Who is the best reviewer with 10000 listens?
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Forum Name: General Music Discussions
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URL: http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=131178
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Topic: Who is the best reviewer with 10000 listens?
Posted By: MikeEnRegalia
Subject: Who is the best reviewer with 10000 listens?
Date Posted: June 29 2023 at 05:47
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A simple thought experiment - what do you think? Which distribution of 10000 listens produces, hypothetically, the best reviewer, with all other factors being equal?
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Replies:
Posted By: Jared
Date Posted: June 29 2023 at 06:19
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Of course, it depends on the complexity of the album, but on average, I think a bare minimum of 6 listens should be given to a disk before an accurate evaluation can be achieved, with 8-10 listens probably being the optimal level for a disk you haven't heard before. I think any more than 10 and it starts to become 'law of diminishing returns' because you've become too familiar with a work and aren't really hearing enough 'new' that will sway your argument. The only other factor here would be the passage of time; if you returned to an album 5 years later, your views might have altered a little in the light of historical context? It also helps if you know what you are comparing it against, as in other albums either by the same artist of by similar within a genre, so it would help greatly to have heard 1,000 albums to create a greater personal frame of reference. My tuppence from a non-reviewer, anyway!
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Posted By: Saperlipopette!
Date Posted: June 29 2023 at 07:05
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I'd say a combination of the third and fourth option. I think a good rewiever has know A LOT of varied music. But what's the point of it all if you're not extra passionate about some artists & albums in particular? Something you know by heart and often revisit. |
Posted By: MikeEnRegalia
Date Posted: June 29 2023 at 07:55
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^ Of course in the real world we don't listen to all releases we come across equally - there is a correlation between how much we enjoy something, and how often we listen. I have no idea how many releases I've listened to in total so far, but I guess it's somewhere around 4000, and I'd imagine that on average I've listened 1-2 times to each album, with the favorites at one end of the spectrum with dozens of listens, and a long list of "bad" albums with only one listen at the other end. ------------- https://awesomeprog.com/release-polls/pa" rel="nofollow - Release Polls Listened to:
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Posted By: Saperlipopette!
Date Posted: June 29 2023 at 09:46
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^Yes I've "listened" to well over 10 000 albums in total (but probably closer to 2000 in full. I do give up on stuff, but I'm no reviewer). My physical collection is probably 15-20% of that (and digital maybe 30-40%... I don't know. A lot:)... out of those there's probably about 5-600 albums in some kind of rotation - and about 100 extra special "desert island discs". Not sure what we're discussing though. My reply is that I think the best listener/reviewer is a combination of option 3 and 4. |
Posted By: Heart of the Matter
Date Posted: June 29 2023 at 10:36
| I think that as important as preventing "under-listening" is preventing also "over-listening", since a fresh perspective prompts a good review. I would say that with more than 4 listens that freshness is lost and one is crossing the line from critic to fan (or hater), so I would listen to 2500 albums 4 times each. |
Posted By: Logan
Date Posted: June 29 2023 at 11:46
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I'd say, like all others who voted, "listened to 1000 albums, but 10 times each." Some who just consumes albums without taking them in a deep way, the fast food lover of music, over multiple spins and time, is I think unlikely to be a good reviewer (or rater). And I think that the type who listen to lots and commonly will just listen once is not getting the chance to acclimate to albums but also is less likely to ever fully pay attention to all the albums they are listening to -- a lot might just tune into a bit of an album and then tune out if it does not grab them immediately or if it is not a style that they are accustomed to or appreciate. That said, I don;t think one needs to listen to an album many times to review it, and I might be okay with a few. I know that I often would be more excited to review an album while it is still fresh for me. Never-the-less, while one need not listen to all albums many times, I do think that having an intense fervour for music, or at least a real affection for some music tends to be a plus, and that means not just playing lots of albums for the sake of playing lots of albums or for the sake of writing lots of reviews. I wrote film reviews for a time for the local newspaper (the free delivered door-to-door kind), and I disliked it. I had to go to press/ special film screenings and then write my review later that evening. You'd see the "critics" scribbling notes as it played. You miss so much that way and it becomes such a mechanical, lifeless and joyless process. When I wrote essays for university on film, then I would watch films again and again, and although I chose ones I loved, I hated them by the end due to the multiple watched and analysis. Writing reviews tends to kill my enjoyment of art, but I digress. ------------- Watching while most appreciating a sunset in the moment need not diminish all the glorious sunsets I have observed before. It can be much like that with music for me. |
Posted By: someone_else
Date Posted: June 29 2023 at 12:05
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Option #3 comes closest, I think. ------------- 
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Posted By: MikeEnRegalia
Date Posted: June 30 2023 at 01:43
It's a very valid point. I've never been a prolific reviewer - recently I decided to start writing them again, but as you say, the danger is that the reviewing starts to interfere with your enjoyment of the music. My current strategy is to just write "extended blurbs" whenever I'm listening to an album and feel like writing something. Most of these "mini reviews" are on TYM since PA is not the ideal platform for them, lengthy reviews (should I write them) I would submit here as well. ------------- https://awesomeprog.com/release-polls/pa" rel="nofollow - Release Polls Listened to:
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Logan wrote:Posted By: Lewian
Date Posted: June 30 2023 at 03:40
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It's fun to see that this rather abstract and formalist topic (I'm not saying it's not interesting) has this very peculiar result with 100% votes (including my own) for an option "somewhere in the middle".  I agree with Saperlipopette though that I prefer a reviewer who has listened just once to lots of albums, many more than 1000 or even 10000. But of course if that means that they've listened to everything just once, it won't fly. |
Posted By: MikeEnRegalia
Date Posted: June 30 2023 at 04:13
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^ Well, in a way I've "rigged" the poll to turn out that way (everyone voting option 3). I didn't do it on purpose, I just thought of Malcolm Gladwell's outliers where he talks about 10000 hours of practice being necessary for anyone to achieve mastery in a certain skill. And being a metrically oriented individual, I chose to divide 10000 hours/listens into 1, 10, 100, 1000 and 10000 releases (I left out the first opion by mistake). But of course out of those options the one with 1000 releases is the only sensible one. The sweet spot may lie around 2000-3000 releases, and on average three listens per release. Incidentally: To listen to 10000 releases takes a LONG time. Assuming that someone manages to listen to 1-2 releases each day (with proper focus), that results in about 500 releases per year, and that means that it would take one about 20 years to listen to 10000 releases.
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Posted By: Lewian
Date Posted: June 30 2023 at 04:37
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Thinking about this it makes me curious whether I have actually listened to 10000 albums... I think I have some 4000 and listened to all of them, but did I listen to more albums in full that I don't own than those 4000? I have no idea. Looking at your arithmetic, maybe rather not, at least not "with proper focus". (Very often of course if I realise early that I don't like something, I won't listen to it in full let alone buy it.) |
Posted By: MikeEnRegalia
Date Posted: June 30 2023 at 08:02
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^ By "proper focus" I was just assuming that in order to count for this thought experiment, a "listen" would have to be deliberate in the sense that you're paying attention to the music as opposed to just having it play in the background, and you focus on the music enough to be able to recall specific information about it afterwards. ------------- https://awesomeprog.com/release-polls/pa" rel="nofollow - Release Polls Listened to:
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Posted By: AFlowerKingCrimson
Date Posted: June 30 2023 at 08:18
| Ideally somewhere between three and four but I voted for three. |
Posted By: Octopus II
Date Posted: June 30 2023 at 08:26
| Voted for 3. |