Can someone explain to me how Rate Your Music "albums of the year" works?

I should have specified.. 40 out of the bottom 100... Now that I look closer it's probably closer to 20 songs, but it's still enough to offend me. I mean.. "Have You Seen Her Face" is in there.. And "At The Zoo." Are people seriously this stupid?

RYM has a special algorithm that is biased towards metal.

The secret is out.

The metal thing is because far fewer metalheads would rate anything metal as bad.. whereas in the worlds of indie-rock, pop, and hiphop, there will always be haters, haters, and more haters.

I think it's more like that "official" music journalists who write the "official" best albums lists have a bias against metal, and sites like that correct the bias.

I think it's more like who the fuck gives a shit about RYM?

Personally I don't like metal at all, but it has always seemed to me that its popularity doesn't really correlate with its critical acclaim.

I think it's more like who the fuck gives a shit about RYM?

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I think it's more like who the fuck gives a shit about RYM ILM?

ok. ta.

(cc @castleb0y) pic.twitter.com/qyrZIfXLEN

— Adventures in Rating Music (@NOTrateyrmusic) May 25, 2021

every time i try to use this website i end up leaving in disgust at how much all these nerds hate pop

as well as music made by women in general

its better than it used to be in those regards but still sucks yeah

r&b remains a massive blind spot yeah, but i insist the place is slowly cleaning up its act

as well as music made by women in general

3 of last year's Top 5 were made by women

Indeed. And 6 of last year's Top 10 were made by women. Several of them are pop albums.

there are literally 2 women who aren't part of a band in the top 100 albums so fuck that

yeah that's a historical wrong that is yet to be righted, but recent trends are encouraging

mariah carey's rainbow is better than 90% of those albums and has an average of 2.86, fuck this site

RYM started in 2000, I bet like half of their active users today weren't even born then

It can be useful to find low rated albums you love, then find the people who rate it highly, and see what else they rate highly.

I am also disgusted when nerds fail to pay obeisance to mass culture.

helping mariah carey to punch up is poptimism in 2021, you didn't get the memo?

as if fucking radiohead isn't mass culture

like if you're an avant-nerd at least go all the way instead of just elevating middlebrow indie shite over pop/r&b

I am also disgusted when nerds fail to pay obeisance to mass culture.

― Sequel to Sadness (Sund4r), Wednesday, May 26, 2021 2:57 PM (thirty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this kind of tone-deaf reactionary thing 1) shows a deep lack of insight into how culture works and 2) is exactly the kind of dumb, reactionary thing that makes a site like rate your music so repellent, just a sea of that kind of bullshit to wade through.

nothing personal lol

please forget i posted anything in this thread

i'd take this line more seriously if they did so themselves. but fucking the bends has a higher rating than for alto or spiritual unity, and those are some of the most well known and widely acclaimed records of their type

i have found a lot of cool users with unusual special interests as well. even with many of them a kind of "you either like pop OR art-music" binary which this board has at least tried to challenge occasionally seems to be sort of the default assumption. and regardless they are still drowned out by the overwhelming redditry of the majority which i guess you have to filter out somehow to make the site usable

like if you're an avant-nerd at least go all the way instead of just elevating middlebrow indie shite over pop/r&b

OK, I'll accept the premise that fans of Jubilee Breakfast and Mdou Moctar are middlebrow indie fans. We can agree that their aesthetic is distinct from Mariah Carey's? Why shouldn't middlebrow indie fans have a site (not a professional journalistic outlet or scholarly journal but a fansite for randos to post scores and reviews) where they rate this music, without an obligation to give higher scores to 'pop' albums, which, by definition, already have a mass audience and significant media coverage (xp or free jazz for that matter - although afaict the difference in scores between The Bends and Spiritual Unity is 3.84/5 vs 3.81/5?)? Are you also offended by their neglect of contemporary country, Broadway musicals, or Bollywood soundtracks, all styles of music that are hugely important to vast numbers of people?

I'm not even especially a RYM fan. Reacting to this with disgust is what strikes me as curious, though.

Get rating, I guess? And if you wouldn't mind posting your handle there, I'd follow it (or however this would be termed on rym...I use it very casually)

xp

Er, Japanese Breakfast

i have done my bit towards downrating The Bends, just gotta wait for history to catch up with me i guess

one person is not going to reverse the rating trends of rym, they reinforce themselves

The Bends already had more than 13,000 ratings 10 years ago. I wonder how many of those people are still active there.

r&b ratings on this website remain pitiful even if the user base has allowed themselves to occasionally give an alt r&b record a 3.4

i know no user base is a monolith

Are you also offended by their neglect of contemporary country

yes

Music and cultural "taste" is backed up with correct arguments and facts, not "digging".

― Banaka™ (banaka), Wednesday, August 15, 2012 8:09 PM

Should people who don't like these styles of music not rate these records? Isn't it better that they are (presumably) listening to the records instead of ignoring them, even if they don't give them top marks?

if you listen but you don't engage or have no context for what you're listening to, are you really listening?

How are you supposed to gain context other than by continued listening? It seems like the message is "don't listen to these genres unless you already love them".

I think it's fair to argue that when you really engage with a given genre, even one you tend to dislike, you'll always find something that speaks to your sensibilities. But that 'something' or je ne sais quoi may only arise, say, 10% of the time. Can you really call yourself a 'fan' of said genre then? And why should you have to pretend you enjoy the remaining 90% that goes in one ear and out the other?

"are you also offended..." i mean slightly, and i would be more if i was into those things

"Why shouldn't middlebrow indie fans" because they already get pandered to enough and their tastes are painfully boring and racist and sexist and class-bound

what bothers me is something like "rockism" but that doesn't quite capture it - it's not just anti-pop but also *practically* disinterested in the fringes despite claiming a sort of theoretical interest (the big exception in this case is metal, which is not as fringe as it likes to think) - it's the assumption that something like radiohead whether you love it or hate it is automatically deserving of the level of time and attention and thoughtful analysis which neither mariah or anthony braxton is ever afforded in forums like these (i.e. RYM and the whole extended universe of subreddits, youtubers etc)

i know there are exceptions but they demonstrate the rule

i don't believe for a second that the people rating britney or mariah albums half a star have ever bothered to listen unless it's to confirm what they already knew

welp now Radiohead's in the top 5 shut it down

Good list.

Ratemypoo thread is that way

One for the 'Things people did in the 2000s' thread.

i have been rating a whole bunch of stuff but it feels a bit like pissing into the void at least for anything big. writing reviews would feel more consequential, if i had a clue how to write about music

ok i'm starting to see a bit more how this site can be useful. still think it's a shame about the nerds but i'm too medicated to be as pissed off as i was before. i guess you can learn to work around them

What's the difference between rate your music and best ever albums.com? I tend to conflate the two but haven't used either. I know that the AOTY lists on best ever albums are compiled from critics' lists as well as their internal user base, but no clue how it's weighted. Anything else?

rym is entirely user-ratings, critics lists don't come into its rankings, and it's way more active than bestalbumsever

ufo what's your username

rym is entirely user-ratings, critics lists don't come into its rankings,

Yes, that's what i was getting at, but didn't quite finish the thought (sorry)

it's way more active than bestalbumsever

Oh.

agree with the sentiment that ratings mean very little in the bigger picture — which is why i stopped. i ultimately wanted to do a write-up for everything i rated, even if it was just a three or four sentence paragraph. of course, it's much easier to just rate and move on, so i had to stop myself when i found i was either over or under ratings things strategically in an attempt to offset the overall average score.

will make a concerted effort to start rating more r+b. even though it's one of the things i listen to the most (especially in the last couple of years), i'm guilty of adding none of it to my discogs collection or rating anything on rym. i have a lot of free time these days, so maybe i'll get back to it.

sidebar / xpost to "bands that were once huge but are now mostly forgotten:: i wanted to get some war albums back in my collection and was very dismayed that the only thing available on amoeba.com is a hits collection. talk about a band that desperately needs one of those "original album classics" sets. ordered several thins from discogs, so i'm about to dig back in, in a very big way.

good thread revive.

I mostly just rate stuff I’ve heard so I see lists with stuff I’ve rated excluded. I don’t really care about the ratings so I give everything 3.5 or 4

I signed up about a decade ago, gave my favourite LPs 5/5, then wasn't sure what else to do there, can't be bothered to review everything I hear, barely even listen to albums anyway.

I do think it’s weird to “rate” (numerically) music that’s not yr cup of tea at all... Because if the number just reflects your distaste/disinterest, it’s not a “rating” that makes sense or has value as a critical judgment

This gets to something I've thought about before - taking this pov to its logical conclusion, literally no recording (or score) should ever get a negative review, since it had to succeed by at least one person's standards to be released in the first place. (Exceptions could possibly be made in e.g. an educational context where there are clear formal or technical goals to be achieved.) Greta Van Fleet are obviously doing something that is of value to large numbers of people; the haters are just unable to see, or appreciate, their perspective. There may be something to this! It would mean that "critical judgment" and "criticism" are themselves suspect concepts, which I think is part of why I eventually lost much interest in looking at music from that angle.

I keep thinking about the withering look Mariah Carey would give someone explaining what Rate Your Music is to her

Liking and disliking are both insuperable critical judgments. It's the (more or less avowed) quest for 'objective' criticism that strikes me as hopelessly quixotic. When I rate an album, I prefer to think of it as rating my encounter with that album at a given point in time. Besides, I listen to so much new music that I find it useful to jot down – be it in this most superficial of forms – which of these experiences were the most meaningful to me.

otm. I notice some users log some stuff without rating it. I take it that the site would then notify them about new releases by those artists? I might have some use for that (want to bulk up my catalog of liked things without re-listening right away and considering where on my hierarchy of likingness I'd put the release).

Do notifications exclude artists you have given negative ratings to? Where do ratings even become negative? Less than 3/5?

You automatically follow artists who contributed to an album you rated 3.5 and up. You can do so manually as well by searching for an artist's page and clicking the 'follow' button, so if you want to take advantage of that function, there's no need to rate anything.

Main artists, rather. Featurings and the like or even individual band members don’t count.

Thanks!

It would be cool if there were options for notifying on projects of other band members and featuring artists. The database seems to be the best thing around as far as linking people across projects.

You automatically follow artists who contributed to an album you rated 3.5 and up. You can do so manually as well by searching for an artist's page and clicking the 'follow' button, so if you want to take advantage of that function, there's no need to rate anything.

lol I might take my rating of Weezer's Blue album down to 3 just to avoid this, like god damn I just rated one album ten years ago

lol I don't blame you.

If you click on 'account', then head over to 'new music updates', you can uncheck the ones you no longer wish to follow.

taking this pov to its logical conclusion, literally no recording (or score) should ever get a negative review, since it had to succeed by at least one person's standards to be released in the first place

I don’t see how that’s the logical conclusion of what I wrote! The standards I’m talking about the reviewer / “critic.”

I don't particularly mind people downvoting stuff they don't like - someone's negative opinion has as much value as any rabid fan's positive opinion. Yes you get lower ratings for mainstream pop artists, but that's to be expected if you poll a group of highly critical, obsessive music collectors. It's like the eternal moaning by fans that critics should pay more attention to sales numbers or general popularity, that's not what they do. Sales charts or ticket sales numbers already give a good idea how charts look if you take a bigger slice of the population and remove all the downvotes (ie, people who hate Drake don't go to his gigs).

I'm fine with RYM being a reflection of what the niche cross section of society of music nerds think of an album, that's all want it to be. If I want to know what's the most popular among the general populace, I look at the sales charts or who's playing the biggest venues, if I want to know who pays Chinese clickfarms the most money, I look at the streaming charts and YouTube views.

It's like the eternal moaning by fans that critics should pay more attention to sales numbers or general popularity

this is BS too, though

look at the comments section of any youtube video, you see countless posts by fans deriding critics for not liking their idols enough

those could also be Chinese clickfarms though, who knows.

there is also the idea out there that if something is popular it must be bad, especially if it's popular with teenage girls. not usually expressed in such blunt terms of course.

(ftr, I meant it's BS when fans say that)

ultimately the issue with RYM is it's so self-selecting, not just in its userbase but in who's rating what kinds of albums. stuff like Mariah or Britney gets downvoted because everyone knows who they are, their music is ubiquitous and it stands to reason that a lot of people just don't like it. as opposed to the noise/metal/VGM stuff that's always highly rated, nobody's hearing this shit on the radio or giving it a shot even though they know it's not their thing, that's why they always do so well.

one good example of this is the album Spirit Phone - when it came out it got a lot of high ratings very fast b/c it was clearly not only his best album but also a really fun slice of wacky prog-pop, and if that's your thing then the album was obviously very good. this wound up placing it on the year-end charts, at #1 in fact, which caused a lot of people who'd never heard of him to check it out and find it obnoxious, causing the rating to tumble from like 4.3 to 3.6 in a few weeks. it's a bummer but I don't quite like the idea that only the fans of a particular thing should be rating it. it's important to take the total number of ratings into consideration.

there is also the idea out there that if something is popular it must be bad, especially if it's popular with teenage girls. not usually expressed in such blunt terms of course.

I don’t see how that’s the logical conclusion of what I wrote! The standards I’m talking about the reviewer / “critic.”

Arguably, every negative review reflects the critic's "disinterest/distaste" and failure to appreciate why the record succeeds by a different set of standards (which every record does). Christgau felt comfortable giving metal records negative reviews because he was an expert on rock music and metal records are rock records that fail by his standards of good rock music. You feel that you can't rate metal records you don't like bc you don't understand metal in and of itself. But at what point do you draw the line? Presumably someone who likes black metal more than deathcore (like myself) should maybe not review deathcore records. Someone who loves avant-garde black metal and is bored by traditional BM should perhaps stick to the former when there are people out there who love more trad BM and appreciate it better on its own terms - what about someone who prefers Victory Over the Sun to Liturgy? What right do they have to give Liturgy a negative review? Surely they just don't appreciate what Liturgy is doing in the way that Liturgy fans do. Etc.

yeah that's definitely arguable

as opposed to the noise/metal/VGM stuff that's always highly rated, nobody's hearing this shit on the radio or giving it a shot even though they know it's not their thing, that's why they always do so well.

this wound up placing it on the year-end charts, at #1 in fact, which caused a lot of people who'd never heard of him to check it out and find it obnoxious, causing the rating to tumble from like 4.3 to 3.6 in a few weeks.

why the record succeeds by a different set of standards (which every record does)

Some records are considered mediocre or even failures by the folks who released them, ha ha

Anyway, not sure there's a point in arguing this (especially in relation to RYM, which I don't use) – but I do think there's a meaning to being a thoughtful critic - and it doesn't involve "objectivity" or judging if an album succeeds from someone else's pov. What it does involve is recognizing if you are able to meaningfully assess a work in a way that would be useful to others.

Yeah exactly - in the end I don't care so much about ratings, they're helpful on a broad level - but if I read even one well written review that makes a good case, I'd happily give that record a chance even if nobody else likes it or the rating is shit.

The lowest I ever rate anything is 2.5, and that's about 2% of my total ratings. Generally I only rate things that I own in some form, and since I tend not to buy things I hate, I don't give many low ratings. Though I will cop to being the kind of nerd who sometimes obsesses over whether something deserves 3.5 or 4 stars.

Is there any context in which you would consider a one-star review "useful to others"?

Some records are considered mediocre or even failures by the folks who released them, ha ha

Often, there are cults who appreciate them despite this. At some point, someone had to think it was worth releasing. xps

Is there any context in which you would consider a one-star review "useful to others"?

Of course, I'm not arguing against negative reviews in general!

An example of an unhelpful positive review would be the famous "Shit, cat." Ryan S. probably didn't have the critical faculties to review that album at that time.

(see also many of the reviews I wrote in college, lol)

Yeah but those records get very few votes, the algorithm already takes care of these highly-rated-in-a-small-scene albums, you don't need downvoters for that.

in some cases yes but the black metal/VGM/anime contingent on RYM is definitely big enough to place those albums on the charts. that said I think the algorithm must've changed lately b/c I don't see as many of them in the year-by-year top 40 the way I used to.

But in a one-user-one-vote world that's what you'd want right? The issue isn't so much with the albums that are widely heard and voted down by people who dislike it, it's with the albums that attract only upvotes and manage to not get noticed by people who'd dislike it, aka the 'our secret club' thing.

right - I mean its as good a system as any, just funny to see an album be the victim of its own success in a way (that one is actually rated slightly lower than his previous one, despite it clearly being much better). I guess it all goes back to what pretty much everyone ITT is trying to say, the ratings & charts are useful but it's dumb to take them seriously

Seriously? With those opening 3 tracks?

Thinking about this, tbf the title track does raise it to two stars but "Sometimes" has negative value so we're back to one.

whaaaat... that song is the greatest. you need to try some dance steps in a stretchy all-white outfit, my friend :)

I'm wearing white pants. Perhaps I should try later on tonight, in the interest of informed criticism.

Yes - put yourself in Britney's pants!! (or one of the guys on the pier)

(I didn't mean that the way it sounded, lol)

you want him to steal the knickers of a dude doing dock work?

because they already get pandered to enough

Think I disagree with this too, actually.

When I rate an album, I prefer to think of it as rating my encounter with that album at a given point in time. Besides, I listen to so much new music that I find it useful to jot down – be it in this most superficial of forms – which of these experiences were the most meaningful to me.

This is pretty much how I use the site, too. I'm not concerned about how my score affects the overall score; my ratings are just for me and my horrible memory. Some days, if I'm having trouble deciding what to listen to, I'll go on the site and see what I've rated highly recently and go from there. Otherwise I end up forgetting about stuff I don't physically own after a while.

I will go back and change a rating to be higher if an album grows on me, but I don't do the opposite, because I like to remind myself that there's something about a particular record that had an impact on me at one point.