RYM - Rate Your Music - your thoughts

It's a better site for rating stuff than PA. Mainly because it covers all sorts of music and it has the half star rating system. I use it quite often, actually. I discovered tons of great stuff there, and most of my knowledge of new releases comes from rym.

I use it for browsing new stuff (that isn't found on PA) but that's all.

I only go there for the "overall" list. Somehow, for some reason I got this idea that numbers matter. It is as though anything with a 3.90-or-over rating is supposed to means quality craftsmanship and anything below 3.60 needed some serious work. I guess I just trust the majority.

Edited by Dayvenkirq - September 11 2015 at 11:53

If I can't find it here,I can find it there.

I often use the site for reference (quicker to find stuff there than on PA, JMA or MMA) and help for the inclusion in our DB, but I certainly don't use the site as many do: to list and quantify their private collection and build themselves a profile with pictures and lists. I mean, I hardly use  any of the special features (like "own" and "what format", etc...

I'm not fond of the hierarchy and immobile structure over there and the voting system to get a correction approved (which means it can take years to get something corrected). However I do like the idea of reviews in other languages (though I won't be able to read most of them).
However, they are slowly catching up on a flaw that was nearly fatal in my eyes: while you could check out every single release of an album or compilation from Singapour, the Kerguellen Islands or Namibia, you weren't allowed to check who played what on the album

as for the forum, though there are some very knowledgeable members, it's made from genre cliques that tend to denigrate stuff they don't adher to.
And it's those same cliques that will massively vote (rate positively) for one style and skew downwards the ratings of other styles... But that's all right, because it does give a more mainstream (and therefore a more realistic) PoV , and globally the hierarchy of the albums within a band's discography is respected

I'm kind of amazed the RYM forums still gets such a success with such antiquated structure (imagine a forum without smileys or difficult embedding techniques).

^ I've just looked up the definitions of these two words: "bourgeois" and "bohemian". Could the melding of the two be an oxymoron?

Edited by Dayvenkirq - September 14 2015 at 11:36

Dayvenkirq wrote: ^ I've just looked up the definitions of these two words: "bourgeois" and "bohemian". Could the melding of the two be an oxymoron?

Actually those two words translate into Bobo in French over the last 10/15 years now... and it concerns middle/upper Middle-class caste, generally well into their 40's or their 50's ... it's a modern day version of the 80's Yuppies, if you wish

But I don't see how it correlates to RYM... nor for the TV series Girls, whose main protagonists  are in their early 20's







Edited by Sean Trane - September 14 2015 at 15:58

RYM is fantastic in that it covers all music, from the most mainstream pop to the most obscure Mongolian throat gargling. The inclusion of bootlegs is nice as well. Not too bothered about half-star ratings and foreign languages, but others seem to like it. The idea of lists and just generally cataloging your collection is kinda cool. 

But the forums are awful. Just a complete mess. Every post is just a crazy game with a billion pages and any new threads very, very quickly disappear with next-to no replies. It makes it near-impossible to really engage anyone in conversation over there. And as others have mentioned, edits and additions can take forever to be approved. 

I put up a few reviews there, but gave up because I don't like the way they set up the user interface. I don't think I'll go back anytime soon.

Rateyourmusic, like Allmusic, Uncut, Rolling Stone (when it mattered), is fun to compare your opinion with others.....fun stuff but to be taken with a grain of salt.  Of course, there are far too many hipsters and white-boy biases but it's for a lark, not for research.

Edited by Intruder - September 16 2015 at 09:29