I’ll be sitting out this year’s main ILM poll so you can expect the rollout’s positivity quotient to shoot up by at least 200%.

i have some bugbears, possibly

la havas is great imo, clipping was equally enjoyable. i can't handle fiona apple for some reason.

La Havas and Apple are both easy to like, it's Clipping I can't seem to handle.
For all the dud responses, it seems a lot of ILXors have an account on RYM. A list would be nice. That way we can generate a Top of the year and also cancel all the polls.

My EOY picks (still in progress for a couple of more weeks):

https://rateyourmusic.com/list/pomenitul/2020-highlights-in-progress/

xp haha. Like some others here, I just use it as a listening log. For that: Classic. Only when the poll here comes around do I really look back, re-listen to more things and try to sort it all out. I don't treat rating seriously (that would mean multiple listens before I've "logged" anything). If I just make it to the end of an album it's getting at least a 3. I've got many 4's to sort out for the poll.

https://rateyourmusic.com/list/o_nate/best-music-of-2020/

still in progress

Am I just a bit slow catching up with a recent design tweak? Quite like it. (As someone who predominantly uses it for search I've been screaming for a larger search box for ages.)

It came into effect like 3h ago, so not slow at all! I quite like it too.

I figured it must have been fairly new but one can never be sure...

looks nice but uh...how do you edit your reviews now?

Hmmm… looks like that's no longer an option.

good to see it's not just me

I know shitpost-style reviews would get unpublished and you'd be barred from trying to review that album again, I figured maybe they thought my reviews were so good that they didn't want me to ever change them

Ratings as of this writing: 73,041

How.

https://rateyourmusic.com/~Vivnm