Acclaimed Music Forums

The individual artist poll is simply a survey of our favorite songs and albums by our favorite artists. There will be one survey a month, using the most recent forum artist poll to determine the order.


Previous Result:




June 2016: Radiohead
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3910



July 2016: David Bowie
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4025



August 2016: The Beatles
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4097



September 2016: Bob Dylan
Voting topic: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4279

Keeping up with that concept maybe Ye after Bowie would be logical

Kanye would be good, as would Prince. It's probably too early for someone like Kendrick, but maybe for more recent artists with smaller bodies of works, I could do two at a time.

Bowie and Prince should definitely be two of the next ones; I'm sure everyone's been listening to them quite a bit recently.

PJ Harvey would work well for artists who have recent releases. Plus, her work is less canonized than others, so the poll would be pretty unpredictable.

Now that Radiohead is complete, we shall move on to David Bowie. I was planning to stick to 10 albums and 25 songs, is that alright with everyone? Different bands should have different ranges, but I think 10 and 25 are a good upper cap. I could easily rank more than 10 Bowie albums, but I'd rather people have to cut their 11th favorite than throw in a random 15th favorite, you know?

You should make both the minimum and the maximum for David Bowie to be 10 albums as he had a lengthy career and 10 albums would just be enough for people looking to explore his discography.

I went with 7 for Radiohead since that's how many top 1000 albums they have, plus an additional spot for AMSP (because I'm betting on it ending up the top 1000). David Bowie currently has 9, and I'd also bet on Blackstar making that range, so a minimum 10 might work. It's one of those things where I don't want people to feel excluded if they haven't listened to everything...but if someone hasn't listened to all of an artist's essentials, they probably shouldn't be voting for that artist in the first place.

Amazing work on the Radiohead poll, BleuPanda. You have really established yourself as the poll maker here!

For future polls, I hope it's ok to discuss the vote distributions. I noticed that the shape was very different for songs and albums in the Radiohead poll:

BleuPanda wrote:Vote distribution (songs):
1: 100
2: 75
3: 60
4: 50
5: 43
6: 37
7: 32
8: 28
9: 25
10: 22
11: 20
12: 18
13: 16
14:14
15: 12
16: 10
17: 9
18: 8
19: 7
20: 6
21: 5
22: 4
23: 3
24: 2
25: 1

Albums:
1: 50
2: 37
3: 28
4: 22
5: 18
6: 14
7: 10
8: 7
9: 4
10: 1

I think the distribution for albums is better (maybe just make the 10th place worth something more). Here's a new suggestion for songs:
1: 50
2: 45
3: 40
4: 36
5: 33
6: 30
7: 28
8: 26
9: 24
10: 22
11: 20
12: 18
13: 16
14:14
15: 12
16: 10
17: 9
18: 8
19: 7
20: 6
21: 5
22: 4
23: 3
24: 2
25: 1

In both cases, the mid-positions (5,5 and 13 respectively) are worth 16 of the maximum 50 points.

Henrik wrote:Amazing work on the Radiohead poll, BleuPanda. You have really established yourself as the poll maker here!

For future polls, I hope it's ok to discuss the vote distributions. I noticed that the shape was very different for songs and albums in the Radiohead poll:

BleuPanda wrote:Vote distribution (songs):
1: 100
2: 75
3: 60
4: 50
5: 43
6: 37
7: 32
8: 28
9: 25
10: 22
11: 20
12: 18
13: 16
14:14
15: 12
16: 10
17: 9
18: 8
19: 7
20: 6
21: 5
22: 4
23: 3
24: 2
25: 1

Albums:
1: 50
2: 37
3: 28
4: 22
5: 18
6: 14
7: 10
8: 7
9: 4
10: 1

I think the distribution for albums is better (maybe just make the 10th place worth something more). Here's a new suggestion for songs:
1: 50
2: 45
3: 40
4: 36
5: 33
6: 30
7: 28
8: 26
9: 24
10: 22
11: 20
12: 18
13: 16
14:14
15: 12
16: 10
17: 9
18: 8
19: 7
20: 6
21: 5
22: 4
23: 3
24: 2
25: 1

In both cases, the mid-positions (5,5 and 13 respectively) are worth 16 of the maximum 50 points.

Later today, I'll check the poll results if I used this formula. I want to see what these results would look like; using your suggested formula would naturally weaken songs with less votes, and I can't tell without seeing it in practice if that would be detrimental.

Great job as usual, Bleu.

Can't wait for the next installment. And I do agree with the different ranges idea simply because so many artists have such a broad body of work, it becomes not only helpful but necessary to narrow the field at times

Here is the Radiohead song list using Henrik's formula instead of mine:


1. Paranoid Android (Change: 0)
2. Fake Plastic Trees (Change: 0)
3. Creep (Change: 0)
4. No Surprises (Change: 0)
5. Idioteque (Change: 1)
6. Karma Police (Change: -1)
7. Pyramid Song (Change: 0)
8. Everything In Its Right Place (Change: 0)
9. Street Spirit (Fade Out) (Change: 0)
10. Reckoner (Change: 0)
11. How to Disappear Completely (Change: 1)
12. The National Anthem (Change: -1)
13. Let Down (Change: 0)
14. Burn the Witch (Change: 2)
15. Climbing Up the Walls (Change: -1)
16. There There (Change: 3)
17. High and Dry (Change: -2)
18. Exit Music (For a Film) (Change: 0)
19. Lucky (Change: -2)
20. 15 Step (Change: 3)
21. Jigsaw Falling Into Place (Change: -1)
22. Just (Change: 0)
23. Weird Fishes/Arpeggi (Change: -2)
24. All I Need (Change: 0)
25. Nude (Change: 0)
26. Daydreaming (Change: 0)
27. True Love Waits (Change: 0)
28. Lotus Flower (Change: 0)
29. My Iron Lung (Change: 1)
30. Airbag (Change: -1)
31. Planet Telex (Change: 0)
32. Electioneering (Change: 1)
33. Myxomatosis (Change: -1)
34. Where I End and You Begin (Change: 2)
35. Optimistic (Change: 0)
36. Knives Out (Change: 4)
37. You and Whose Army? (Change: 0)
38. Codex (Change: 0)
39. In Limbo (Change: -5)
40. Subterranean Homesick Alien (Change: 1)
41. 2 + 2 = 5 (Change: 4)
42. Morning Bell (Change: -3)
43. Motion Picture Soundtrack (Change: 1)
44. Bodysnatchers (Change: -1)
45. The Bends (Change: 1)
46. Talk Show Host (Change: 4)
47. Life in a Glass House (Change: 5)
48. A Wolf at the Door (Change: 5)
49. I Might Be Wrong (Change: -2)
50. Present Tense (Change: -1)

Cuttooth would end up at #53 (down 11), and Fitter Happier down to 57 (down 9).

Altogether, the results don't look that different. Songs with more votes benefited, and this formula appears to do a good job blocking a rogue opinion from breaking into the top 50 (but as much as I like seeing Fitter Happier fall out, Cuttooth also deserves more credit among their songs...). I guess the question is, does a song like There There deserve to be three spots higher simply because more people throw it into their song list? Part of the benefit of my formula is that it really spaces out our absolute favorites from moderate favorites that might be there due to familiarity. Either way, the difference isn't much, and I'd like others thoughts. What it comes down to, for me, is whether it's important to block a single uncommon opinion from having much influence. What's more important: a list that represents the board-wide consensus as close as possible or one that allows unique opinions to shine through?

For albums, I might simply make the last few drop 2 points instead of 3, as such:
1: 50
2: 37
3: 28
4: 22
5: 18
6: 14
7: 10
8: 8
9: 6
10: 4

Personally I prefer the list with Henrik's formula because if it's an AMF poll, I think it should reflect the board's opinion and not allow songs that only one or two members listed. That's why I think it's a good idea to list people's favorites that didn't make the list beforehand so they still get their deserved attention.

I'm starting to think we shouldn't do Prince.

Why is that?



I've been questioning whether to do Prince due to the availability of his work. Do you have another issue?

BleuPanda wrote:I've been questioning whether to do Prince due to the availability of his work.

This. I mean, Sweepstakes Ron knows a website that has most of Prince's essentials albums, but how many people will actually go there and listen to the albums? I don't think most of them would go out and buy albums just to make a list for this game. Thus, this is why I question whether we should do Prince due to this. If it wasn't for this and the albums were widely available on Spotify, YouTube, and such, I would totally be for doing Prince especially in this year of his death.

I think it'd be a good idea to put it off until his music magically gets added to a mainstream source.

After this, I might follow the results of the next artist poll (interrupting it if a big new release inspires us to break the cycle). Does that sound good to everyone? That would likely mean The Beatles, Bob Dylan, and The Rolling Stones as our next three.

One way or another, I hope we get to Prince by April of next year.

I've been really into Jimi Hendrix a lot lately, and it would be interesting to see how his (mostly posthumous) albums are ranked after the obvious top 3, and how other fans would rank his songs.

Added a link to the Radiohead results in the first post, so this topic can be a central hub.

Added to the first post.

Updated again with Bob Dylan's results; I'd ask if we could pin this to the top, but it's kind of cluttered, isn't it?