Are We Too Generous?

You are correct, good sir. Which is why any reviewer worth his salt will wait a good 10 or so listens before passing judgement.

This is not always the case though. I still have the same feelings about Snakes & Arrows as when it was released. One of my favorite Rush albums!

I do find that the opposite is true as well. Some people will throw a band into the fire and then admit years later that, "it's actually a pretty good album, I just didn't 'get' it at the time"

The real question is: is it legitimate to go back and change your rating? That's why I have always been a proponent of a "cooling" period where new releases are not rateable. Text reviews should always be welcome, but quantitative ratings are, as the premise of your post, skewed by the (won't use the 'f' word that ends with 'boy') people who are predisposed to grab their favorite band's new album the minute its released.

Everybody's taste changes and like it or not, albums sometimes don't stand the test of time. There was a time when there was an extremely limited number of progmetal bands. I regarded Dream Theater very highly for the first 2 albums. Now that i know what was really out there, and what has been subsequently created that is light years better than DT, they bore me, and in some cases, completely annoy. The Wall, used to seem so profound. In its case, its not just other music, but reading and life experience that really exposes The Wall as a 90 minute transferal whine by a self-absorbed masochist.

So I guess, yes, we (meaning everybody else) are too generous. But really, the ratings say more about the rater than the album.  That's why its a good idea to look at member profiles and get an idea of what they like and how the give ratings to really determine if what you are seeing is indicative of quality, or just personal taste. 

I don't do that personally, I normally up the rating with more listens. But I give a lot of four and five stars so you could say I'm kind of a music fanboy in general.

I gave only one five star review last year, that being David Minasian, a rating I stand by. I haven't been as busy in 2011, but out of the seven (I think) 2011 albums i have bought and reviewed, only Pendragon's new release got five stars, again a rating I stand by.

I have given only two five star ratings from any release in the last 20 years. One of those five star ratings is from this year. Deep Politics from the Grails. The other is In Absentia by PT. There is a handful I would rate as 4 1/2 stars. As for prog in the 80's, Moving Pictures by Rush I have given 5 stars with KC's Discilpine coming in at 4 1/2 stars. The 70's is another story.

Tapfret wrote: cannon wrote: ...The other is In Absentia by PT... This speaks to my point of rating saying more about the rater than the album. You have only given two 5's, and one is to an album that bores me to death. No PT album exceeds 3 stars to me. But that's ok. Were I rating PT albums, someone would look at those ratings and say, "this guy does like Porky Tree". The choice is, read the review to see why (maybe this guys tastes match mine and I can check albums from his profile that he fancies), or move on and find out what someone with similar tastes thinks. I also believe there is a rather limited view we can take away from a 5 star system. There is considerable polarity built in. I give 5 stars here to what would be nines in a ten star system. Again, what I really, really like says more about me than the album.

 

IMDb is the same way. Movie ratings shoot up when people first see them and then drop. Rate Your Music is the exact opposite: people rate new albums lower and it can take years for their ratings to go up.

I imagine that in the beginning most people who seek out the album as soon as it is released (or even sooner) or really really big fans of the band, and they will probably be more forgiving for lesser tracks or things that are terrible about it, and thus rate it higher. After time, when the general listening community gets around to hearing it, things will probably level out to something lower. Not saying that fans can't be objective, it's just I imagine that fans could be less objective (compared to people who just like a band, or don't know them, or whatever) when it comes to one of their "favorite bands".

Yep to the OP, too many generous fanboy and over-hurried ratings when albums come out.

I don't always listen 10 times before I review, but I do usually take a couple of months, listening to the music in various moods, places and under various circumstances and multiple devices...

5 stars is only for albums that get me totally hooked for an extensive period of time.

Too generous, possibly, yeah. I've only reviewed a few albums, but the ideal situation for me is that I don't review anything that I haven't owned for at least over a year. Or 6 months perhaps.

So with that tough time frame, it's basically impossible for me to review a new release or anything that arrived in the mail between Feb & Now. So I will have to figure something out there.  The cooling off period is a great idea.