Objectivity in rating albums

One thing is certain and irrefutable: Art is objective, perception is subjective. In fact, I believe that there is nothing more objective than a work of art; everything is there for a meaning and a reason. It takes a lot of work to completely detach oneself from how one feels and enjoys music in order to create a serious review of a song, an album, a band or whatever one wants to qualify it, but that doesn't make it impossible or extremely difficult. You can evaluate points such as originality, complexity, the development of the instrumental line-up on the album, the production, the main melodies and the ambience within them, what the musician is trying to achieve, and many more. Around here, many of us dare to rate with words some works that have a very special and vast background, for which perhaps months of work are needed so that nothing escapes the rating. Even so, I think that one should not try to leave one's tastes aside when it comes to rating, because it is one's own action and it carries one's own name. If we are not going to express our feelings in our reviews, then let's leave them to the robots!

I see your points, but I still think, it would be good having criterion/criteria that could include other values than only liking, as an appreciation of some general artistic values. 

There have been a few people now who have suggested now that the accumulating of many peoples opinions is not always/necessarily an accurate way of deciding “the great classics”. The problems with ratings, and especially when people attempt to be objective about it rather than subjective, is that it all becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more votes one thing has, the more people listen to it over something else that might be (objectively or subjectively) just as good, or even better, and then give another vote to keep it at the top. Furthermore, as the aforementioned people have suggested, a lot of people attempt to be objective and rate an album higher than they would otherwise, simply because they want to recognise/reflect what others think. It is incredibly difficult on a site like PA for anything to compete with “the great classics”, which is not to suggest they are not great, but that there are plenty of other things that are just as “great” but can’t compete with the what has been so established that even people who don’t like something (and say so in their review), will still give it a four or five star rating because it might not be to their liking, but they can recognise how important it is.

Purely subjective ratings would be far more useful in my eyes. When the reviews say something different than the rating, and that happens often on PA, there is a problem with the ratings, in mt opinion. Much of it comes down to people attempting objectivity.

Without a doubt. But then, the same could be said for probably 99% of the topics posted in this forum! 😄🤪

I'd even say that is much weight to ratings with reviews, but I'm glad to get it to know as I didn't realise it. 

I certainly think, it would be best if we talked about "rating", meaning with stars, and "reviews", meaning with words. 

"Rating with words" is confusing unless it should contain criteria with single words.