Objectivity in rating albums

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 Logan wrote:

Appreciation is, of course subjective, but if one agrees to or adheres to certain standards or set criteria, then some efforts can be considered objectively more successful then others.  An example of this for me would be a replication challenge.  We have three performers asked to read and play Ligeti's Devil's Staircase (Etude 13) and are asked not to improvise, but to play it accurately.  Performer one is Keyboard Cat.  The cat's human servant (one does not own the cat, the cat owns you) sprinkles dry cat food across the keyboard cum catwalk.  The cat walk back and forth and it sounds nothing like the Ligeti piece.  The second performer is an acclaimed concert pianist who plays all the right notes in the right order and at the right time.  The fourth is a three year old beginner (first time trying to play the piano) who lacks the experience to play the piece.  The fifth is a very drunk concert pianist who fumbles over the keys and then vomits all over the piano.  The mother of the three year old might well enjoy her child's performance the most, but it wouldn't be the "best" according to the criterion of replication (playing a piece).  The drunk's regurgitation might ultimately be declared great performance and visual art, but it would not be considered the most successful according to the challenge. The keyboard cat's performance may be the most successful on youtube, going viral (I know I like cat videos), but again it wouldn't be the most accurate performance.  Now we have those same people record an album\s worth each of Liszt at the same level of proficiency, and we can judge it at the level of performance.  Another way is to consider success is the intent, if someone sets out to make the greatest modal jazz album and the consensus finds that it ended up sounding like a messed up version of Crunkcore, then maybe it doesn't deserve a five star rating as a modal jazz album.  As a messed up Crunkcore album it may be a masterpiece however.  The albums may even be hailed as up there with Borkencyde! But not up there with Charles Mingus or Miles Davis and Gil Evans probably.

One of my favourite albums is The Shagg's Philosophy of the World, which is hailed as a bad album (they were amateurs), but many love it. Based on my subjective appreciation, I would rate it much higher than any Dream Theater, Spock's Beard or The Flower Kings album I know.  But it's apples and oranges...

While I too would rather be able to review without rating, I actually have liked ratings a s reflection of an individual's taste (I will look at peoples reviewer pages) more so than as a conglomerate or aggregate at PA.

I do use RYM's album ratings charts to discover albums (I like the fact that I can search while using multiple tags for the album unlike here where all of a band's discography fall under one category, and not even multiple categories.
I do find that to be a useful research guide for checking things out (I have discovered quite a few acts and albums that I love that way).  I also like to search reddit for music similar to whatever it is I am most into at the time but I digress.

I wish that ProgArchives ratings descriptors did not appeal to a sense of objectivity due to the subjective nature of evaluation.  To each his or her own tastes.  My scale would be more like ( I would want a wider spectrum and there is overlap in the descriptors, have done better ones before):
5.  I love this!
4.  I really liked this!
3.  I like this.
2. Unsatisfying to me.
1.  I really disliked/ loathed this.

I like that that scale is explicitly subjective.  I do think there are various objective measures to evaluate the success of songs and albums, such as if you know what the goal of the song or album was, such as if it is lyrically trying to convey something that it actually gets wrong, like something historical nd not all music is performed as proficiently (I have heard DIY music that sounds terrible both in production and performance, and I do believe that if the artist was more skilled it would have made for a better album).  That said I love the Shagg's and that amateur aspect is a big part of the charm (I'd rate it a five as one of its ilk).

I would put:

"Hmmm..."

between 2 and 3.