Rate Your Music - Latest

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b1mb0w
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Rate Your Music - Latest

Post by b1mb0w »

https://consequence.net/2023/02/to-pimp ... top-album/

Rate Your Music’s Top Albums of All Time
01. Kendrick Lamar – To Pimp a Butterfly
02. Radiohead – OK Computer
03. Pink Floyd – Wish You Were Here
04. King Crimson – In the Court of the Crimson King
05. Radiohead – Kid A
06. Madvillain – Madvillainy
07. My Bloody Valentine – Loveless
08. Radiohead – In Rainbows
09. Pink Floyd – The Dark Side of the Moon
10. The Beatles – Abbey Road
11. Kendrick Lamar – good kid, m.A.A.d city
12. David Bowie – The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars
13. The Velvet Underground & Nico – The Velvet Underground & Nico
14. Talking Heads – Remain in Light
15. Mingus – The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady
16. The Beatles – Revolver
17. John Coltrane – A Love Supreme
18. Nas – Illmatic
19. Black Sabbath – Paranoid
20. Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Attenas to Heaven!
b1mb0w
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Re: Rate Your Music - Latest

Post by b1mb0w »

Not eligible I believe, but I have a soft spot for Rate Your Music.

2 Radiohead albums in the top 5 and Wish You Were Here is the highest rated Pink Floyd album. What's not to like.

To Pimp A Butterfly is an incredible album, so who is to say it is not the best.

Loveless in the Top 10, another tick from me.

But... In Rainbows better than anything by the Beatles? Abbey Road is the best Beatles album? Yeah, not eligible after all.
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BleuPanda
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Re: Rate Your Music - Latest

Post by BleuPanda »

I really don't get people's fascination with RYM ratings here. Nothing about it feels like a meaningful reflection of anything. It's a user-based website that cultivated a very specific demographic early on. I'm assuming OK Computer is the most rated album there and it only has about 80,000 votes; the next ones up sit around 60,000. Compare this to IMDB or Goodreads where the most famous works literally have millions of votes. It's a niche inside a niche, and nothing suggests to me that the people there are particularly well-informed; you can generally guess what an album's relative score will be there based purely on genre. Their top choices are certainly more artful than comparable websites covering other mediums, but their choices also suggest the average user cannot understand the concept of subtlety. The horrid interface doesn't help matters; being an active RYM user requires someone to really want their opinion to be heard which, again, is a very specific type of person that can't be taken as representative of anything but itself.
Jackson
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Re: Rate Your Music - Latest

Post by Jackson »

BleuPanda wrote: Fri Feb 03, 2023 12:44 am Compare this to IMDB or Goodreads where the most famous works literally have millions of votes.
I disagree here, RYM is much more useful than IMDB or Goodreads is in finding new things. Whether you like the very top of the charts or not, it can be an amazing resource in efficiently finding new, often lesser-known music that could be of interest to you. I generally prefer RYM's lists to aggregate critics' list, or at least think they should be looked at in tandem.
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BleuPanda
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Re: Rate Your Music - Latest

Post by BleuPanda »

I wasn't saying Goodreads or IMDb were better in that regard - only that they are largely better in capturing popular opinion. It's impossible to tell who RYM actually represents. Sure, there are some great albums I think people only learned about due to the high ratings there, but there are just as many great albums being buried there because they aren't in the right genres.
Pepperami
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Re: Rate Your Music - Latest

Post by Pepperami »

No Kevin Federline? I'm shocked 😲 xx
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Rob
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Re: Rate Your Music - Latest

Post by Rob »

BleuPanda wrote: Fri Feb 03, 2023 1:54 am I wasn't saying Goodreads or IMDb were better in that regard - only that they are largely better in capturing popular opinion. It's impossible to tell who RYM actually represents.
The weird thing is that I kind of got a feeling to what it represents, at least as much as possible for a database with so many users. They highly favor a technical and intricate approach to music, which explains the general high ratings for metal, Radiohead, prog rock, art pop and abstract hiphop. There is a distaste for the currently popular, so current pop albums fare very badly (any page regarding, say Billie Eilish, should be visited only for the same reason as one visits a train wreck), to say nothing of the hatred towards music that can be thought of as 'hip'. However, usually hated genres can score very well if the artist is an unknown.

The thing is that the stuff RYM on average loves are things that critics tend to ignore. The initial end of year consensus of critics tends to be exclusively for well-promoted music and actually ignores things like metal, world music and abstract hiphop altogether. Especially since the rise of poptimism the critics lists as an aggregate have become far less deep. That's why I use RYM and critic lists in tandem. Both have significant strengths and weaknesses, but they fill each other's gaps rather well.
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prosecutorgodot
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Re: Rate Your Music - Latest

Post by prosecutorgodot »

I think RYM is also a great place to get info on records and the people who made them. I love the music history side of things. The credits are especially distinctive.
Gillingham
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Re: Rate Your Music - Latest

Post by Gillingham »

BleuPanda wrote: Fri Feb 03, 2023 1:54 am I wasn't saying Goodreads or IMDb were better in that regard - only that they are largely better in capturing popular opinion. It's impossible to tell who RYM actually represents. Sure, there are some great albums I think people only learned about due to the high ratings there, but there are just as many great albums being buried there because they aren't in the right genres.
Exactly because RYM doesn't represent popular opinion, the ratings tend to be much more useful to me than ratings on especially IMDB. Within genres it's very useful to know how certain albums compare to other albums. The only thing I get from IMDB ratings is that if it's below - say - a 6, the movie will generally be pretty bad (or at least very controversial). Higher scores don't give me a lot of useful information.
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Rob
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Re: Rate Your Music - Latest

Post by Rob »

One thing that helped me appreciate RYM more is setting the default review sorting on 'Positive'. Not because I can't take negative reviews, but because the normally default sorting is by votes and RYM users, like movie equivalent Letterboxd, tend to upvote snarky and "clever" yet empty reviews without reason.
TheLastEnemy
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Re: Rate Your Music - Latest

Post by TheLastEnemy »

prosecutorgodot wrote: Fri Feb 03, 2023 3:26 pm I think RYM is also a great place to get info on records and the people who made them. I love the music history side of things. The credits are especially distinctive.
Likewise, it's my go-to for who's in a band, and what they've released. I also enjoy the album, single and EP charts for the year so far, which update at 1700 GMT on a Tuesday.
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spiderpig
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Re: Rate Your Music - Latest

Post by spiderpig »

BleuPanda wrote: Fri Feb 03, 2023 1:54 am I wasn't saying Goodreads or IMDb were better in that regard - only that they are largely better in capturing popular opinion. I
Which is usually not what users of a website called "Acclaimed Music" want. ;)

I understand why someone would like to know what the current popular opinion is. But frankly I very rarely - if ever - need that. And if I do, I'll just peek sales/streaming figures.

Popular opinion is very unreliable as it is largely influenced by factors that have nothing to do with how good something is. Here's a couple of examples.

Prior to the latest season of Stranger Things, the average person was not listening to Kate Bush. Then all of a sudden, everyone was listening to Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill". The song wasn't new, so it wasn't because of that. The song didn't change. People's tastes certainly didn't radically change in a matter of a couple of a weeks!

The four Beatles singles that preceded "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" flopped in the US. And then, when that song was released, those other 4 songs were suddenly big hits everywhere, just weeks/months after people were only showing some fairly modest interest in those songs.

The masses are herded toward a very narrow set of options. They simply only get to see very few works, therefore their opinion isn't as informed as someone who has access to a larger set of works (say, critics or enthusiasts of a particular art form). Hey, this is not a "wake up sheeple" speech. I am one of the sheeple in many areas that don't particularly interest me much. But I learned to value the opinion of people who spend more time with and know more items of a particular area.

The opinion of the masses is subject to business decisions and luck. It's also averse to demanding stuff, since they lack the experience and the willingness to subject themselves to sink time in developing a taste for that.

Now I would say that IMDb generally has better ratings that Goodreads.

In fact many of the downsides of RYM (namely cultists of a certain niche genre) will be present in Goodreads, without any of the upsides. In fact, Goodreads makes a remarkably sparse use of its gigantic number of user ratings and other information, while RYM will allow you much better access to much more information and to customize this information. You can easily learn what are the best rock EPs in Spain in the opinion of the people you follow, while Goodreads doesn't give you access to even a basic "best books in Goodreads" ranking, like IMDb does.

RYM, despite its flaws, still gives you pretty solid recommendations. As Rob said,
That's why I use RYM and critic lists in tandem.
I used to do that but I'm finding that critics lists are becoming shallower (which, I think, is the opposite of what you should expect from critics) and RYM is becoming better at giving you recommendations.

Here are some suggestions if you want a ranking approach (which you possibly do, since you're using AM):

1. For music, I suggest you pick a large number of active RYM users whose tastes you respect (finding those is a science in itself - I can give people tips and I also appreciate giving tips on how to find them). Follow them and you'll be able to build a great custom list! One where black metal isn't there as much as in the default list (which is a pretty good list already)... Just make sure to follow A LOT of people and try to drop users that are not active to avoid biasing your list against recent releases.
(There's also AM/AMF but you already know these...)

2. For films, I suggest... RYM. Really, I do. Forget IMDb, RYM has the best movie list on the web (even better than its music list, I'd say!). Although music-related films do much better there than they probably should, for obvious reasons. But apart from that, I think it's unbeatable.

3. For TV series, I would suggest senscritique.com - the only problem being that it's a French website. In French, you know. But hey, I use it and my French is not even that good.

4. For books, senscritique.com is also good but I also implemented a similar approach as the one I described above for RYM. Pick users and follow them. The data will not be presented as well as in RYM, but it's decent.
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BleuPanda
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Re: Rate Your Music - Latest

Post by BleuPanda »

Again, I don't really agree with it being better. When I see the RYM list, my immediate thought is that it is largely made by straight white guys, probably in their 20s and 30s, who spend a lot of time online. Which, yes, most of us share similar tastes because those demographics largely line up with this forum. But treating it on a higher level feels like saying the person in the mirror has great taste.

The userbase there largely does not appear able to differentiate between good and bad pop music and seem to have similar issues with stuff that falls on the softer or lyrical-focused side. If I counted correctly, 14 of the top 25 albums of 2022 chosen by critics have female vocalists; only 7 of the RYM top 25 does. RYM has always been aggressively masculine. As someone who likes aggressive music, it's nice to have a place to find it! But I also don't think it should be at the expense of artists like Rosalia and Angel Olsen.
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spiderpig
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Re: Rate Your Music - Latest

Post by spiderpig »

BleuPanda wrote: Wed Feb 08, 2023 3:02 pm it is largely made by straight white guys
Ironically, as I write this, this year's top album on RYM is by a trans person. Although yeah, it'll sink next week.

But hey, since you bring up whiteness, let's compare RYM's all-time albums with AM's all-time albums.
RYM's all-time album is an album specifically about Blackness.
Let's see how many albums sung by non-white artists (to borrow your criteria) are on the all-time top 10, 20, etc. of RYM and AM:

RYM: Top 10: 3; Top 25: 8; Top 50: 14;Top 100: 31
AM: Top 10: 1; Top 25: 5; Top 50: 13; Top 100: 23

(I have included J Dilla and Mingus, Coltrane and Sanders, despite no singing or little singing, but not Massive Attack. It seemed right to include Black solo artists whose music is mostly instrumental).

Now let's do the same for the 2010s (to account for AM's understandable old music bias):
RYM: Top 10: 7; Top 25: 16; Top 50: 25;Top 100: 46
AM: Top 10: 6; Top 25: 10; Top 50: 17; Top 100: 29

(same criteria, but included Run the Jewels - but not Brockhampton as I have no idea who's singing what when; counted Farazi v Kayra, Deftones, Kero Kero Bonito as non-white; did not count Vektor, Mgła, Candy Claws, Standing on the Corner and Arca as I'm unsure; counted Iberians Rosalía and Bruno Pernadas as white)

So, regarding race, RYM is indeed less white-centric than critics. But regarding gender, it is more male-centric.


Still, the point of my comment was that RYM is preferable to sites like IMDb and Goodreads, dominated by the masses. By comparing RYM to critics, that doesn't really show us if an alternative to RYM dominated by the masses would be preferable to RYM. I have reasons to believe it wouldn't. Namely, this apples to apples comparison: compare IMDb's top 25 (look for IMDb's top 250) with RYM's film chart top 25.

IMDb gives you not much more than a US-based monoculture (or satellite cultures like the UK or Australia/New Zealand). 23 out of 25 movies have their main actors speaking in English (including "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly"). Only the 20th and 23rd films are spoken in different languages. Now take a look at RYM: only 13 out of 25 films (including "The Good, The Bad and the Ugly") have their main actors speaking in English.

Also, 3 films with female protagonists on RYM's top25 and only one film on IMDb's. So yeah, RYM is male-centric but I'm not sure a "general audience" site would be better in that regard.
BleuPanda wrote: Wed Feb 08, 2023 3:02 pm As someone who likes aggressive music, it's nice to have a place to find it! But I also don't think it should be at the expense of artists like Rosalia and Angel Olsen.
Maybe... But is that the whole picture? We should ask Natalia Lafourcade, whose album "De todas las flores" was the 7th best album last year for RYM users but only 84th for critics. Its main five RYM descriptors are "female vocals, lush, poetic, soothing, love". The music sounds extremely non-aggressive. What explains the discrepancy, then? Likely many factors. One of which is that RYM has a lot of people with different tastes. And also that it is less permeable to the power of the music industry. Artists without big budget promotional campaigns actually stand a chance there.

But let's also do a reverse exercise. RYM likes hip-hop. Now according to AM, "It Takes a Nation of Millions" is the 18th best album of all time and the 2nd best hip-hop album. It's also an aggressive album. It stands to reason that RYM should be completely in awe. Instead, it's not even in their top 300. Meanwhile, from that same period, RYM users think the "The Low End Theory", a "mellow" album (according to those users) is the 52nd best of all time, while AM only puts it at 194th.

BleuPanda wrote: Wed Feb 08, 2023 3:02 pm The userbase there largely does not appear able to differentiate between good and bad pop music
And how exactly did you determine that? That is, of course, highly subjective.


I will however agree with what somebody here said regarding RYM's short snarky reviews. If you want to read criticism, you're better off reading a professional writer. A music critic. Still, RYM's reviews are not worse than Goodread's, which ironically is a site devoted to the written word.
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Re: Rate Your Music - Latest

Post by panam »

RYM is much more diverse than it is usually accused of. it could be better? Of course. But within its ecosphere there are great contributors to the discovery of music that you will not find anywhere else. In addition, all the problems of which he is accused are found in all other user platforms on the Internet and much more amplified.
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Re: Rate Your Music - Latest

Post by Jirin »

I’ve never put a lot of stock in RYM because voters for any given album are inherently not representative samples of the voting base. Most people only bother to rate their favorites and least favorites. And there’s no way to prevent “Compensation votes”, people rating things lower to increase their impact on the average.

Kind of like how Last of Us episode 3 got review bombed by homophobes. Unless everyone has an equal chance to have voted for everything the average is not statistically meaningful.
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