Song Ratings?

In this day and age of downloading individual tracks, instead of buying albums, I think it would be a great improvement to have song ratings as a sub-set of the album ratings.

 

I don’t know if this is even possible, not being familiar with the rating system currently used for albums; but when I get an itunes card, I spend a lot of time on this site trying to find a new band or a band I'm only slightly familiar with, then reading through all the reviews, trying to gather all the different opinions on which are the better tracks from each band/album.

 

Itunes specifically has a lot of good prog content; in the last few weeks, I've downloaded some Izz, IQ, Andromeda, Discipline, Glass Hammer, Opeth, Fates Warning, etc. The most difficult part of the process is choosing which tracks to grab when you’re working with limited credits.

 

Granted, individual songs, longer than ten minutes (a lot of our kind of music), can only be gotten by buying whole albums, as I did with Unfolded Like Staircase, which is all long tracks, but there are plenty of great tracks just under ten minutes, which is where I think you're getting the most music for your $0.99.

 

So, just a thought, is it even remotely possible?

Edited by Rushman - April 04 2008 at 12:38

Well, my opinion about this should be obvious to everyone who knows my website ... which is of course http://ratingfreak.com (), if there's a remote possibility that whoever reads this doesn't know already.

Anyway, at RF the whole rating system is based on the tracks ... album ratings are computed from track ratings, and the artist ratings are - guess what - computed from album ratings. And to make it even worse, the same strategy is used for genres and tags ...

BTW: Rushman, you should check out emusic.com. Some great prog albums are available there, and depending on the subscription levels you choose you can pay as little as $0.30 per track. here's a small selection of albums available there.


Edited by MikeEnRegalia - April 04 2008 at 14:43

I like track rating on an individual scale, and though I see a lot of advantage in it for use on a grander scale, I doubt it can work for this site, as most of us (including me) judge albums on an album level and not just on a song level. I will not take the time to rate each song individually, but if there is a way to upload my song ratings directly to the site than I think it will be a great possibility.

^ I disagree ... why should an album be rated higher than the average of its tracks? You can always adjust the track ratings so that they result in the album rating you want to achieve. 

^ on my website the album average is indeed computed using the track lengths as weights - so longer tracks "count" more than shorter tracks. As far as your argument about a "distortion" of album vs. tracks is concerned: I don't think that's a problem. Rating is always about compromises. If the album rating you choose doesn't match the average of the track ratings then that's a distortion regardless how you see it. While I was building the rating system I considered to introduce an album rating which is independent of the tracks, but I quickly discarded it because it would be counter-intuitive. Albums consist of tracks, so album ratings should be compiled from track ratings.

^ Yup, I agree. The whole rating thing seems a little overstated. It sure is a good guideline, but only when an album has got many, many ratings. What I really care for is the written word, the rating is a somewhat simplistic and confusing number, since not everybody follows the PA guidelines. And even with them I find it really hard to rate an album properly. And having to rate each individual song would make it even harder.

Easy Livin wrote: For me, the old adage about the whole being more than the sum of the parts is significant here. I don't believe you can arrive at a rating for an album simply by taking the sum of the parts, no matter how sophisticated the algorithm. To me, it is turning an emotional assessment into an arithmetic one.

MikeEnRegalia wrote: ^ on my website the album average is indeed computed using the track lengths as weights - so longer tracks "count" more than shorter tracks. As far as your argument about a "distortion" of album vs. tracks is concerned: I don't think that's a problem. Rating is always about compromises. If the album rating you choose doesn't match the average of the track ratings then that's a distortion regardless how you see it. While I was building the rating system I considered to introduce an album rating which is independent of the tracks, but I quickly discarded it because it would be counter-intuitive. Albums consist of tracks, so album ratings should be compiled from track ratings.

I completely disagree. Albums do consist of tracks, but there is a difference between an album that is one cohesive entity and just a collection of songs. I can think of quite a few albums in which each track is great, but there is just no flow. There is no beginning, middle, and end to the album. You could rearrange the order of all the tracks and it would still convey the same effect. There's no reason to listen to the album as a whole because of this, therefore even though each track is great on its own, the overall satisfaction of the album suffers greatly.

It's the same concept as a movie. There are many fantastic movies that have scenes in which, if placed on their own, one might consider boring or unexciting. However, when properly placed within the whole, it achieves a much greater effect and makes much more sense than if just singled out. On the other hand, the same can be said with great, exciting, action scenes. A lot of blockbusters and kung-fu movies have plenty of intense sequences, but they just aren't lined up intelligently. The ending result is ultimately disappointing because of this.

The ability to create albums that are not just collections of songs, but actual narrative structure is in my opinion, one of the greatest things that separates progressive rock from most other genres of music.