TS: RYM vs. Metacritic

I don't want to ask, really I don't, it's just that I feel this strange uncontrollable urge that I'm powerless to resist....

I think he's flabbergasted that an album by a comedian (i.e. no music) made a list. Which makes him a musicist, apparently...

Aaaaah, now that would explain things.

Like why I'd never 'eard of 'im before.

"Which makes him a musicist, apparently..."

Are you sure he's not a comedist?

It's true. Metacritic also has blind spots with respect to hard rock, classic rock and metal in general. And they often assign numerical scores which have no correlation with the actual review. I used to laugh when my stuff would get sampled and was clearly a serious putdown or shredding would get a mediocre number in the yellow. I'm betting that happens systematically with many others which were sampled. It's better suited to aggregation of movies since the job is a lot less intensive.

As for the rest, no experience, not interested to make cost effective.

Rewind: Music from 10, 20, and 30 Years Ago This Month

As we did in October, September, August, June and July, we look back at key albums released 10, 20, and 30 years ago this month. This month, we remember November 2000, November 1990, and November 1980.

Albums from November 2000

Key Release:
The Sophtware Slump 81
by Grandaddy

KEY RELEASE

THE SOPHTWARE SLUMP

BY GRANDADDY

!!!!!!!!

K, so, Metacritic. I've been wondering at the way the critics' ratings of music are nearly all green ("universal acclaim") with a very few yellow ("mixed") ratings and virtually no red. Whereas the movies seem to have more of a bell curve. Is it that movies are easier to criticize without chalking it up to personal taste, or is all this new music just AWSSUM?

music is harder to fuck up than movies

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

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

Twitter brain

Yeah, def. If there's a prime example of an artist that could only exist under capitalism, it's obviously "the boss."

(In a neighboring timeline, there's an awful Yakov Smirnoff bit about a soviet answer to Springsteen called "the worker".)

enjoyed this exchange i just stumbled upon

https://i.imgur.com/UtAi8BO.png

GOD DAMMIT WHAT WAS THE ALBUM NOW I HAVE TO KNOW

I hate Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes and all that as much as anyone, but at the same time I don't know any other sites that collate links to reviews like that, so I use them both ten times a day.

even I don't know what album that is and I wrote the posts lmao

ohhhh it's that Silverchair side-project, obvs :D

(the song in question is Somewhere Down The Barrel)

rym absolutely adores the new bruno mars album so i'm not sure what planet i'm on

#2 for the year?? damn I almost wanna check that out.

it's a solid 70s pastiche, not at all a bad album but not really anything special either, so it's just baffling the way they've latched onto it this much. like rym is still not that interested in soul or r&b more generally so why this of all things lol. does .paak's involvement add sufficient cred to the project or something idk

"Random Access Memories" was also a high-profile pastiche and wildly popular, this doesn't surprise me at all.

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