great, great resource. yeah, i spend hours reading it.

its bad that they just changed all their 4 star reviews to 3 1/2 though. looks like we are going to be seeing a bit lowered metascores.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: robot,

What is with the new 3 1/2 star ratings? This upsets me deeply. Some albums really deserve four stars. They should have changed some of the 4 1/2 star ratings to either 4's or 5's. There are way too damn many 4 1/2's.

But I agree that it is an incredibly great resource that I never tire of.

I went to the site and tried to find some rationale to the change but couldn't find any. Now, supposedly what I consider a 110, The Soundtrack of Our Lives' "Behind the Music" is dinked to ***1/2 (supposedly a 70.) MetaCritic , don't buy the anti-hype hype, please.

All Music, who art in heaven...

Yeah, that's easily the best music resource online.

AMG is as comprehensive as music resources get, but I don't like their review system. I'm almost sort of glad that they're lowering a lot of the reviews now (if what you say is true), because they used to be pretty ridiculously positive all around.

I agree that All Music is a terrific resource. I also agree that they err on the side of excessively positive review, which makes it hard for the less critical visitor to sift the wheat from the chaff.

I've been listening to the new albums from The Redwalls and True Love this week. Both both bands "wear their influences on their sleeves" as the hip critics like to say these days.

Tim Sendra gives The Redwalls four enthusiastic stars surmising, "[A]ny classic rocker would be silly to dismiss Universal Blues as mere imitation. Better to just throw away your purist notions and enjoy the rock."

While Matt Collar takes True Love to task with a mere two-and-a-half stars noting "[W]hile the melodies are catchy there is something slavish and irritating about a band so obviously indebted to their idols."

Now to my ears the two bands are pretty much the same in terms of quality, hopelessly derivative, but generally a fun, if harmless, listen. The gulf between All Music's reviews both amuses me and gives me some hope that they're not just rubber stamping every album that comes down the pike.

Now Playing: "All Around Cowboy" Chris LeDoux _20 Originals: The Early Years_ (Capitol)

I noticed the 3.5 star thing recently. Every four star review is now three and a half. I'm thinking this is some kind of mistake.

I was wondering something. Have there been any ***non-compilation*** albums that have received five stars from allmusic in the past couple years? The most recent one I'm aware of is Basement Jaxx's 2001 album "Rooty", which is totally deserving of the honor. It was originally 4.5, but they bumped it up. I'm betting they'll do that for the Strokes as well. Not because it's 100% deserving, but because their first album has a notorious history already, and is considered a landmark album of a movement.

Maybe my eyes deceive me, but I think that all the formerly 3.5 star reviews have gone back to 4 stars. (Which sucks, because Sonic Nurse by Sonic Youth was already recorded at 70 )

quote:

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Originally posted by Buck "Sweetie" McGuck:
I was wondering something. Have there been any ***non-compilation*** albums that have received five stars from allmusic in the past couple years? The most recent one I'm aware of is Basement Jaxx's 2001 album "Rooty", which is totally deserving of the honor. It was originally 4.5, but they bumped it up. I'm betting they'll do that for the Strokes as well. Not because it's 100% deserving, but because their first album has a notorious history already, and is considered a landmark album of a movement.

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David Cross' Shut Up, You Fucking Baby! was given a full five stars, but that's a comedy album so I don't think it counts. Recently, All Music bumped Radiohead's The Bends and Weezer's The Blue Album up to a full five stars. Jay-Z's The Blueprint was also bumped up to five stars, and if Metacritic is correct, then it was formerly 4.5 stars.

In either case, I don't think they've ever given a brand new a full five stars. They usually give it 4.5 and bump it up at a later date.

I wouldn't put a whole lot of stock in AMG's scores, because not only do they frequently change their scores at a later date, sometimes they actually change the entire review and substitute another one. I don't want to accuse them of anything, but I have noticed many instances where they have originally given an album a mediocre review and score, and later on--after it seems that most critics are praising the album--they have substituted a much better review and score.

On Metacritic, we record AMG's score and quote at the time we read the review. If we happen to notice later on (or if one of you folks email us) that the review has changed, we will update both the score and the quote; frequently, however, we do not even know that there has been a change, since we certainly don't have the resources to check every one of their reviews every few weeks to see if it is any different.

All that being said, though, they are a tremendous resource--I just wish they would post a review and score and stick with it instead of being so wishy-washy.

First of all, I don't believe that correcting your mistakes, for whatever reason, is wishy-washy. "When I was a child, I spake as a child...when I became a man, I put away childish things"(wish it were true.)

Second, they did go back to ****, instead of ***1/2, so either it was a glitch or they put away childish things.

Third, I agree that they give LOTS of high ratings, but did anyone else notice that they give ratings to albums that they have obviously not heard. Their standard "unheard" rating is **, but it mostly seems to involve older albums, so maybe it won't affect MetaCritic. The examples that I noticed were some old, great, Paul Kelly albums and some older Happy the Man records. No way anybody there ever heard them.

I use AMG a lot but never really get into their ratings at all. Music is an artform and shouldn't be rated like that. When it comes down to it it's all about one's own musical preferences. One man's "*" is another man's "*****".
AMG is probably the best place for biographical and discographical details. However it is definetely not flawless. More often than not I find the wrong info, especially when it comes to release years. I really wish users could contribute to the site just like at IMBD.

In response to the recent 5-star ratings topic... I seem to remember that Streetcore by Joe Strummer recieved 5 stars for about 2 weeks, then was bumped down to 4 1/2. But other than that and the David Cross album, I haven't seen anything remotely new get 5. There's just a ridiculously high number of 4 1/2's.

quote:

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Originally posted by Ryan D:
In response to the recent 5-star ratings topic... I seem to remember that _Streetcore_ by Joe Strummer recieved 5 stars for about 2 weeks, then was bumped down to 4 1/2. But other than that and the David Cross album, I haven't seen anything remotely new get 5. There's just a ridiculously high number of 4 1/2's.

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My theory is that, to All Music, five-star albums reveal themselves with time. A four-and-a-half-star album means that it's just really, really good. If, in time, it proves itself with influence and power, then perhaps it'd get a five-star bump-up. (Examples: The Bends, The Blue Album.)

However, Basement Jaxx, The Blueprint, and Shut Up, You Fucking Baby! all contradict this theory, so whatever.

I noticed that some albums stayed at 3 1/2, though. Like Avril's first album.

I don't mind sites that review positively a lot. It counteracts all the negativity out there.

I love a lot of music, but often I'll either love or hate something. We all have our own styles based on our tastes, which as stated, are subjective. That said, it does look weird having ratings with what looks like a music encyclopedia.

Check out their new look.

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Originally posted by Fastnbulbous:
Check out their new look.

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What new look? The site looks the same as it always have, as far as I can tell...

No it's new, although it seemed to change for some more quickly than others oddly enough.

Oh yeah, and it's only built for Internet Explorer for Windows. So anyone who likes to use a SECURE browser, or us hippies with our Macs are out of luck.

I use Mozilla and I seemed to be able to use the site okay, for the few pages I looked at, but it looked all funky. And I have heard reports of Firefox users just getting an error page. Did they get some big kickback from Microsoft or something? Way to alienate your more technologically discerning users, dudes.

Those who are "registered" with AMG got the new look first. Others are getting it today, I think. I, for one, don't like the structural changes. I don't want to have to click to get a discography. The old page, with the discograpy coming up on the front page, was far more naviagable.

It looks a little cleaner, for sure, but it's less fun to use now. Change is bad.

quote:

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Originally posted by philosopherEric:
Those who are "registered" with AMG got the new look first. Others are getting it today, I think. I, for one, don't like the structural changes. I don't want to have to click to get a discography. The old page, with the discograpy coming up on the front page, was far more naviagable.

It looks a little cleaner, for sure, but it's less fun to use now. Change is bad.

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Once again, pE, you are spot-on. Personally, I don't like the new format aesthetically either. The silver is so anaesthesized that it makes me feel like I'm surfing a dentistry site. And the discography thing is driving me nuts.

Also, it's ridiculously slow, but that's probably just the number of users on the site and not the new format.

As an employee at AMG I just wanted to let everybody know what is going on with the allmusic site redesign. This is fairly detailed, but we are working hard to get things up to speed.

GENERAL COMMENTS
We’ve been on the net since 1995 providing a free music reference resource. We would hope that we’ve earned a little patience from our users as we work through the transition to the new site and some of the difficulties we’re experiencing. We’re a small company with small company resources. While we’re flattered by our users’ expectations, we are not Amazon or Yahoo! We’re a small company from Ann Arbor, MI, trying to provide a great resource for music fans.


SLOW RESPONSE TIMES
We are experiencing some response time delays as we work to get all of our servers properly balanced. Additionally, we will be adding server capacity over the next week which will further improve response times. While this site is bigger and more complex than and will be somewhat slower than the old site, the difference once we get everything at peak form won't be very noticeable.



SUPPORT OF NON-IE FOR WINDOWS BROWSERS
Optimizing a site of allmusic’s complexity and size for all browsers and operating systems is no small feat. This isn’t a simple “brochure-ware” site of static pages. While we would love to optimize the AMG sites for all browsers and all operating systems, we simply don’t have the necessary resources to do so. Despite some users flattering comparison of our site with that of Google, Amazon and Yahoo!, we are a small company with limited resources. So, we had to pick the most widely used browser by our users (over 87%) to optimize the site for and then work on compatibility issues with the other major browsers as we go forward.

We are first concentrating on fixing some compatibility issues with the Mozilla browsers, which are mainly visual, not functional. The main Mozilla problem is a glitch in how tables are displayed. We’re hoping to have this fixed in the near future. We will also be working to fix some compatibility problems with Safari (Mac).

We ask for your patience as we work on these issues.

REGISTRATION
The allmusic site remains totally FREE to our users and only requires registration for access to new Premium Content. If you are uncomfortable registering, we understand and invite you to continue to use the portion of the site (roughly equivalent to the former site) that does not require registration. But we would like to take a moment to explain why we have intrduced registration for Premium Content. The AMG websites are FREE sites that are marginally supported by only advertising and product sales. To attract advertisers and retailers, we need to provide them with basic demographic information of our users so they can determine if our site is a fit for their products. We provide this information only in the aggregate (i.e. 60% of our users are male) and never pass on any individual user information. Please read our privacy policy for more information. Without these advertisers and retailers, the AMG websites would be out of business. Registration is a common practice among free publishing sites such as the AMG sites (i.e. NY Times, LA Times, etc.) that fund their enterprise through advertising and product sales. AMG is in line with common Internet practices and, as a good Internet citizen, zealously protects the privacy of our users.


TAB FORMAT
We realized when we designed the tab system that we would make some folks unhappy, but we felt the trade off was worth it. If we stuck to the one page approach it would limit our ability to add additional information. That design approach (one page) just doesn't scale as we expand content. And it's a real problem with artists with extensive discographies. We think that once folks take some more time on the site, they'll see that there is much more information available now than there was on the old site. The addition of the Songs and Credits tabs are both good examples of information that just wouldn’t be possible in a one page format.