Whose opinions do you trust the most: Music buying public or Music Critics?

I thought blurred lines was reviled from the off?

#5 single in the 2013 Pazz & Jop: https://www.villagevoice.com/2014/01/15/the-village-voices-pazz-jop-critics-poll-top-10-singles-by-year-1979-2013/

It’s a great single

That Pazz and Jop Top Ten summary is pretty nice, somehow never saw that.

At this point, I pretty much only trust algorithms. I've been training Spotify Hipster Boyfriend so long, and so hard, as to what I actually *like*, that he does get his 'made for you' and 'release radar' playlists pretty spot on, usually at least 50% stuff I am genuinely interested in.
― Extractor Fan (Branwell with an N), Friday, September 4, 2020 9:41 AM (two weeks ago)

That's the theory, but for every brilliant suggestion fueled by state-of-the-art awesome AI technology, there's five generic no-hopers who bypass all that fancy AI and just buy their way into your 'made for you' and 'release radar', which makes listening to those playlist a mostly tedious experience for me, and it's only getting worse.

Back when there really were career music critics who could write long, nuanced stuff then they held greatest sway over me. Wasn't until '86 ish that I looked to get a critic's recommendation verified by someone else before buying. These days I will take a personal recommendation over any writers still on the circuit other than maybe Richard Williams and Alex Ross.

xp

as far as I can tell, Release Radar is there to give you new releases that involve artists that you are following on Spotify. I happen to follow a huge number of artists in current genres like afropop and dancehall, where people drop new tracks all the time and do lots of features, so I get a handsome 200, mostly* relevant, ones each week, of which a small fraction is carried over from the previous week. (there’s always a few non-relevant releases by artists that share the same name with someone I’m following - no biggie, shit happens).

I’m not sure, but I assume that if you’re following a limited number of artists and/or ones that are not in the habit of releasing new material regularly, Spotify fills up your quota with stuff through its algorithms.

Wait, what, 200? I get 30, and don’t think I could handle 200 tbh

neither can I!

...but do keep in mind that the large majority of these are singles, not multi-track albums

It certainly helps to follow artists, but it also just works off stuff you have merely liked or added to a playlist.

(One problem I have is, I've made a couple of classical playlists - and classical tracks tend to list composer, orchestra, conductor and any soloists in the artist, so you can end up with anything by any of these randos turning up in your suggestions.)

If there's stuff that persistently turns up that you do not want to hear, just keep hitting 'do not play this artist' until they go away. I don't know that the 'buy your way onto playlists' thing actually works that way. I was speaking quite a lot earlier this year, to the management of a band who were trying to push their new album. You can certainly pay to push your stuff higher to people who have already expressed some kind of interest in that band (following, liking, adding to playlists) but targeting people who liked adjacent stuff was surprisingly difficult.

Finally located that Do Not Play button, thanks

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I VOTED

Same. Went with the Critical Establishment in the end, and I already regret it.

Shame on you

My answer is B and C (And yes, I know there isn't a C)

C = diehard music fans who might as well be critics but don't write

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

65 music critics (-1 aka yours truly) can't be wrong.

Raymond Cummings otm

65 music critics (-1 aka yours truly) can't be wrong.

so some turkeys dont vote for christmas then

One monkey don't stop no show.

Ha ha god bless you.

https://rateyourmusic.com/list/schmidtt/rolling-stones-500-worst-reviews-of-all-time-work-in-progress/13/p

Wow