Ratings of Bruce Springsteen & Radiohead albums
Printed From: Progarchives.com
Category: Other music related lounges
Forum Name: General Music Discussions
Forum Description: Discuss and create polls about all types of music
URL: http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=131006
Printed Date: November 28 2024 at 16:36
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Topic: Ratings of Bruce Springsteen & Radiohead albums
Posted By: Logan
Subject: Ratings of Bruce Springsteen & Radiohead albums
Date Posted: May 30 2023 at 12:26
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This was inspired by a discussion with Lorenzo (jamesbaldwin) about Radiohead, raking higher than Bruce Springsteen and some other classic artists. See https://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=129063&PID=6081176#6081176" rel="nofollow - THIS (click) topic page for context. I have no issue with more people there giving ratings (and good ones) to Radiohead albums and thus it ranking higher. I was wondering, if you were a rater at a general music site, would you be more likely to give ratings (and high ratings) to Radiohead or Bruce Springsteen? Which would have more (or any) albums that would rank higher on your own personal favourite albums list? I would not rate any Bruce Springsteen albums. I have not listened to any of his albums in full, like some of his early songs, and I have disliked him generally. Radiohead, on the other hand, is one of most important bands to me these days and I consider it to be a true modern classic band and a very important one not just for ones that started in the 90s. If one were to ask me what is the most significant band of the past 30 years, Radiohead would be the first to come to mind (rather like the Beatles of the 90s if not as popular but also made popular music and got experimental). I think that Radiohead is remarkable. Kid A, A Moon Shaped poll, and OK Computer are all five star albums in my book. To be honest, I haven't rated those at PA, but that's because when I did all of my ratings without reviews (not that I wrote many reviews) it was when the quick rating feature was introduced and I was not yet into Radiohead save a song or two. This is only about importance to you poll-wise, not which is better or more objectively important, in that I ask people to vote for which they would more likely rate (and rate various albums by) and or give good ratings too. When it comes to rankings at general music sites, it's about knownness and popularity and this poll should reflect on that with the PA forumites who participate. Easily Radiohead for me as I would give many Radiohead albums high ratings and I would not give any Bruce Springsteen album any ratings at this time (I have not heard any of his in full and from I know of his, I would not expect to like his albums as much as Radiohead. Even if I knew in full some of his albums in full, I don't tend to like to give such ratings for that which I am not enthusiastic about -- a reason why ratings often skew high as we are more likely to rate those we care about and be exposed to one we think we will care about. Too long an OP, but hopefully the question is clear enough for the poll. I could have an option like I wouldn't rate either, but I don't see much point in that. ------------- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXcp9fYc6K4IKuxIZkenfvukL_Y8VBqzK" rel="nofollow - Duos for fave acts |
Replies:
Posted By: Cristi
Date Posted: May 30 2023 at 12:30
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Radiohead Bruce Sprigsteen's music does nothing for me anymore.
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Posted By: Psychedelic Paul
Date Posted: May 30 2023 at 12:45
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Bruce Springsteen Radiohead's music does nothing for me anymore.
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Posted By: Logan
Date Posted: May 30 2023 at 12:47
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^ It's tied. Paul, Which Radiohead used to do it for you, out of interest? I remember now, I think it was early Radiohead like Pablo Honey and/or The Bends. Our ratings are very different for Radiohead. Hope you share those of yours and your Bruce Springsteen ones (be interested to see how you rank his albums).
------------- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXcp9fYc6K4IKuxIZkenfvukL_Y8VBqzK" rel="nofollow - Duos for fave acts |
Posted By: Psychedelic Paul
Date Posted: May 30 2023 at 12:56
I have three Radiohead albums on CD - The Bends, OK Computer & Hail to the Thief - but I very rarely listen to them these days, whereas I have six Bruce Springsteen albums on CD which I listened to just last week.
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Logan wrote:Posted By: Logan
Date Posted: May 30 2023 at 13:03
What's your favourite (or favourites) Bruce Springsteen album (I have not listened to any of his in full and I might check it out) My favourite Radiohead albums are Kid A, A Moon Shaped Pool and OK Computer -- all five stars for me. ------------- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXcp9fYc6K4IKuxIZkenfvukL_Y8VBqzK" rel="nofollow - Duos for fave acts |
Posted By: jamesbaldwin
Date Posted: May 30 2023 at 13:03
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This is a spoiled challenge from the start, Greg, you are comparing a prog crossover band (alternative-rock, art-rock for RYM) with a heartland rock/folk-rock artist, who has been doing mostly pop-rock for 20 years, on a prog music site! Anyway, I'll try to give you my opinion. ------------- Amos Goldberg (professor of Genocide Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem): Yes, it's genocide. It's so difficult and painful to admit it, but we can no longer avoid this conclusion. |
Posted By: Logan
Date Posted: May 30 2023 at 13:11
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But, Lorenzo, on an all-music site you think that Bruce Springsteen should be rated more (and perhaps higher) and therefore ranked higher? (or to put it another, way, that the charts would have more validity/value if Bruce ranked higher than Radiohead). Maybe some people will chime on your thoughts in the Italian thread, because to be honest, I just don't understand your perspective on this. I wish Dean were around. By the way, BS (not to be confused with Black Sabbath or bull****) has twice the number of votes now. I do hope that all who vote share their thoughts.
------------- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXcp9fYc6K4IKuxIZkenfvukL_Y8VBqzK" rel="nofollow - Duos for fave acts |
Posted By: Psychedelic Paul
Date Posted: May 30 2023 at 13:37
My favourite Radiohead album is The Bends and least favourite is Kid A. I don't really have a favourite studio album by Springsteen though. His Greatest Hits album is the one I enjoy the most.
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Posted By: Psychedelic Paul
Date Posted: May 30 2023 at 13:46
But many of us here - including me - listen to a lot more than just prog-rock. For instance, my CD collection consists of just 5% prog, or around 160 CD's out of 3,200 CD's in total.
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Posted By: Logan
Date Posted: May 30 2023 at 13:54
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^^ I have a few compilations, but I think I only have three greatest hits sort of CDs in my collection. One is Kate Bush's The Whole Story another is ABBA Gold and the other is The Very Best of Supertramp (all not bought at Charity Shops). ^ Most, or half, of what I listen to is not Prog Rock (and quite a few at PA have stated that Radiohead is not Prog Rock, and some have said that it has no place at PA -- various of those were quite ignorant I think and judging it based on limited listening, the wrong material material and not understanding how our Prog categories work well-enough). Weyes Blood and Chelsea Wolfe are but two that have got such a lot of playtime from me recently for various albums that I would rate very highly. I do listen to more modern music these days and so would sooner rate modern albums (I would rather rate that album which I am currently enthusiastic about, and that commonly is a more recent find for me, be it old or new). ------------- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXcp9fYc6K4IKuxIZkenfvukL_Y8VBqzK" rel="nofollow - Duos for fave acts |
Posted By: Psychedelic Paul
Date Posted: May 30 2023 at 13:58
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^ I have all three of those compilations you mentioned:- ABBA; Kate Bush & Supertramp, all bought from charity shops.
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Posted By: Logan
Date Posted: May 30 2023 at 14:06
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^ Well, they were all fairly recent releases when I bought them (Kate Bush's was a few years old). For used albums, I buy LPs (some can be quite expensive). I don't play them or sell them, I just like having them. I own plenty of CDs but even those I now listen to through other means (mostly streaming). I should donate a lot more of of my stuff to charity shops as I don't like to sell things. ------------- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXcp9fYc6K4IKuxIZkenfvukL_Y8VBqzK" rel="nofollow - Duos for fave acts |
Posted By: jamesbaldwin
Date Posted: May 30 2023 at 14:18
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Greg, 1) You say that the RYM ranking is a popularity ranking. Which is exactly why I don't care. I'm interested in quality rankings. 2) PA's ranking is achieved in the same way as RYM, but to a certain extent: the site contributors give ratings that are worth 10, the forumists' ratings are worth 1. And in my opinion this is effective, it corrects the ranking for the better. I would be in favour of a ranking made by the site contributors alone. 3) Pink Floyd are present in Pa's Top 10 with three albums, it is true. But it is a prog music ranking. Whereas on RYM, PF are present with three albums in the Top 10 of all seventies music. There is a big difference. 4) You say that David Bowie is more famous than Bruce Springsteen. But in Europe since the 1980s, Bruce Springsteen is much more famous. David Bowie in the last 30 years has sold a lot less than Springsteen and didn't fill stadiums. 5) So, the RYM ranking is not just a popularity ranking. Some famous artists such as Pink Floyd, David Bowie, Radiohead are very pumped up, other famous artists with a big commercial impact on the other hand are almost ignored: Rolling Stones, The Who, Springsteen, Michael Jackson, Dire Straits, U2, REM, Oasis, Coldplay etc. In addition, some cult artists enjoy a very high ranking (No. 8: My Bloody Valentine - Loveless!!). That ranking seems to me totally unpredictable and devoid of any logic other than that of being a mirror of fan groups. Perhaps, if there is a logic, it is to devalue flok-blues-rock artists (Dylan, Springsteen, Rolling Stones, Lou Reed, U2, REM etc.). The popular heartland-folk-roots artists are completely underrated: Springsteen, Seger, Mellencamp, Petty, Hiatt etc. ------------- Amos Goldberg (professor of Genocide Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem): Yes, it's genocide. It's so difficult and painful to admit it, but we can no longer avoid this conclusion. |
Posted By: jamesbaldwin
Date Posted: May 30 2023 at 14:36
I voted for Springsteen, because I consider his production from 1973 to 1984 to be of excellent quality - within his genre: heartland rock, singer-songwriting, folk music Excellent albums are: - The Wild - Born to Run - Darkness - Nebraska. (all five stars for me) Very good are The River and Born in the USA. He also made other good albums (the Rising, Western Stars) but since the 1990s his production has not been of great quality. Radiohead had a golden period from - The Bends to Amnesiac. They have two 5-star albums: OK Computer, Amnesiac, two very good albums: The Bends, Kid A. And some other good album. They are certainly more modern and more innovative than Springsteen. Anyway, we are comparing two artists who express themselves with music from different genres. However, since Hail to the Thief, in my opinion, Radiohead have not reached the quality of their previous albums. And in my opinion, the 4 Springsteem records that I consider excellent, in a quality ranking should certainly come before In Rainbows, which occupies the 7th position in RYM's all time chart!!! In short, in my opinion, Springsteen and Radiohead are both great artists within their genre. Three Radiohead records in the all-time Top 10 that includes all genres, is, i.m.o., a great exaggeration, especially for In Rainbows. But I would also consider three Springsteen records in the Top 10 an exaggeration. ------------- Amos Goldberg (professor of Genocide Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem): Yes, it's genocide. It's so difficult and painful to admit it, but we can no longer avoid this conclusion. |
Posted By: omphaloskepsis
Date Posted: May 30 2023 at 15:31
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With the exception of Kid A, I don't get Radiohead. Bruce? Following four head and shoulders above the rest in my heart. The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle Born to Run Darkness On The Edge Of Down Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J.
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Posted By: Logan
Date Posted: May 30 2023 at 16:02
Apologies to Cristi or anyone else if this quoting makes it harder to read and join in with your own thoughts on this conversation: 1) Yes, it gauges the popularity of albums based on the ratings of the users. Quality in art is often subjective., but lists even by the so-called cognoscenti commonly are subjective (it's not about "true" quality or some Platonian ideal, it's about what they appreciate). What you think are quality ranking might well not be what I consider quality rankings. I'm more interested in qualities than quality. Who is the ultimate arbiter of quality (other than my wife who manages the quality department of a biotech company)? 2) I think it's five times the value given to collabs over non-collabs and ten times ratings with reviews over rating without reviews here. I could be wrong as I don't wish to double-check, Part of getting older for me is being okay with such public mistakes. There has been much abuse including people ratings albums without hearing them (or barely listening to them) -- sometimes this has been from official reviewers and collabs too to be honest. There is some utility in how we do it here, especially as we have far fewer numbers of people. Large numbers can be a corrective since there are individuals who abuse the system (systems groups) by trying to manipulate the rankings. I don't think my ratings with a review should be worth more than, most members, but it is. Most of us just rate according to how much we like an album, not based on quality write large -- perceived quality as a factor, okay. Not singling you out, but just cause we agreed to make you a Prog Reviewer, I wouldn't value your opinion of quality over other forumites. I would rather more numbers of raters and do away with favouritism (it's the socialist in me that dislikes elitism). 3) I never thought of Pink Floyd as Prog growing up. I still think of it as more art rock than prog proper. Pink Floyd is a pretty mainstream rock band, still gets played regularly on classic rock radio and I would is still culturally relevant. I would expect it to do well on any music site that includes popular music. As for those others you mention, which I don't like as much, check out the numbers of ratings at RYM. It's not just about the ranking, but the number of people who appreciate it. The fact is, Pink Floyd is still selling and being discovered by lot of people and referenced in movies and shows. I see nothing wrong with it being that popular. 4) This is really about rating specific albums. I'm surprised if Springsteen is more famous in Europe than Bowie since the 80s. It's the classic albums that most people know and rate highly of Bowie, and at RYM, it's Springsteen's 70s albums that got the most ratings. His Born to Run has 15,704 ratings with a 3.95 as I mentioned in the other topic. Various others are at about the 10, 000 mark. David Bowie's Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust... has over 50, 000 ratings there. Blackstar is, I think, such a great swansong that I get a lump in my throat just talking about it. Maybe Springsteen will do an album on his deathbed that gets much more acclaim, who knows. By the way, Blackstar there has 32,027 ratings with 4.11. Bruce Springsteen's contemporaneous albums have far few ratings and much lower ratings, but as established perhaps, those RYM rabble are not sophisticated/ erudite enough to recognise quality (just kidding). As for me saying that Bowie is more famous, I can't find where I said that. I said that Bowie is incredibly popular, and that Bowie is more popular than Springsteen (I mean at the RYM chart). Springsteen has lots of ratings at RYM for his discography, Bowie does better still which leads to the rankings of the albums. I just thought Bowie is popular enough that it's not surprising that he would have various albums that would rate high. Blackstar is the top of the year at PA when including Prog Related and does well here too in the charts. Bowie does well here, and he was not an early addition to PA so has not had as much time to accumulate votes as most others there: https://www.progarchives.com/top-prog-albums.asp?ssubgenres=38" rel="nofollow - TOP Prog Related albums chart 5. Are they almost ignored? Just looking at the raking for the top rated album of each: The Who - Who's Next: A 3.92 with almost 21,737 ratings. #17 for its year and number 346 overall. The Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers 19,506 ratings with a 3.99 (Let it Bleed almost as much), #11 for 1971, #207 overall. Bruce Springsteen - Born to Run 15,704 ratings with a 3.95. #6 for 1975, #320 overall Michael Jackson - Thriller: 24,734 ratings with 3.97. #3 for 1982, #194 overall U2 - The Joshua Tree: 17,168 ratings with a 3.71. #33 for 1987, #2,552 overall Cumulatively for all of their albums as you can imagine, that's a huge amount of attention from the raters at the site. Maybe you have a very different definition of almost ignore or maybe its just because some have even more ratings. So what? You say it's devoid of logic, and I don't understand your logic. Popularity breeds popularity, and some groups and individuals so have great influence. There is something of a herd mentality at play. But I don't see why, say, a very popular album by a popular act getting 50, 00 ratings devalues a not so popular album by a group getting twenty thousand ratings. I think you care more about ranking than I do and ratings for that matter. In the Italian music themed topic that I linked to I gave the ratings for the top ranked Dylan, Springsteen, Rolling Stones and Lou Reed albums and judging by the number of ratings, the respectable rankings, how well they do in the year, to say that they are devalued boggles my mind. And as for heartland-folk-roots artists being underrated, that's just your value judgment that shows your biases. Sorry for myself and a great many others not appreciating it as much as you and underrating it so badly. I hate lots of that stuff, sorry. I won't call it bad, I just don't like it or actually dislike. loathe it. I guess there's no accounting for taste. Here are the stats again that I posted in response to you regarding RYM's not valuing these artists enough (or however you would put it). - Bruce Springsteen - Born to Run 3.95 / 5.0 from 15,698 ratings. #6 for 1975, #321 overall - Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited 4.15 / 5.0 from 31,188 ratings. #2 for 1965, #55 overall - Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers 3.99 / 5.0 from 19,496 ratings. Ranked #11 for 1971, #205 overall - Neil Young - After the Gold Rush 4.07 / 5.0 from 20,981 ratings. Ranked #5 for 1970, #115 overall - Lou Reed - Transformer 3.90 / 5.0 from 20,932 ratings. Ranked #15 for 1972, #380 overall - Tom Waits - Rain Dogs 4.05 / 5.0 from 22,367 ratings. Ranked #2 for 1985, #122 overall I guess we interpret the data and its implications very differently. Speaking of Lou Reed and I mention it in the other thread, The Velvet Underground gets very high ratings and rakings at RYM. The debut album has 55,716 ratings with a 4.21. Subsequent numbers for albums are also high. VU of course has been very hip and trendy for quite some years. There is a bandwagon effect commonly when it comes to such things. ------------- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXcp9fYc6K4IKuxIZkenfvukL_Y8VBqzK" rel="nofollow - Duos for fave acts |
Posted By: Logan
Date Posted: May 30 2023 at 16:24
Sorry to cut you short, but how then should such a site work to limit the numbers of albums form an artist if it should at all to avoid such "exaggeration"? One could oneself come up with a list based on it with only the top ranked album of each act (I've done that before), the algorithm could be adjusted to only allow the top rated album to show up in the chart, but that would defeat its purpose methinks. One's not going to have 50, 000 raters talking it out to come up with a consensus for greatest album that only should be considerable for the top list (well, that could just be the top ranked album, so I'm being silly). The thing I don't understand is how can this be an exaggeration if it truly reflects the ratings. If Radiohead has several very popular albums with many ratings that rank high enough for the top ten, then I think they should be in the top 10. It's not about best, as established, it's just a ranking based on the accumulation of ratings for albums. Many people who rate one album by a band highly will also rate others albums by that band highly. Not surprising. At PA bands like Pink Floyd, Genesis, Yes, and King Crimson do well in the rankings with multiple albums, as do Camel and Rush etc. Whether it's top 10, top 20, top 50, top 200.... Anyway, Bruce Springsteen accumulated more votes in this time in this poll than I expected, and Radiohead rather less. ------------- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXcp9fYc6K4IKuxIZkenfvukL_Y8VBqzK" rel="nofollow - Duos for fave acts |
Posted By: Logan
Date Posted: May 30 2023 at 23:21
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All of this said, I think I may know where you are coming from, Lorenzo, and you do recognise that the lists are merely a presentation based on the ratings given by a great many people for a great many albums, and those album ratings and numbers of ratings determine the ranking. That doesn't make them invalid or worthless, but maybe not of value to you, and that's fine and it depends on what one uses the charts for I suppose in part. If an album is ranked high already, then it is more likely that more people check it out and then rate that album. Fame begets more fame. Exaggeration might make sense if it was a considered best list, but not the way it works as calculations based on the amalgamated ratings of albums. I've seen people say the list is wrong, it makes no sense. It makes sense from a simple input equals output way. And I don't think it can be really wrong unless there is some flaw in the computations. I don't think of it as a best list, or PA's charts. Best is largely subjective to me. They are rankings based on the input -- the input is not wrong (with exceptions), the question is does the output compute well? The logic is in the algorithm and the way the site was set up. I don't think there's anything wrong with those top ranked artists getting lots of ratings, or with many albums by top ranked artists being rated -- if I like an artist, I will check out more of that artists albums, and if I rate one well by that artists, I might rate many well by that artists. So I would expect repetition of names in a top list. As said, those almost ignored artists have a great many ratings, not just for the albums I highlighted, and are well respected. It's just that some are more popular (get more ratings, and a relatively small amount can change the ranking significantly). The beauty of such rankings is that, ideally, it is a fair representation of what is best rated, and people aren't comparing this album to that to come up with a top list. There isn't, potential manipulators aside, such thought as the algorithm doesn't think. It's cold and statistical. If an individual or 20 individuals (or more) came to together to make, say, a 20 top all-time jazz albums list, they would be actively comparing which should be higher than another and thinking about how many should be listed by an artists. It would be a thoughtful collaborative process. That might well results in what you think is better list, but it's such a different process, and each of those people has their biases. THE RYM way if anything, is more likely to seem fair to me, but then maybe they should not be compared. And I might totally disagree with those jazz albums or they do the obvious albums probably like A Love Supreme etc. ------------- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXcp9fYc6K4IKuxIZkenfvukL_Y8VBqzK" rel="nofollow - Duos for fave acts |
Posted By: Saperlipopette!
Date Posted: May 31 2023 at 00:34
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(I'll reply here instead of at "is Italian prog epigonic" as the whole discussion seem to have moved over here. I know I'm repeating some of Logan's points, but they seem to need being repeated) -Oh my god. There's valid critizism and then there's just plain misunderstandings like
I rather think of RYM as a "music listener utopia". Because that's really what it is. If you asked 662 475* random people about their 100 favorite albums I guess a majority couldn't name more than a dozen. The final list would possibly maybe end up with a couple of Beatles and Pink Floyd albums. And probably a greatest hits collection each by Queen, ABBA, Eagles, Fleetwood Mac etc... Also there would be Ed Sheeran, Adele, Harry Styles and a maybe couple of Taylor Swift-albums. No jazz, no prog, no krautrock and no italian album in the top thousand. Well ok, maybe Måneskin (who's latest album got a well desereved 1.92 rating at RYM), but certainly not any italian prog. Springsteen might have appeared with Born in the USA, not Born to Run. It's plain silly to argue that "I wouldn't include this or that album and no artist more than once". The ratings of a relatively big city of people can't be compared to your own thought through and balanced choices. These people haven't talked together. A person that has five starred Dark Side of the Moon is likely to give Wish You Were Here a very high rating as well. And that's why they are both in the top ten. Still I think RYM comes up with much better and interesting albums than Lorenzo does himself. By taking music that's released post 1980 as seriously as 1970's rock. By lifting sonically interesting music by My Blood Valentine, Radiohead, Madvillainy, Bowie etc... over musically unevenful genres like Dad Rock/Heartland Rock - which I find so boring it makes me physically ill. Btw: comparing RYM's all time
chart with PA's progchart, and complaining that there's no italian bands
in the former, is... just...not... relevant. Italian prog is cherised
both at PA and RYM. You will notice when you compare the latter place' prog chart with PA's chart. Any other comparizon is 100% nonsensical.
- *the number of RYM users |
Posted By: Kotro
Date Posted: May 31 2023 at 02:27
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I've only heard one entire Springsteen album (Born to Run), but I like it better than the 4 albums by Radiohead I know (The Bends, Ok Computer, Kid A, In Rainbows). ------------- Bigger on the inside. |
Posted By: Lewian
Date Posted: May 31 2023 at 04:25
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Radiohead - they're great. Lorenzo has made me appreciate Springsteen's live attitude, and I really like some of his live videos. Also he wrote Because The Night and some of the songs Manfred Mann's Earth Band has done versions of that I really love. Still Springsteen's studio material, as far as I took the time to listen to it, has never convinced me. Nice polemic by the way by Saperlipopette! I can identify with much of it. |
Posted By: Cristi
Date Posted: May 31 2023 at 04:28
All the MMEB covers of Sprigsteen are great, amazing, more fun & entertaining than the original (IMO).
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Posted By: jamesbaldwin
Date Posted: May 31 2023 at 18:10
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@Logan (Greg) It seems to me that everything you write confirms what I am arguing. The ranking you get on RYM has no inherent value with the quality of the music. It's just a ranking that mirrors the fan groups on RYM. There are a lot of fans of Radiohead and Bowie and Pink Floyd - these groups have a lot of reviews, these groups lead the charts with a large number of albums. And all the most important artists in rock history of XX century (Springsteen, Reed, Young, Who, Doors, Waits, Stones etc), and even commercially important, are found beyond the 100th place (Dylan is at 55th) . The Rolling Stones, the most important and long-lived rock music group is at ( I dont remember.... ) place. U2, probably the most famous rock bands of the last 30 years, are even in 2552 place. Another site like RYM might have instead of the aforementioned groups U2, Springsteen and the Rolling Stones (I have named artists of equal or greater global fame than Radiohead, Bowie and Pink Floyd) and have the highest rated album by Radiohead (for example OK Computer ) at 2552 place, as happens on RYM in The Joshua Tree. It all depends on how busy a site is with fans of various bands. If instead of young fans, linked to more modern and crossover/alternative/psychedelic rock, there were older fans, more linked to classic rock, we would have a ranking similar to that of Rolling Stones magazine, where Pink Floyd do not even appear in the Top 100 and where the importance of Radiohead and Bowie (not to mention Lamar) would be very marginal. That being the case, it should be clear why I consider RYM's chart to be of no artistic value. If anything, it has sociological value. A ranking of this type, therefore, is the height of subjectivity. It's completely unpredictable. The ranking of the Rolling Stones magazine, however, despite all the political influences it undergoes (the influence of Black Lives Matter), is much more serious and competent than that of RYM. because it is made by an editorial team that tries to balance attendance. 1) Gaye - What's going home 2) Beach Boys - Pet Sounds 3) J Miotchell - Blue 4) S Wonder - Songs in the key... 5) Beatles - Abbey Road 6) Nirvana - Nevermind 7) F Mac - Rumors 8) Prince - Purple Rain 9) Dylan - Blood 10) Lauryn Hill - The Miseducation 11) Beatles - Revolver 12) M Jackson - Thriller 13) Aretha Franklin - I never 14) Stones - Exile 15) Public Enemy - It Takes 16) Clash - London Calling 17) K West - My Beautiful 18) Dylan - Highway 61 19) Lamar - To Pimp 20) Radiohead - Kid A In this chart, Reed, Young, Springsteen, Waits, Who etc are in a good place. Not over 100 or 300. But this team doesn't decide a priori to place just one album per artist in the Top 10 or Top 20, it doesn't set itself limitations of this type, it simply votes albums based on a composite jury that in the end gives results without too many exaggerations (in the past they used to exaggerate the Beatles' presence in the Top 10, now they exaggerate a little in the presence of black music). There is a coherence in this ranking, and there is a clear trend, the one that favors classic rock, linked to the origins (progressive is not in the top positions). Obviously, there is even better than this Rolling Stones ranking, which is conditioned by the aforementioned trends. Each classification will always be subjective (just as music critics have different opinions), but a quality classification, if made with precise criteria by an editorial team of connoisseurs who listen to all the albums and then vote, obtains results that are less subjective, less linked to personal tastes and more linked to precise criteria, beauty is usually looked at, in the arts, and therefore also in music (Merlin's ranking is based on the criterion of innovation.). Then, obviously, if the classifications are divided by genre and by decades, information of a certain aesthetic (critical) value can already be given. For example, the classification made by the Italian editorial staff of Ondarock is, in my opinion, a serious and competent classification. For example: http://https://www.ondarock.it/classifiche/#" rel="nofollow - http://https://www.ondarock.it/classifiche/# The classification of Scaruffi is very coherent with the beauty of the albums (he completely refused their commercial impact and popularity), but it si more subjective than a chart made of a collettive of persons.
------------- Amos Goldberg (professor of Genocide Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem): Yes, it's genocide. It's so difficult and painful to admit it, but we can no longer avoid this conclusion. |
Posted By: Logan
Date Posted: May 31 2023 at 22:07
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The ranking reflects on the users who rate at RYM. If the rankings are incorrect at RYM then the algorithm is incorrect. As I've said, I don't think it's a best list or a most important list, it's the result of a program calculating the number of ratings and rating values of those who rated albums at the site. If contemplating the seriousness or competency of the results, then that requires seeing if the algorithm and system works or is flawed according to what it attempts to do -- not what, say, you want it to do or the results that you would want. If those results (the output) are not what one would expect from the data (the input of ratings) then there likely was some incompetence in the implementation of the algorithm. If it's a good, competent and serious list depends on if it is a true representation of the ratings of the users, because that's what it's supposed to represent. To me it's just not important that those big classic names are not in the top 100 all-time, all-categories list of RYM. I use RYM mostly to discover and look into the discographies of acts and clicking on the albums to read the reviews for more modern artists. It has its utility to me for searching using various fields such as multiple genres, years, attributes etc. If those are not as popular as others there, fine by me. Not sure why it should bother one. Most of what you have listed I don't care much for so I would not rate those even if they are of importance to the history of music. I am a lover of kinds of music; not a music historian. I like the idea of rating music depending on how much we like it rather than our perceptions of its global, or perceived I should say, significance. Many rate and rank (often pros or wanna-be pros) depending on how they think it should be rated based on what they have heard about it, rather than based on how much they just plain enjoy it. If more people like and therefore rate Radiohead and Bowie there than Springsteen and The Rolling Stones, I don't see a problem with that. I am with them.. I respect the Stones significance more than I like the music (well, I do like some of the Stones music very much, but that's not important), and I just haven't liked Springsteen period (that said, you did introduce me to music of his that I did enjoy). My dad loathed the Stones and would have said they don't hold a candle to Bach and Brahms, but apples and oranges. I expect that Rolling Stone magazine list is fine for what is is, which is not what RYM's is. It may well be a regurgitation of the kinds of albums, or the actual albums, and names that they have highlighted in the past past rather than fresh interpretations or fresh perspectives (even if it is a blacker list). It tends to be a pretty conservative publication despite any potential progressive pandering (black artist/musicians are very significant, and I'm not diminishing that). It looks like the kind of list I would expect from them, no real surprises. Pretty safe and calculated. I'd be more interested to see most people's lists in our community. It' doesn't excite or surprise me. There are only two albums I have really liked on that list, which are Joni Mitchell's Blue and Kid A (not heard the Lamar except in part). As for that ondarock one, that actually has a significant number of my 2022 favourites on the page it took me to, or would have. Your link was missing a colon so not working, but here it is in workable form https://www.ondarock.it/classifiche/#" rel="nofollow - https://www.ondarock.it/classifiche/# 5 to 8, Beach House, Weyes Blood, The Smile (which is pretty much Radiohead, god bless 'em), and Black Midi (took a while for me) are particular favourites of mine. I also like Black Country, New Road. Funnily enough, I got into some of these because they were well rated (and ranked) for the year at RYM, and there's an influence from people at PA whose tastes I dig. And in the next list from the year, there is that Anna von Hausswolff live album, which was the top ranked live album of the year at RYM and that's how I discovered it. I can appreciate different lists that come about in different ways. I like that at RYM so many raters there seem to like the same kinds of music I do and I was surprised to see how much there is there that is highly ranked that aligns so well with my tastes. I would not expect rate your music top of the charts to be a representation of the greatest (problematic term that that can be) all-time albums. It's about rating album in your collection/ albums you know, choosing so-called greatest would involve buying into a narrative of what's canonically been held as great to a large extent. And those canons often do change over time. A lot of music once held by the arbiters of what's good has fallen out of favour and fashion, but this is rather a digression. Since lots of people there rate the kinds of music I like there, it is a particularly good resource for me. If I liked Heartland USA rock, then... well, I shudder to think, but I could see an interesting horror movie that involves people turning overnight into Heartland loving musicos, a sort of Stepford Wives meets invasion of Body Snatchers scenario only more boring. And I could be dealing with those heartland rock loving zombies Ash from Evil Dead style to spice things up else the audience all falls asleep aside from that weird kid from Deliverance. ------------- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXcp9fYc6K4IKuxIZkenfvukL_Y8VBqzK" rel="nofollow - Duos for fave acts |
Posted By: Saperlipopette!
Date Posted: May 31 2023 at 23:32
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Rolling Stone magazine has force fed us with the same predictable lists for
decades. I like many of the classics, so lots of great music to find
there too of course. Plenty of flat out boring music that means very
little to most non-Americans as well. RS never really cared for or
understood jazz, prog - or any of the wonderful music made outside the
anglosphere. The Ramones were always more essential than Coltrane, Can
and King Crimson by default. Why should I care about them? Whenever
they’ve included music from outside their comfort zone, they always
struck me as musical tourists picking a common denominator from the very
basic starters kit of a certain genre, scene or artist. Not because
they wanted to, but because they felt like they had to. What music listeners actually rate highly and treasure is so much more interesting than their desperate attempts to stay relevant. For curated lists that actually have a clue about both the zeitgeist, the rest of the world and the music of our near past, I’d rather look at the decade and year-lists at Pitchfork. |
Posted By: richardh
Date Posted: June 01 2023 at 04:21
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Springsteen is a big personality with great 'guns' and clearly thrives in a live stadium arena where he can whip the natives up into a frenzy. Not many people can go on a stage and own it they way he has always done. He is also very 'American' and his lyrics display his patriotism boldly with no shame. All power to his elbow but I will always appreciate a lot more the anally retentive, almost painfully introspective English indie band over a big bold personality like Springsteen. I could say its like comparing Apples and Oranges but its more like Beef Burgers/ Fish and Chips
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Posted By: jamesbaldwin
Date Posted: June 01 2023 at 04:35
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I try to write my top 20 1) Robert Wyatt- Rock Bottom 2) Van der Graaf - From H to He 3) The Doors 4) Velvet Underground 5) The Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers 6) Bruce Springsteen - Born To Run 7) Van der Graaf - Pawn Hearts 8) Soft Machine Third 9)Area - Arbeit Mach Fre 10) Talk Talk - Spirit of Eden 11) The Who - Quadro phenia 12) Beatles - Abbey Road 13) In The Court of KC 14) Pink Floyd - The Piper 15) Bob Dylan Highway 16) Television Marquee Moon 17) Cave - No More Shall We Part 18) Radiohead - Ok computed 19) Buckley - Starsailor 20) Zappa - Uncle Meat ------------- Amos Goldberg (professor of Genocide Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem): Yes, it's genocide. It's so difficult and painful to admit it, but we can no longer avoid this conclusion. |
Posted By: Pekka
Date Posted: June 01 2023 at 07:31
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I think (maybe excluding some very latest Bruce albums) I've got pretty much the whole discographies from both on my shelves. Both have some really great albums (OK, Kid, Rainbows / pretty much everything from Born to Run to Born in the USA) and some that I barely ever listen to (Pablo, Bends, Moon / pretty much everything from the 90s onwards). OK Computer is my favorite album from the entire bunch but there's a lot more good stuff to listen to from Bruce. So it's all very even! But if I have to choose I'll go with Springsteen because of the longevity and live work. ------------- http://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=42652" rel="nofollow - It's on PA! 
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Posted By: Logan
Date Posted: June 01 2023 at 10:22
Interesting that Springsteen has more votes. I knew that Radiohead does have many detractors (as one person memorably had put it, music to slit your wrists too).
Yours is a particularly interesting post to me especially in the context of how this poll came to be based on a conversation in another topic. For those that didn't notice the genesis of this, it was over concerns that Radiohead albums ranked higher at RateYourMusic than various classic artists, and in fact until not that long ago OK Computer was the number one ranked album in the Rate Your Music charts (now number two) with a 4.26 rating, 89,734 ratings and 1,671 reviews. As that is your favourite album of the bunch, were you to rate say on the right scale then that would get the highest rating for you. I actually had thought about phrasing this poll as which of these artists has the higher ranked album, or some such thing but the issue raised was not just that OK Computer is ranked over these classic artists at a site for rating albums you know and like, but that Radiohead and others have, I think this is a fair summation, too many in the top 100 or so to take the list seriously, or something.... And the classics which may have 15,000 to going on 25, 000 ratings or so for certain albums (I did the stats earlier) are being ignored by not ranking higher (the ranking being based on the number of ratings as well as the average of the ratings) than they do I have a very different take and angle on this, which is why this has been discussed with a few of us participating over many thousands of words in this thread and others. Bruce Springsteen's top rated album there, Born to Run has a 3.95 rating, 15,715 ratings by the way. His next most popular, Nebraska, has 11,538 ratings, Born in the USA has 10,045 ratings. Those all would be very high numbers at PA, but RYM of course is much bigger. By comparison, Close to the Edge at PA has 4, 944 ratings. Springsteen has six albums at RYM with considerably higher numbers of ratings than Close to The Edge here, and another that has almost as many ratings. So not ignored, just a smaller number of fan raters than various others at RYM. ------------- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXcp9fYc6K4IKuxIZkenfvukL_Y8VBqzK" rel="nofollow - Duos for fave acts |
Posted By: jamesbaldwin
Date Posted: June 01 2023 at 10:40
I must admit a fact: if I observe the charts for decade, RYM is not so bad. The main problem is the Top albums of all time: in that case some popular artists of the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties find place in the at the back because only a few artists have very high ratings, and so these artists occupy the top positions with many albums. Tonight I will try to make comparisons per decade between RYM and Italian Ondarock, and you will see the similarities and differences. ------------- Amos Goldberg (professor of Genocide Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem): Yes, it's genocide. It's so difficult and painful to admit it, but we can no longer avoid this conclusion. |
Posted By: Logan
Date Posted: June 01 2023 at 10:49
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Thanks Lorenzo, I have a strange interest in these kinds of statistics and their implications/ what one can infer from them. This conversation has been getting my brain to work a little better, I think. I've been taking meds for a serious case of shingles (a kind of herpes, but not the kind born of any fun). Your top 20 does seem great to me and shows to me how much we value the same music highly (that could mostly be my own list). I will listen to Born to Run by the way, as other than the BS I have heard and liked from you, I just had this bad feeling from the radio hits I grew up with. I did quite like Cheech's Born in East LA. ------------- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXcp9fYc6K4IKuxIZkenfvukL_Y8VBqzK" rel="nofollow - Duos for fave acts |
Posted By: Jared
Date Posted: June 01 2023 at 14:28
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A really easy one for me.... Bruce all the way... Asbury Park, Born To Run, Darkness, the starkness of Nebraska, the more commercial rockiness of USA... generally excellent stuff, although like Steve Earle and Jackson Browne, he doesn't get a listen these days.... Simply can't stand Radiohead I'm afraid...
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Posted By: Jared
Date Posted: June 01 2023 at 14:30
Yep, I think that was me...
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Posted By: Logan
Date Posted: June 01 2023 at 14:36
Could well be, it was years ago but it stuck with me. I was no Radiohead fan for many years, but little things started to turn me around. I really liked 2016's A Moon Shaped Pool, and this sequence from Westworld got to me. ------------- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXcp9fYc6K4IKuxIZkenfvukL_Y8VBqzK" rel="nofollow - Duos for fave acts |
Posted By: Nogbad_The_Bad
Date Posted: June 01 2023 at 17:03
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OK Computer 14 In Rainbows 13 The King Of Limbs 13 Kid A 12 Bruce - I got nothing ------------- Ian Host of the Post-Avant Jazzcore Happy Hour on Progrock.com https://podcasts.progrock.com/post-avant-jazzcore-happy-hour/ |
Posted By: jamesbaldwin
Date Posted: June 01 2023 at 17:42
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Let's take the era of progressive, the Seventies: RYM top 38 1) PF: Wish 2) PF: Dark 3) Bowie: Ziggy 4) BS: Paranoid 5) KC: Red 6) PF: Animals 7) Drake: Pink 8) S. Wonder: Songs 9) Joy Division: Unknown 10) M. Davis: Bitches ---- 11) Bowie: Low 12) Yes: Close 13) Television: Marquee 14) M Gaye : Whats 15) Led Zepp IV 16) BS: Masters 17) Dylan: Blood 18) Bowie: Station 19) Can: Future Days 20) S Wonder: innvervisions 21) Black Sabbath 22) Can: Tago Mago 23) Nascimento: Clube 24) Stooges: Fun 25) Young: After 26) Bowie: Hunk 27) Steve Reich 28) Clash: London Calling 29) F Mac Rumors 30) Young: On The Beach 31) Harrison: All Things 32) A. Coltrane: Journey... 33) J Micthell: Blue 34) Eno: Another 35) KC: Larks 36) Cohen: Songs of... 37) Can: Ege 38) TH: Fear of Music In black the albums of RYM also present on Ondarock. In green those of RYM absent on Ondarock. What can we notice? 1) Bowie: 4 albums 2) PF: 3 albums (in the Top 10)! Black Sabbat and Can: 3 albums!!! 4) KC, Wonder, Young, 2 albums. Ondarock: 1) Bowie: Low 2) Joy Division: Unknown 3) Television: Marquee 4) Bowie: Ziggy 5) Suicide: Suicide 6) KC: Red 7) Wyatt: Rock Bottom 8) PF: Dark 9) Led Zepp IV 10) Kraftwerk - The Man... --------- 11) BS: Paranoid 12) Can: Tago Mago 13) Yes: Close 14) Clash: London Calling 15) M. Davis: Bitches 16) Rolling Stones: Sticky Fingers 17) Pere Ubu: Modern Dance 18) Young: On The Beach 19) Roxy Music: For Your Pleasure 20) stooges: Fun 21) Reed: Berlin 22) Reed: Transformer 23) Drake: pink Moon 24) Neu 25) Kraftwerk: Trans... 26) Soft Machine 3 27) Genesis: The Lamb 28) Nico: Desert Shore 29) Faust I 30) M. Gaye: Whats... 31) Gang of Four: Entertainment 32) Genesis: Selling 33) Sex Pistols: Never Mind... 34) Young: Harvest 35) PF: Wish You... 36) Bowie: Heroes 37) Van der Graaf: Pawn Hearts 38) Residents: Not Avalaible In black the albums of Ondarock also present on RYM. In red those of Ondarock absent on RYM. Discover - similarities - differences.
------------- Amos Goldberg (professor of Genocide Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem): Yes, it's genocide. It's so difficult and painful to admit it, but we can no longer avoid this conclusion. |
Posted By: Logan
Date Posted: June 01 2023 at 20:58
It's easy to spot the differences in albums covered with your highlights, but I think to highlight much more it is important to understand the differences in how the lists are derived, the contributors and how the sites operate. As you have specifically referenced rateyourmusic having multiple albums and I see thsat Ondarock has a maximum of two, this is a translation of what it says at Ondarock that I found the 70s list page
So they limit the number of albums that can be in the list, whereas rateyourmusic has no such restrictions. RYM's charts are just based on users ratings (average value of rating and number of ratings), and of course if many people like and rate one album by a band, it is likely that they will like and rate more albums by the band, thus multiple albums will be in the charts. I don't know how many contributors there are to Ondarock (how many people that list was derived from) but that is something I would wish to evaluate when making comparisons. It's a different thing being a rater just rating lots of albums you like, then a program computes all that those ratings for the ranking, than it is to be contributor to such lists because that becomes much more considered. So while there are similarities in the albums, the charts are rather apples and oranges because of the differences in how they are derived. ------------- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXcp9fYc6K4IKuxIZkenfvukL_Y8VBqzK" rel="nofollow - Duos for fave acts |
Posted By: Logan
Date Posted: June 02 2023 at 00:02
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Just out of non-interest probably, I did a series of 23 polls last year covering albums in RYM charts that are also in PA while focusing on one album per artist. On album per artist not throughout the whole series of polls, but at least only one album by an artist in each poll, and these first two polls only had one per artist. This list from the first two polls only includes the ones included in Prog categories at Prog Archives. The numbers on the right indicate what were the rankings at RYM in the general music all-time chart at the time. I had neglected Spiderland before even though I know the album well. I might not have thought that it was in PA at the time. I made a mistake on it being out of PA recently, which was pointed out. This series was a time-consuming exercise, but I had considerable time on my hands and a lot of insomnia. I had hoped that this might complement David's list as mine was compiled differently which was based on RYM's progressive rock chart instead of the general list -- I know so much in PA from my years here that that was fairly easy even if I missed more than one, or two.... If in doubt I did check PA to see if it was in. Miles Davis' In a Silent Way actually is not the top ranked Miles Davis album there, it is Kind of Blue, but I could not bring myself to include it in the list. The much more appropriate In a Silent Way was the second highest-rated Davis album. Radiohead - OK Computer (1) Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here (3) King Crimson - In the Court of the Crimson King (4) Godspeed You Black Emperor! - Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven! (21) Slint - Spiderland (28) Miles Davis - In a Silent Way* (33) Kate Bush - Hounds of Love (38) Björk - Vespertine (40) Yes - Close to the Edge (52) Swans - Soundtracks for the Blind (66) Talk Talk - Laughing Stock (72) Can - Future Days (77) Sigur Rós - Ágætis byrjun (92) Death - Symbolic (102) Frank Zappa - Hot Rats (103) Eno - Another Green World (131) Genesis - Selling England by the Pound (166) Comus - First Utterance (178) Jethro Tull - Thick as a Brick (187) Tool - Lateralus (206) Kraftwerk - Die Mensch-Maschine (218) Herbie Hancock - Head Hunters (228) Opeth - Blackwater Park (249) This Heat - Deceit (268) black midi - Hellfire (285) Camel - Mirage (302) Invisible - El jardín de los presentes (329) Rush - Moving Pictures (333) Coil - The Ape of Naples (344) The Mahavishnu Orchestra with John McLaughlin - The Inner Mounting Flame (386) Gorguts - Obscura (392) Nine Inch Nails - The Fragile (403) Van der Graaf Generator - Pawn Hearts (408) Robert Wyatt - Rock Bottom (427) Magma - Rétrospective Vol. 1 & 2 (428) Neurosis - Through Silver in Blood (431)* Electric Masada - At the Mountains of Madness (433) Agalloch - Ashes Against the Grain (437) Tim Buckley - Dream Letter: Live in London 1968 (441) Mastodon - Crack the Skye (458) Soft Machine - Third (464) Santana - Abraxas (466) Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band (480) Mr. Bungle - California (487) Ulver - Bergtatt: Et eeventyr i 5 capitler (499) Isis - Panopticon (511) Caravan - In the Land of Grey and Pink (513) Boredoms - Vision Creation Newsun (519) NEU! - NEU! '75 (524) Weakling - Dead as Dreams (534) Peter Gabriel - Peter Gabriel 3 (aka "Arrgh, My Face Is Melting!", at least that's how I like to call it) (546) *whenever I see Coil - The Ape of Naples, I misread it as The Age of Nipples. I wonder what Freud would say about that (I have a feeling I know). After the first two polls, I made it that I could repeat bands/artists for the series as long as it was no more than one album per act per poll. And I started to include Prog Related and Proto-Prog (I had one nor two polls dedicated to that). For any Italian comrades who may be reading this... While there is a Prog Related Italian album in the fifth poll, the top ranked Italian album from one of our Prog categories, Museo Rosenbach - Zarathustra (1514) did not come until the 12th poll. Then in Poll 13 we had Premiata Forneria Marconi - Storia di un minuto (1601) and Banco del Mutuo Soccorso - Darwin! (1675). Radiohead also features in that poll with Hail to the Thief (1739). Then in Poll 14 of the series we get PFM again, this time with Per un amico (1602), and we get Franco Battiato with La voce del padrone (1812), additionally we get BdMS again in Poll 14 with the self-titled debut (1813). In poll 23 we had Biglietto per l'Inferno - Biglietto per l'Inferno (3284) and Il Balletto di Bronzo - Ys (3350). I remember wanting to get to Area at RYM, and I did, but I gave up on putting up the polls in PA before then as I then got busy with work and really bored with the exercise. Unfortunately. I did not save the lists behind what I posted here, so gave up on the rather fatuous, perhaps, project even though I might have returned to it otherwise (I should have posted all of it in David's topic for posterity or in my last poll). One not surprising thing was that when a band with multiple lauded albums amongst the Prognoscenti started appearing in the list like with PFM and BdMS, it was common for another album or albums by the same band to appear in the ranking soon. This happened with Gentle Giant and some others. This happens often because when fans of a band rate one album by a band high, they commonly also rate other "respected" albums by that band highly. So you do get these kinds of clusters and one who rates PFM albums, and rates them highly, is more likely than most to also rate BdSM album highly (shared audiences) and so those often will cluster into the rankings not too far apart. PFM had an album ranking at 1601 and at 1602 of all album in RYM. BdSM had a fair distance between the rankings of its albums with 1675 and 1814, when dealing with so many albums, and only including the ones included in Prog Archives, that number does not seem very much. It probably seems a much bigger difference in ranking for those types who only focus on the top 100 or so of the general music lists, but I went through significantly more than 5000 albums even though my polls stopped before then. EDIT: I was looking through my polls again and I did miss it there as it was in poll 16: Area - Arbeit macht frei (2183) I had remembered it doing quite well at RYM. 2183 may seem low a ranking to some, but that's a very good score when looking at the overall numbers and what it is higher than -- when you're talking the kind of numbers of RYM and how little it can take in terms of average rating to significantly change the chart position. I love Area (one of my very favourites), so I had been anticipating that when I went down the charts. I know, Lorenzo, that is a band you too hold in high regard (of course you being my number one Italian comrade). ------------- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXcp9fYc6K4IKuxIZkenfvukL_Y8VBqzK" rel="nofollow - Duos for fave acts |
Posted By: Stressed Cheese
Date Posted: June 02 2023 at 04:02
They were one of the most popular bands in the 70's, and are one of the most popular bands now, so this is a pretty good argument in favor of RYM.
Keep in mind that some artists are more known for their singles and are popular radio artists, while other bands are either just more album oriented (PF), or are less likely to attract real devotees. RYM is mostly about albums. That is reflected in RYM's amount of ratings, but the average ratings of, say Michael Jackson's classic albums are still very high. So ultimately, this is a non-issue. Just because the amount of ratings doesn't line up with what you'd expect based on album or ticket sales from when these albums were made, doesn't mean the ratings themselves are invalid, and like Logan pointed out, the artists you call "almost ignored" have very good ratings. Also, Loveless is highly regarded both on RYM and outside.How is that "devoid of any logic"? Because it doesn't line up with your expectations? Because it's not what Rolling Stone would say? There's a lot of highly regarded and popular hip-hop albums on RYM. I wouldn't have been able to guess what they would be before seeing what they are, because that's not my kind of music. But that doesn't mean they're invalid choices. Before I ever started using RYM I was already aware of Loveless as a highly popular album, so if anything, it would be "devoid of any logic" if RYM didn't reflect that. if it was mostly fan groups pumping up ratings, why didn't they do the same to the other 2 MBV albums? You could say the same about Yes on PA. RYM has its issues for sure, but the reviews show that most people who rate albums do so because they have an interest in the genre. You wouldn't find enough hip-hop fans who hate prog review-bombing Yes albums, for instance, to make any difference.
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Posted By: Logan
Date Posted: June 02 2023 at 09:39
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^ Absolutely with Pink Floyd. It has sold huge numbers of albums, been popular in the 70s, the 80s, the 90s, and is still very popular amongst different ages. It is of course popular with albums and individual songs and is a staple of classic rock radio -- I heard Pink Floyd far more on the radio than Springsteen for instance. It's an iconic band. And it's still culturally relevant and gets referenced in different media regularly. When I was staying at a hotel with Waters also there last decade, word got out where he was staying, and there were so many young people outside the entrance of the hotel in their Pink Floyd shirts (not Waters shirts). Say to the average person who says they like Pink Floyd, "Oh, so you're into Prog!" and I would not be surprised if one got a weird look. Some of those kids with the Dark Side of the Moon shirts of course like the iconic design. I used to like to draw that cover in some classes instead of focusing on the subject, but then I loved the album, and The Wall and Wish You Were Here etc. when I was a teenager. It's hardly just a Prog phenomenon. I have no idea how many of those who know Pink Floyd think of it as Prog. I didn't even when I become aware of Prog as a thing (I associated Prog with Yes and ELP). It transcends genre. It's popular with the kids who are into psych kinds of music (and psych and related is popular at RateYourMusic), older dudes, to those into art rock and classic rock, and just into music. And it shares a lot of fanbase with Radiohead. They are very similar in various ways, so that's all the more reason why I could see a site which has many Radiohead fans rating their albums also rating Pink Floyd albums. Good point about the logic of it, I focused on the logic being the input/output process, that if the algorithm sufficiently represents the ratings for the ranking in a sensible and reliable way, then it's logical, but actually the logic goes a lot deeper than that. To understand the logic requires understanding how things work there and knowing something about what music is popular and has been since RYM started amongst the kinds of communities and individuals they have there. As a determinist especially (A causes B causes C etc.). Alien thinking to me. I wonder what Hari Seldon, who "develops psychohistory, an algorithmic science that allows him to predict the future in probabilistic terms" would think? It's important to be aware of one's own biases and particular cultural/ environmental conditioning. Here is the Season 3 trailer of Westworld: I hear that music and still gives me a thrills after all these years. By the way, since you mentioned Lou Reed, for the season four Westworld trailer, they used Lou Reed's Just a Perfect Day which is so perfect (preferred that trailer and season to season three). And for one of the most iconic scenes in Westworld's season one they used Paint it Black by the Stones. They used Radiohead multiple times. I'm a Westworld fanboy even if I preferred some seasons to others. ------------- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXcp9fYc6K4IKuxIZkenfvukL_Y8VBqzK" rel="nofollow - Duos for fave acts |
Posted By: jamesbaldwin
Date Posted: June 02 2023 at 16:09
In fact, I compared Pa's ranking with RYM's ranking of the prog. And in the latter ranking, Italian prog is completely absent in the Top 60. In PA 4 or 5 Italian albums works in the Top 60. So it is your statement that makes no sense.
Instead it is true. I was referring to the ranking of the best albums of all time. In that ranking, all these artists are absent (ignored) in the top 100 (apart from Dylan). Many of them are also absent from the Top 200.
From your point of view it should be devalued. ------------- Amos Goldberg (professor of Genocide Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem): Yes, it's genocide. It's so difficult and painful to admit it, but we can no longer avoid this conclusion. |
Posted By: jamesbaldwin
Date Posted: June 02 2023 at 16:19
In his golden age (1972-1988) Springsteen never had a good producer. And he has always conceived his albums around a precise theme. This created a song selection that often had little to do with their music quality. Springsteen's approach, in short, is much more narrative, much more folk than rock, even when he wrote rock songs. Lyrics, in short, are essential to understanding his art. His studio albums have never approached the performance of his live shows (just compare Because the night studio version with live version). For a prog fan, I think his best albums are The Wild and Born To Run. PS Nice Polemic? Really? ------------- Amos Goldberg (professor of Genocide Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem): Yes, it's genocide. It's so difficult and painful to admit it, but we can no longer avoid this conclusion. |
Posted By: jamesbaldwin
Date Posted: June 02 2023 at 16:58
Greg, an unlimited number of albums by the same artist can appear in the FINAL Ondarock chart (three of Bowie's appear). It is in the personal Top 20 that each editor has compiled that a maximum of two albums by a single artist can appear. The main reason why there are more artists in the Ondarock ranking than in the RYM ranking, in my opinion, lies in the fact that the editors of Ondarock are NOT fans of specific artists or a specific genre (they have their own tastes, ok: tastes similar to that of the users of RYM: they are not fond of heartland rock, for example), they tend to have a wide range of albums that they consider good. Also, by putting favourite albums in order from 1 to 20, giving each of them a score from 1 to 20, a hierarchy of value and score is necessarily created and this favours the selection of a few albums for the same author. I say 'favours', because since the FINAL ranking is the sum of the editors' Top 20, it could always happen, for example, that the 5 highest rated Bowie albums (I mean the 5 best rated on RYM) are present with more or less the same score - but it doesn't happen, because, I mean, the "best" are Ziggy and Low (or Heroes? ), which also represent two different periods of his production (undoubtedly there are also other albums that one may like very much: one that seems to me overlooked, perhaps because of the bad production, is Aladdin Sane). In other words, if you want to rank the albums, you have to develop a coherent technique to do so. If you simply average the ratings from 1 to 5 of all the voters, it is unlikely to come out well. The one from progarchives is very good, and it is a miracle, but as we have already said, it has some adjustments. Any serios ranking, for example, must have the same number of voters, or rather, must have the same voters. It makes no sense to compare the score achieved by David Bowie with that achieved by Springsteen if the voters are completely different people, it is not 'scientific'. If you go to a music or film festival, you find a jury. Not two juries. Try to think: at the cannes festival a jury votes half of the films and another jury votes the other half of the films. Then the film with the highest score wins. There would be many disputes, because for example that film might not be liked by the jury that did not evaluate it. For example, I, as a prog reviewer, am trying to write a review of all the albums in the PA Top 100. I'm almost done with the Top 50, and I'm well on my way to those between 51 and 100. It almost feels like it's my duty to do so, if I want to contribute to the ranking. It doesn't make sense for me to vote only for certain albums and not for others, because my vote has helped to move some albums up a few positions, and to move other albums down a few positions: it is only fair that I do this with all of them. ------------- Amos Goldberg (professor of Genocide Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem): Yes, it's genocide. It's so difficult and painful to admit it, but we can no longer avoid this conclusion. |
Posted By: Logan
Date Posted: June 02 2023 at 21:22
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Oh damn. Was typing on my phone while waiting for someone and my browser crashed. I was just on my last words when it happened. Maybe it was saying to me, enough is enough you fatuous smelly windbag. No wonder one must be brave to use the Brave browser. In the future I’ll not use this for posting and use Safari on my phone instead. Sketchy browser as someone said here not long ago but good for blocking ads on my iPhone. On android I love Ublock Origin but I recently got an iPhone. Thanks for pointing that info out. I actually realized later that I likely had misinterpreted, my fault not the translation program, the message and that that limit of two per artist was just imposed on the contributor. It’s based on curated lists from a limited number of people. A very different process to RYM as those contributors who present lists will be more calculating, whereas the RYM program is the much more calculating one by just using an algorithm to calculate the ranking based on the ratings across the database of huge numbers of users. That’s much more impersonal. I do prefer the way the Cannes film festival awards work compared to say the US academy awards for best pictures etc. Too many people who vote for things in the academy haven’t even seen the films. I like the shortlist, then Jury chooses between them based on a limited number of films that they all watch and discuss. I have huge issues with best if lists generally, but at least I know that they have all considered that shortlist and seen them. Of course has more prized like audience etc. As to reviewing, various reviewers prefer to review lesser known, little reviewed albums, and that is what I would do — To bring attention to ones I think others will like and I really like. I don’t really care much about the ranking, you seem to try make more of a science of your ratings than I would, we have have very different ideas and approaches on that, and I’m more interested in albums at PA outside the top 100. I better finish this up before it crashes again. Anyway, I find interest in the more thought curated lists from limited numbers who contribute and lists that are statistically calculated based on large numbers just rating things. ------------- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXcp9fYc6K4IKuxIZkenfvukL_Y8VBqzK" rel="nofollow - Duos for fave acts |
Posted By: Saperlipopette!
Date Posted: June 03 2023 at 02:24
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Posted By: Lewian
Date Posted: June 03 2023 at 03:01
Well that says I liked to read it, and that it is a polemic. Anyway, as far as I can tell I'm totally with you that Springsteen on albums is far behind Springsteen live. But then we're talking album charts here. Maybe Springsteen as an artists for his overall work and career deserves a status that none of his albums deserve? But that would be irrelevant when talking about album charts.
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Posted By: Saperlipopette!
Date Posted: June 03 2023 at 03:29
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Posted By: Stressed Cheese
Date Posted: June 03 2023 at 04:27
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I still don't get the what the problem is supposed to be with RYM charts? They don't pretend to be a carefully curated chart, they are a chart summarizing (with some kind of algorithm, just like PA uses an algorithm) what their users think of albums, and what is popular/acclaimed now. Which is stated in one of their FAQs too. It's a website where everyone can rate things, and that's how things should be, right? If you make a chart there with the top whatever albums in a certain genre, you get a rough overview of albums people really like, and if you're new to a genre you might have an idea where to start. They're not exactly in order of highest to lowest rating because of algorithm shenanigans, but rating albums is subjective anyway, so why be bothered by things like that. Rating albums is subjective, and no website is going to cover all demographics, so I don't know what else you can really ask for, really. And heartland rock isn't the biggest genre, so if there happen to be no really highly rated artists in that genre, that's not really that weird, and doesn't say anything about RYM users' tastes. Same goes for other genres like pop punk, really. Springsteen has a lot of highly rated albums, and he's the flagship artist for the genre, so I really don't see the problem here. If there aren't that many highly rated artists in the genre aside from him, than that's what the average person thinks of those albums apparentely. RYM is a summation of what everybody who listens to X thinks of X, not just fans of X.
Pink Floyd is probably the only prog artist to kind of transcend the genre (well, there's stuff like Genesis' post-70's output, but by then they weren't prog anymore). I suspect that I'm not the only one for whom this is the case, but for me it was very much a gateway drug to prog. If you're interested in older bands, you'll get to Floyd at some point given their popularity, and from there on you're going to find other bands in the same genre. But I'm kind of curious to see what people who aren't into prog think Pink Floyd's genre is.
RYM has some kind of algorithm that they're not making public because they don't want people to abuse it, but the point is to chart what's popular/well recieved nowadays. But ultimately, if you're not into genre X, you're not going to rate genre X albums on there, so it's still a reflection of what people who have appropriate tastes think. So if I think it's dissapointing there's no Slayer albums with ratings above 4, that doesn't mean there's something wrong with the algorithm or that RYM users don't like Thrash metal, it's just that that's how people who listen to Slayer would evaluate them. There's just an inherit logic there. Trying to curate it further beyond that is just letting your own bias or view of how things should be get in the way. That's IMO exactly why a list compiled by Rolling Stone or such is completely useless. |
Posted By: jamesbaldwin
Date Posted: June 03 2023 at 06:03
Yes, it makes your statement false. In progarchives, Italian progressive rock occupies positions 16, 20, 23, 30, just to mention the four most considered albums. So there is quite a difference between these positions and those of RYM. There should be no argument on this point: the difference is obvious. But since you have a way of relating to what I write, as I've noticed in various threads, that is based on arrogance and offence, you claimed I would - made a meaningless comparison - written something that was not true. well, then, at this point, it would be intellectually honest to admit that you were wrong. But you prefer not to admit your mistakes and amuse yourself by saying that I act like a child. If you only understand this language, I could retort by saying that your behaviour sounds like that of a crying baby. But I believe that if you showed more commitment and respect for your interlocutors, we could have a more intelligent confrontation on issues on which we disagree. ------------- Amos Goldberg (professor of Genocide Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem): Yes, it's genocide. It's so difficult and painful to admit it, but we can no longer avoid this conclusion. |
Posted By: Saperlipopette!
Date Posted: June 03 2023 at 06:14
Ok. So this statement of mine is false because italian prog is placed higher up on the top 100 at PA
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Posted By: jamesbaldwin
Date Posted: June 03 2023 at 07:47
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@Christian @ Greg
In Italy, exactly the opposite happens. Springsteen only came to tour Europe in 1981, after The River (in 1975, after Born To Run, he only came to London). In 1981 he did not come to Italy but some music journalists who had liked his early records went to see him in Switzerland, and they were blown away by that concert. The music magazine 'Il Mucchio Selvaggio' (The Wild Bunch, title taken from the Peckinpah movie) tried hard throughout the 1980s to make Springsteen's records known to Italians. When he finally toured Italy in 1985, at the Milano concert it was a frenzy (I wasn't there). Springsteenmania exploded. Springsteen's fans multiplied enormously thanks to his live performances and to the international success of Born in the Usa. In 1988 Springsteen toured Italy twice, in the city of Turin. First in June, solo, then in September, for the tour with Amnesty International, together with Yossou Ndour, Tracy Chapman, Peter Gabriel, Sting. At first, the artists performed alone, and Springsteen was the last, then everyone went on stage with Springsteen band for the last three songs all together (Get Up, Stand Up, Chimes of Freedom and Twist and Shout). But the audience kept shouting 'Bruuuuce'. I was there (and I was surprised by Gabriel's grit). In 1988 Springsteen's hotel in Turin was besieged by fans. And since then Springsteen's fame in Italy has increased even more and remained very high. In the last two months, Waters, Gabriel and Springsteen have performed in Italy. The attention of fans, journalists, and even some politicians and intellectuals has been all towards Springsteen. The state TV news broadcast a report on Springsteen's fans who greeted him in the city of Bologna, where Christian lives. Then Springsteen went to give a concert in a nearby provincial town called Ferrara, which had already set up a series of decorations with American flags and the Welcome Bruce inscription days before. Springsteen's concert aroused controversy because there was severe flooding in the vicinity of Ferrara and many influencers, knowing Springsteen's ethical principles and his dedication to the working class, expected Springsteen to suspend the concert or donate money for the victims (incidentally, Little Steven recently explained that they were unaware of the tragedy). This is to explain the consideration, not only musical, enjoyed by Springsteen in Italy.
Yes, this is a this is an acute consideration, in the sense that a ranking of the artists could also be made. In this case, artists without albums in the top 100 of all time may still end up in the top spots. But still he should have a series of relatively well-rated albums. Now, if I think about RYM, especially the 80s, and see that Rem and U2 have their well-rated albums respectively above the 1000 and above the 2000 position on the ALL time chart, I think, what consideration should we give these artists ? In other words: there are artists, and there are purely commercial phenomena. Rem and U2: you can like them or not like them. But they are artists. They weren't just a commercial phenomenon. And according to RYM they would just be bands that have had great success producing bad music.
------------- Amos Goldberg (professor of Genocide Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem): Yes, it's genocide. It's so difficult and painful to admit it, but we can no longer avoid this conclusion. |
Posted By: Logan
Date Posted: June 03 2023 at 12:45
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Lorenzo, we interpret the data/ results so differently, come to such different conclusions, and infer so differently that coming to a consensus does not seem at all likely. And I share Saperlipopette's perspectives (and Stressed Cheese...). These things can be frustrating, but we should try to keep it civil and, as much as possible, to invoke the principle of charity which means putting the other's argument in the strongest form if,, and that is a big IF, possible (steelmanning). It's more important to try to find the truth than to try to win an argument, and that can take humility and an open-mind, just not so open that your brains fall out. I prefer dialectic to debate. Okay, that might seem like I'm on my soapbox, and might sound preachy, but I believe in the principles. Sometimes people just make claims that seem hyperbolic and unjustifiable no matter, and keep repeating the same kinds of things seemingly without taking into account or understanding why others take issue. I agree with Saper... on these issues, and understand frustration, and do feel like we are going in circles, but I have been pleased that despite our major differences in interpretation and inference of the data, Lorenzo and I have kept it cool and civil. I like both of you on a personal level in ways, Sap has been a major influencer on my interests (very indebted), which might make a difference in how I interact with you both. I have not been on friendly terms then I am harsher.
This conclusion "according to RYM they would just be bands that have had great success producing bad music" especially after all the discussion we've been through is bizarre to me. And I think you are not seeing the forest for the trees, so to speak. Forget about the chart for a minute (which I believe you make the wrong inferences from and cone to very dubious conclusions), look at the ratings themselves and ask yourself, would I come to the same the same conclusion based on those alone? -- https://rateyourmusic.com/artist/u2" rel="nofollow - https://rateyourmusic.com/artist/u2 The Joshua Tree at 3.71, 17,176 ratings Achtung Baby 3.71, 11,876 ratings War at 3.67 and 10,860 The Unforgettable Fire at 3.60 and 7,538 etc. That is a high average rating and considerable ratings. 17, 176. It has ten albums each that have more ratings than the top ranked album at PA. I think you are interpreting the chart data in a way that misleads you and draws you to the wrong conclusions. You are acting is they de-value it because other artists have higher ranked albums in the chart, and that does not make sense to me. Earlier you said that artists were practically being ignored, and I showed you the high ratings and many ratings for their albums and said something to the effect of just because various others rank higher and are more rated hardly makes those ignored by users (many users). Many raters do hold those Italian album in high regard, and having gone through the top 5000 or so, getting anywhere in there can be considre3d an accomplishment. Look deeper at the numbers, no just the rankings. I do think your biases are getting in the way and that you have been doubling-down on your opinions. Lewian is a statistician if I remember correctly (and yes, my memory is getting really bad, I forgot before how bad it can be), so he might have a more interesting take on this than I or you when it comes to fair inference based on the data. Edited to clean this post up a bit and clarify, hopefully. This all does feel muddled and muddy and not moving forward as much as we all may like. ------------- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXcp9fYc6K4IKuxIZkenfvukL_Y8VBqzK" rel="nofollow - Duos for fave acts |
Posted By: Saperlipopette!
Date Posted: June 03 2023 at 15:47
Both you Lewian and have the patience of saints. I don't, and neither am I much of a diplomat. Although I mostly edit out insults before (and after) posting, I can't really hide my annoyance. Sometimes irritation is my sole reason for responding. So instead of letting it escalate further, sometimes it better for me to just look another way. I've written what I wanted to write here anyway. Anyone interested can decide for themselves which perspectives and what arguments make the most sense. |
Posted By: Logan
Date Posted: June 03 2023 at 16:49
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^ I don't like to offend people. I do lose my cool sometimes. This stuff can really annoy me, but at the same time if I didn't kind of enjoy it, I wouldn't engage because I am no masochist (even if a little SM can be fun with the right mistresses). I try to take it in humour often. My problem is that because I do not like to offend I am not as direct as I would like and as is practical. That can make me come across as passive-aggressive which may be why I have been threatened with violence on various occasions. Diplomacy is not always the best way to get results, and pussy-footing around the issues can be a waste of everybody's time. It's finding the right balance. Life is short so patience have its limits. Now my wife is shouting at me to get down to cleaning the house which I said I would start on half an hour ago. ------------- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXcp9fYc6K4IKuxIZkenfvukL_Y8VBqzK" rel="nofollow - Duos for fave acts |
Posted By: Stressed Cheese
Date Posted: June 03 2023 at 17:16
This confuses me, and makes me think you don't use RYM regularly. First of all, R.E.M.'s debut album is at number 477, not above 1000. Second, ratings are based on how everybody who listens to an artist rates them, not just fans. That means that, while there might be a lot of U2 fanatics, a lot of other people who are into their general type of music (rock), do not evaluate them as highly as non-fanatics of, say, Led Zeppelin would. The average Led Zeppelin non-fan likes them better, than the average U2 non-fan likes them, if you get what I'm saying. Just because that doesn't line up with their popularity or how you think of them as "artists" doesn't mean that those ratings are somehow wrong. That's what people think of their albums. Third. R.E.M. has very high ratings. They have 7 albums that are bolded (meaning they're in the overall top 10.000), which is a lot, and they have 4 albums above a 3.80, which is very high for RYM. If you'd be unfamiliar with R.E.M. and you'd see those ratings, you'd probably be inclined to check them out, that's how high those ratings are. That you'd declare them underrated on RYM makes me think you're not familiar with RYM's rating system, which is fine, but they are clearly critically acclaimed on there.
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Posted By: jamesbaldwin
Date Posted: June 03 2023 at 18:22
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@Greg 1) I'd like to have respectful and intelligent dialogues with Saperlipopette, but I've noticed over the last few months that he often writes mainly to argue destructively with what I say. I have noticed this in various threads and have tried to respond in a precise and patient manner (particularly the one I opened on the discs containing the first suites, where I had to repeatedly point out that I meant one-sided songs), without getting much respect. I have now tried to reply using his usual language towards me, and I see that as a result he has chosen not to relate to me any more. 2) Granted that I now see that I was wrong about Rem (who are completely absent from the Top 400 anyway), you respond to my remarks, which are facts, by shifting the question to the evaluation of the individual album. You are right when you say U2 got a lot of ratings - but, it's seems obvious to me: they are very famous. The problem is how that ratings are. You claim that a score of 3.71 is a high score. Is it really high? It depends on that of others. Having a high or low score is a relative evaluation. U2's best album score from the RYM charts is exceeded by 2551 other albums. And we are talking about their highest scoring album. There are 7 albums by Bowie that exceed that score. So is that score high? Well, not so much. It is an indisputable fact that if the editors of RYM were to publish an encyclopaedia with the reviews of the best 2500 albums of all time, there would be no trace of U2. So, since we are talking about one of the most famous bands in music history in terms of popularity, sales and quality (in the 80's), something is wrong with the charts of RYM. On RYM you can read: U2 are arguably the most important, most popular and, indeed, "biggest" band of the last 25 years. The true heirs of the big 70's groups (Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, etc), U2 are probably one of the few bands that can be considered to be at the same level of those giants in terms of popularity, sales, worldwide massive reach and quality. At least two of their albums are considered as "classic" and "masterpieces" in almost every music critic (and a lot of fans') list. (https://rateyourmusic.com/artist/u2) If this statement written by a member of RYM was right, then it'd be not compatible with the fact that no U2's albums is present on RYM Top 2500 of all time chart (where Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd are present with many albums - all six early Led Zeppelin albums score is greater than 3.71, including III, which is hardly considered a masterpiece). In fact, if we use logic, we cant say that a very famous band absent from the top 2500 list has produced albums of great quality, unless we say that that list has nothing to do with the quality of the music - which is what I claim: but then I don't know what to make of that list. Instead, in the ranking made by Ondarock you can find a logic of quality.
------------- Amos Goldberg (professor of Genocide Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem): Yes, it's genocide. It's so difficult and painful to admit it, but we can no longer avoid this conclusion. |
Posted By: Lewian
Date Posted: June 03 2023 at 18:56
It's nice that you bring me in in this way. Unfortunately I may not have that much to say. This is just not my kind of discussion. The RYM charts are what they are. Lorenzo can disagree with them as much as he wants. I see his reasons and I don't have an issue with them, but neither do I agree with them because I don't expect these charts to do what Lorenzo apparently wants them to do. Furthermore I am too much of a constructivist for believing that there is something like an objectively true ranking against which any charts could be measured. When discussing the RYM charts, by the way, keep in mind that the RYM raters are still a peculiar bunch of people. Very many people, even music enthusiasts, don't go to RYM and rate albums. There is no reason to believe that RYM users are representative for any well defined wider group of people. They are what they are and nothing else. (I do believe though that most of them care for their music - why would they otherwise spend time there? But then there are probably still many ratings given without much care.) The charts have no authority other than the authority that anyone who uses them ascribes to them (or not). But this is not really different from "curated" charts such as Pitchfork, ondarock, or Rolling Stone. Music is not made for being ranked (at least properly good music isn't  ). Charts are entertainment only (unless I get interested in the social role they play of course). Last remark, as a statistician I find it a major annoyance that RYM don't make their algorithm transparent. I'm not particularly keen on the PA algorithm but I know what it is and I understand it. That is a big advantage. RYM gives *some* information, I can see average ranks, which is fair enough, but if somebody like Saperlipopette complains about how the PA charts get certain things wrong based on the numbers, I'd expect to be able to understand and reproduce what goes on there. With RYM, no way.
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Posted By: Logan
Date Posted: June 03 2023 at 18:58
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^ Well, that all seems very fair to me. Of course he can disagree as much as he wants, and believe that pigs can fly, faeries exist, elephants are pink and all sorts of eccentric and dubious views. As can I, well in a sense I can, I don't think I could do it and actually believe that stuff if I decided to now. Stressed Cheese had said that the algorithm is kept mum due to potential abuse when it would come to manipulating the charts. Or perhaps it is all a conspiracy to suppress the knowledge of Springsteen's greatness and thus diminish his awesome potential powers of global music persuasion. Just kidding of course.. More likely Bowie put RYM in his will with the condition that they would receive much of his estate if he was promised higher album rankings than his old nemesis Bruce. ;) I really don't take charts that seriously, not nearly as seriously as it seems Lorenzo does (nor rating), but I have felt in the past and in this thread that he has been very unfair in his assertions. The utility of the charts for me is how customisable they are, and that has helped me to discover music, and it has been for entertainment for coming up with polls. I thought you might have an idea if his claims follow the statistical evidence well and seem valid, but then we all can have opinions on that. It' not just you a s statistician but as an intelligent person with whom I have had interesting and enjoyable conversations that have changed my thinking on various matters, even if those changes were very temporary. ;) ^^ I believe that a 3.71 average is very respectable average rating, and that the ranking is also very respectable (higher than the vast majority of albums in RYM). Just because many albums by different artist are ranked higher does not negate that I believe that in all of your examples that I can think of that the artists had good ratings. I do not agree with your conclusion and inferences, nor the way you put it, such as "according to RYM they would just be bands that have had great success producing bad music" and "Some famous artists such as Pink Floyd, David Bowie, Radiohead are very pumped up, other famous artists with a big commercial impact on the other hand are almost ignored: Rolling Stones, The Who, Springsteen, Michael Jackson, Dire Straits, U2, REM, Oasis, Coldplay" and so on, and like Stressed Cheese it lead me to understand that you don't really understand RYM. And I think your biases are blinkering you. RYM has 1,653,090 Artists, 5,604,651 Releases, 116,516,341 Ratings, 2,980,245 Ratings. Something to consider for perspective. I honestly don't know to continue with this because I just can't get grok where you are coming from, we have such different senses of perspective when it comes to this, and you don't seem to be able to grok things from my perspective. I've tried my best to explain my perspective and offer my insights on this and to understand and appreciate your take, but I guess your angle and conclusions are just not resonating with me at all. I don't think anything more to add beyond what I have said in this and various other topics with you or beyond what others have said in response to you. Maybe you and Stressed Cheese will come to some understanding. I feel like my cheese is well stressed now and getting stretched to the breaking point. ------------- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXcp9fYc6K4IKuxIZkenfvukL_Y8VBqzK" rel="nofollow - Duos for fave acts |
Posted By: jamesbaldwin
Date Posted: June 03 2023 at 20:33
Just a few clarifications. I don't disagree or disagree with a chart. I can appreciate a chart where there are groups that I don't like in the top positions, I'm interested in the seriousness and logic with which it is done. Often the charts that I appreciated the most are those that offered me in the first places groups that I didn't know, or that I knew little, as they were not very commercial, which then fascinated me. Charts that offer me almost only very famous groups of certain musical genres in the first positions, while ignoring (in the sense that they are totally absent from the top 100 or 1000) other famous groups of other musical genres I do not consider them serious and made according to a logic. So, I dont give them big importance. It's the case of RYM. And here we come to the second point. How a chart is made also determines its validity in assessing the beauty of music. In my opinion, there are curated charts that are very different from RYM's and that give a heuristic and musical criticism perspective (i.e. they respect criteria), and here on Progarchives I have brought several times charts that I consider serious and coherent: - Scaruffi - Enrico Merlin (from which this thread started) - Il Mucchio selvaggio - Ondarock Charts, especially when combined with reviews, can play an enlightening role both in discovering artists you don't know and in providing a philosophical framework for the history of music. And all of this has little to do with finding charts that suit my tastes. ------------- Amos Goldberg (professor of Genocide Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem): Yes, it's genocide. It's so difficult and painful to admit it, but we can no longer avoid this conclusion. |
Posted By: jamesbaldwin
Date Posted: June 03 2023 at 20:36
Greg, I think I totally understand your perspective, and I think I totally understand how RYM works. I may have expressed opinions emphatically (U2 producing "bad music", leading singer-songwriters are "ignored" in RYM), but all my opinions refer to facts that I have clearly specified (U2 are objectively absent , despite being so famous and popular, from the top 2500 positions while other bands have 2 or 3 albums in the Top 20, the main singer-songwriters of the past - except Dylan - are objectively absent in the Top 100). What can I say? That U2 and Springsteen aren't rated so badly on RYM because some of their albums are rated 3.7-3.9? Okay, a few of their albums (one or two, at most) are good enough to be in the Top 10 the year they came out. Wow, you know what a value! It would be like saying that some symphonies by Mahler are well placed in the ranking of the best symphonies of the late nineteenth-early eighteenth century, but none of his symphonies is in the Top 100 ever. In short, well, according to the RYM ratings, if we consider the many thousands of bands present in RYM, for sure there are more bands worse than U2 or artists worse than Springsteen than bands/artists better than them. But I don't think this would make U2 or Springsteen happy, if they knew it, just as I think very few music critics would consider these charts valid from the point of view of musical quality or the historical importance of a band. I'm interested in the music criticism and in ranking that reflect a music critic perspective. Then, if you tell me, just look at the fact that you can personalize that charts, don't think about the quality, ok, that's fine, RYM as I said many times did a great job of classifying the records. ------------- Amos Goldberg (professor of Genocide Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem): Yes, it's genocide. It's so difficult and painful to admit it, but we can no longer avoid this conclusion. |
Posted By: Logan
Date Posted: June 03 2023 at 22:27
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They refer to facts, but we interpret the implications differently and come to different conclusions. They are emphatic in that they are forcibly expressed, but not clear to me because they seem hyperbolic at best. I don't find such rhetoric at all persuasive, and it comes across as unconstructive, absurd, and unfair criticism, and unnecessarily negative. Yes, I don't think those many artists you call nearly ignored, rated badly or whatever are what you say they are.
Stressed Cheese is much more aligned with my thinking than you. I "get" what you want and like, but you have seemed to have expectations of RYM in making your quality assessments that don't jibe with the site or its purpose. I expect that I would rate Springsteen albums a lot more "badly" than their average album ratings (I knew you were a fan already). It seems to me that you care way more about top 10 lists than I do and take them way more seriously than I do. The way you break down your ratings like it actually matters (fine if it matters to you, just don't expect others to take it seriously), we have different attitudes to rating and on matters of subjectivity vs objectivity.
I don't think it should make Springsteen or U2 happy or that they should mind either. I don't think a serious music critic should be making lists to please and pander to such people either -- you do find these sycophantic reviewers eager to please those they review. If those artists have the expectations that they SHOULD be better represented in a chart of a site that has been around for about 20 years, that operates by calculating the ratings of very large numbers of raters covering a huge number of albums of great diversity based on how people enjoy their collection, where users rate how much they like music they are into, then that would seem very arrogant to me. Neither would I rate, because neither are my bag. I don't rate much or rate there, but if I did it would be about the music I most like rather than the music I'm told by someone like you that I should rate highly because apparently it is more significant than what I appreciate?. As to your validity comment, I just don't see how that is what the charts are about and so why that would even be serious consideration. If critics start complaining that the charts are not valid from the perspective of music quality and historical importance, I think they should get their heads out of their posteriors. Those hypothetical critics are idiots, methinks. Whatever critic would even be thinking that should maybe learn a little more about critical reasoning (relevance, sufficiency, acceptability...). I would not take such critics seriously who would involve that validity card re those charts. Now if it was the algorithm itself that seemed flawed, the output based on the input, in other words the results based on all the ratings given, that would be a much more compelling case for validity. It reminds me of Trump's claims that the election was stolen, rigged etc. The election of Biden would have been invalid had Trump been right. The chart positions are invalid if there is a flaw in the process/ processing. You are free to dismiss and ignore the chart, and ultimately the users, for not enough of them giving as much appreciation to those who you think deserve more appreciation. I would rather appreciate the appreciation that does exist for music I care for, but that's me. How it's ranked in the General Music chart is not of much importance to me. It matters when I'm searching for new-to-me music, but I use various filters. You would not complain because you likely have no heard of it than I had. I don't care what's in PA's top 100 either, and treat it as a popularity list rather than a mark of quality and historical importance. I often take issue with those who rate based on received wisdom when it comes to the value of an album. I would rather my own ears by the judge, but of course other people's idea of quality have affected what I listen to and check out. It does matter but some of us dig deeper than top tens and so on. I can appreciate it for what it is, and how it works, rather than depreciate it for what it is not nor intends to be. I'm absolutely fine with you preferring and being more interested in music criticism (more academic?) and in rankings that reflect a music critic perspective (perspectives will vary), but you seem to think there is something wrong with RYM because it does not operate the same or yield the same kinds of results, or maybe moreso, the results that you would want based on your particular biases. If you look at many kinds of music critics, and art critics generally, there is much disparity even if there are commonly accepted canons. I'm not a big one for tradition in some cases like favouring that which has been traditionally favoured -- I'm a little more progressive than that. But there is a case of those who make best of lists who desire acceptance and to be taken seriously who will just regurgitate the conventional views of the pantheon of the supposed greats that they have been told are greats by others who likely have been told these are the greats.... In that case it's not really about what IS GREAT, it's more about what is GREATLY ACCEPTED AS GREAT (use of all-caps inspired by Mosh). Sometimes it takes a long time before another contemporaneous group or a later group is held in the same high esteem or higher (it is something as fashion dictates). I wanted to be a film critic, went to film school, but but I lack respect for much of the establishment, and found a lot of it pretentious and making very dubious claims and pushing old canards. I don't hold much respect for those who act like they are the purveyors of truth when it comes to greatness, and those who claim best in art, and a lot of those fuddy-duddies are really out of touch, parochial. Narrow-minded purveyors of received wisdom.. There is a lack of creative and original thinking that is common among so many art critics and people generally of course. I get value from their charts in customised form, you've told me what you like (and I can like that too). I often feel life is too short often to focus overmuch on that which we don't appreciate unless it's something of serious global consequence, and I don't consider these concerns to be of such importance. ------------- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXcp9fYc6K4IKuxIZkenfvukL_Y8VBqzK" rel="nofollow - Duos for fave acts |
Posted By: Stressed Cheese
Date Posted: June 04 2023 at 04:21
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There seem to be two separate things here regarding the merits of RYM's ratings: 1) A community-driven, average-rating driven list like RYM isn't as valuable as more curated lists 2) RYM's ranking system is wrong, and certain artists should be higher up 1) is a matter of opinion, 2) is just objectively wrong. Why should a music critic's opinion on what albums are better or worse be held in higher regard or count more than random shmucks like, say, me? Why is a chart that democratically looks at what thousands of people think of albums worse than one that has been more carefully constructed by a small group of individuals? Rating albums is a subjective thing to do. Shouldn't music criticism from actual listeners, thousands of them in many cases on RYM, be more valuable? Why should I expect my own musical tastes to align more with that of critics than that of RYM? Music critics were already dubious back in the 60's and 70's, but now that we have the internet available, we can get a wide variety of opinions from a wide variety of people - and thus they've become obsolete. Much more valuable to me than what a small group of critics think. Let's talk about U2 again. You say RYM's rating system is unfair to U2 because you think they should be higher up in the top ___. Why? Because of their popularity. But RYM doesn't rank things based on popularity. U2 is a household name, whereas, say, Fishmans, isn't. But the average U2 listener evaluates Joshua Tree lower than the average Fishmans listener evaluates Long Season. Ok, so far, so good, that's just the raw ratings. Apparentely Fishmans carve out a really good niche for themselves. What RYM then does is rate that Fishmans album higher than U2, because it's evaluated more positively. Too bad for U2, but why shouldn't Fishmans deserve that? Should they be ranked lower because U2 sold more albums and are more well known? That often has as much to do with how accessible an artist is than with their quality. If an artist like Pink Floyd recieves higher ratings than U2, that's not because RYM users are bigger fans of Floyd than U2, that's because people are. Also, U2 is one example, but you'll notice that a lot of famous artists actually have very good ratings. Not that U2's are bad, but seriously. Look up any really well-known artist and you'll see that they often have a bunch of bolded albums (meaning they're in the top 10.000), and pretty high ratings. Now, the great thing about the RYM charts is that, if I see some extreme death metal album ranked very highly, I just ignore that, because I don't like that kind of music. People who aren't into what Fishmans is doing are free to ignore them. But that doesn't mean that, in their genre, they don't do what they do very well apparentely. It basically comes down to RYM just taking ratings into account. That is that site's "logic". How is tampering with that and creating a more curated list any more "logical"? You say that if a famous artist isn't present in the top 2500, that's a sign that RYM thinks they haven't made great albums. But fame has nothing to do with it. It's not like the more famous an artist is, the higher rating they have to achieve. A 3.71 is a good album, whether you're some obscure band nobody has heard of or world-famous U2. RYM is supposed to be purely about quality, not about popularity, or influence, or critical darlings. That creates some unexpectedly highly rated albums at times, but what's wrong with that? And yes, there's some kind of algorithm, but from what I can tell, this mostly boils down to making sure inactive users can't review bomb or boost/degrade their favorite/hated artists. Demographics also have f**k all to do with it. The average RYM user probably really hates death metal, since it's a very niche genre. And yet, death metal albums can recieve very high averages. That's because if you're on RYM, you're not going to rate albums that you don't care about. I don't go around giving every hip hop album a 1 star rating, because I don't listen to hip hop. That's not to say that a lot of (older) people probably absolutely can't stand hip hop, but they won't listen to it, so they're not the audience. Saying that RYM's demographics don't appreciate U2 is nonsense. And in case you didn't know, a lot of people can't stand U2. Since they're so mainstream, and they're easily recommended/encountered, that means that that'll be reflected in the ratings. And that's fair, because those opinions are from people who otherwise would be into this kind of genre/era. U2 just isn't as appreciated by the mainstream as the Beatles, or Led Zeppelin, or whatever kind of household name has higher ratings than U2. Also, it's probably a lost cause to try to convince people of the worthlessness of music critics if they still have respect for them in 2023, but consider the validity of such lists. If some random average person would pick out music based on either a critic's list, or a RYM chart, what would you think be able to predict their tastes better? A list based on thousands of other people, or a list based on what a few people say? A few people that all work in the same industry? Obviously the RYM chart will be more valid, in the scientific sense of the word. If you get some kind of value out of more curated lists, fine. But to say they're more accurate or valid or whatnot is completely wrong. Lastly, while I might've spend several paragraphs defending RYM, at the end of the day, it's just something for fun, something to use to discover new music, and it's just interesting to see what people think of certain artists. Critic lists aren't much different. Critics don't try to come up with some kind of "correct" list (because that'd be impossible), they try to make a list that fits their view of the music industry, or what artists they think should be appreciated based on influence or whatnot. I love King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, but a lot of their albums have rather low RYM ratings. But I'm not going to cry about it - in fact, I can see people's arguments in a lot of cases. And I'm sure you can see why some people would find U2 boring as sh*t.
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Posted By: Saperlipopette!
Date Posted: June 04 2023 at 04:37
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^Yep. I don't really get how it's possible to look at it any other way (not without being wrong). But appearently it is. |
Posted By: Lewian
Date Posted: June 04 2023 at 04:39
Err, what!? If RYM users do the ratings, the ratings tell us about RYM users and not about anybody else. And by the way, I haven't checked a ranking but I'd be pretty sure their ranking algorithm would prefer a U2 album with loads of ratings and a somewhat lower but still good average to Fishmans with a higher average and a handful of ratings only. But I'm not sure because of lack of transparency. (I can see that albums with fewer than 100 ratings and an average larger than 4 do not feature high in rankings.)
What is the "scientific sense" of the word that could apply here? I'm a scientist and "validity" statements are part of my bread and butter, and I can't make sense of this statement. It is what it is, it isn't what it isn't, and Lorenzo is just as well entitled to his preference of curated lists as you are preferring RYM.
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Posted By: Lewian
Date Posted: June 04 2023 at 04:52
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@Logan:
Fair enough, though they could disclose the basic algorithm and say that adjustments are being made based on certain rating patterns that may indicate abuse, and just not disclose how precisely this is done. Obviously they can do what they want; it's just that personally I like higher transparency more, just as Lorenzo prefers curated lists by critics.
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Posted By: Lewian
Date Posted: June 04 2023 at 04:56
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By the way, Radiohead in the lead now. The prog world is regaining its senses. |
Posted By: Logan
Date Posted: June 04 2023 at 06:33
A very interesting post, Stressed Cheese.
This a is good summation of what I have been trying to stress, not just in this poll.
This felt coincidental to me. I have not been sleeping much at all in a week because I have painful shingles -- I'm not looking for pity and so, as is common, I woke up out of a two hour sleep. Well, problem with posting alot is it follows me into bed and into my sleep and I often wake up thinking things about it. In this case it was something like when half-asleep, top ten reason that the RYM chart is awesome, and Fishmans was number one for me. Like much music these days, I discovered that through the RYM charts. And I love Long Season. That album would not be out of place in Prog Archives methinks. I have been impressed, per my tastes of course, at how much interesting (to me) progressive music (not necessarily Prog) gets covered there prominently from my perspective. Another for me that I found is Natural Snow Buildings with Daughter of Darkness. Is it niche? Yes, but I am niche. Looking at the number of ratings, it has 4,629 ratings, way less than the bigger albums of those mostly "ignored" names, and yet I discovered it through RYM's charts quickly. Well, The Dance of the Moon and the Sun was the first with 5,856 ratings that I saw. The worth of the charts can depend on how you use them, including the filters, and what you are using them for. I, as said before, have used them to discover music. Some others might only be interested in seeing or trying to see what they know. All hail RYM as far as I am concerned. I think it's time I became a rater there and a list maker (another cool option at RYM). I checked out the forums before and had trouble getting used to those. I like PA for that, and I have loyalty to this forum but for finding music I like, RYM is great for me. I like the way they multi-tag albums with genre and descriptions and make it so searchable using multiple tags. That's so helpful to someone like me who likes to search to discover music of different kinds from different periods that might fit my mood and interests at any given time, For Fishmans Long Season: Genres Dream Pop, Neo-Psychedelia, Progressive Pop Dub, Ambient Pop, Post-Rock, Post-Minimalism Descriptors atmospheric, lush, repetitive, psychedelic, mellow, aquatic, warm, suite, hypnotic, nature, androgynous vocals, melodic, ethereal, summer, progressive, uplifting, sentimental, peaceful, male vocals, bittersweet, soothing, love, spring, seasonal, meditative, passionate, longing, surreal, forest, melancholic, soft, romantic At PA what we get, Crossover I guess, not very descriptive, and every album is under the same simple heading regardless of its unique qualities. Sometimes I forget that I'm an Admin here and where my loyalties should be. All hail PA! ;) EDIT to add: Those RYM charts also have led to seem pretty decent polls if I do say so myself. This is not a shameless plug, this is a public service message. ;) https://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=131028" rel="nofollow - Part 3: 25 albums derived from a 23 poll series ( https://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=131027" rel="nofollow - Part 2: 25 albums derived from a 23 poll series https://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=131024" rel="nofollow - 25 album choices derived from a 23 poll series Rate by voting or forever hold your peace. What gets well rated there depends on the users, and positive posts about choices leads to positive exposure.. It may be no Interactive Poll, of which i think I have put up some very good ones, bur for the Italian Prog aficionado, I suggest partaking in Part 2. Maybe I'll even do a heartland USA one because I do like to please even if I am not very good at pleasuring. This song comes first to mind. Lee Greenwood, God Bless the USA. On the other hand, I'd rather continue to expose people to music like Fishmans (Long Season part 5 was an Interactive Poll nomination of mine not long ago. For those that don't know, Lorenzo, aka jamesbaldwin started a wonderful Interactive Poll series of which Lewian here and I have been major contributors. I have discovered much great music through the contributions of people in those topics as well as through RateYourMusic. I like having a plethora of platforms for discovery. And on the poll front, yes Radiohead, one of the most significant bands of the past 30 years I feel comfortable saying, even more so than The Flower Kings*, is rightfully in the lead. Joking but nothing against The Flower Kings. ------------- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXcp9fYc6K4IKuxIZkenfvukL_Y8VBqzK" rel="nofollow - Duos for fave acts |
Posted By: jamesbaldwin
Date Posted: June 04 2023 at 07:11
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@Greg I think it's time to draw conclusions. 1) I thank you for opening this thread, which has drawn attention to Springsteen (Radiohead is already in Progarchives) and some very popular artists from genres that don't get much ratings on RYM: singer-songwriter, folk, heartland rock, roots rock etc. 2) You have given me a chance to explore RYM better, now I will see if I can write about it in an orderly way. 3) Now I explain what I would propose to Progarchives in order to make a ranking with clear criteria that I consider serious and coherent. A ranking that could be placed alongside the existing one, which I consider very good, especially when I think about how it was drawn up (it could have given disastrous results). I would do in this way: a) Every collaborator and prog reviewer, but I would also add long-time forumists who make themselves available, could draw up a list of the 200 albums they consider to be the best (= the most beautiful) in the history of prog. Not necessarily his or her favourites, those he or she considers most beautiful as music. Restrictions: he can choose a maximum of 4 albums by the same artist. b) How do we define the beauty of the music? Obviously everyone will have a subjective opinion here. We could identify criteria (the application of which will always be subjective). I would propose these criteria: 1) The ability of music to convey emotions (pathos) - most important criterion 2) Ability to be original, innovative and non-epigonic (not reminiscent of other bands' music) - second most important criterion FOLLOWING, of equal importance 3) The beauty of the melody 4) The expressiveness of the vocals and instruments (which is different from being virtuosic) 5) The richness of the musical composition 6) The care for the timbre of the music (the sound) 7) the care and variety of the arrangements 8) the richness of the rhythm, the musical dynamics. PS: If there are lyrics, we should also take into high consideration the literary nature of the lyrics and the consonance they have with the music (if music plus lyrics together amplifies the emotion) Obviously, selecting criteria could take years of discussion, so I would try to avoid stopping there. In any case, each participant would be free to apply the criteria as he/she wish, without accountability. Some will compile a matrix by putting a mark for each criterion and then average them and get the final score, others will make a summary in their head. The important is the effort to consider this criteria. (c) Album period. I would start in 1968 (or 1969?) because prog was born in those years, and finish in 2000, because albums from the last two decades have yet to be assimilated by everyone and they must overcome "the test of time". d) Each participant will have to listen at least twice to all the selected albums, which will be many thousands. This work coudl take 2 or 3 (o maybe more?) years. People like you or SillyPuppy will be favoured, given your encyclopaedic knowledge of prog, others like me will have to work a lot. e) each participant will draw up a list of the 100 albums he will consider the most beautiful, from 1 to 100: the first will get 100 points, the last 1 point (maximum 4 albums by the same artist). f) in the end the scores of all the lists are added up and a classification will be obtained which will probably exceed one thousand positions. This is my proposal.
------------- Amos Goldberg (professor of Genocide Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem): Yes, it's genocide. It's so difficult and painful to admit it, but we can no longer avoid this conclusion. |
Posted By: jamesbaldwin
Date Posted: June 04 2023 at 07:33
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@Stressed Cheese I think I've already answered most of your comments, which seem to me an official defense of RYM, a kind of tautology (that is, with your way of setting the arguments, no site would be open to criticism) but if you want I'll look into the next few days to make an orderly list of my objections. ------------- Amos Goldberg (professor of Genocide Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem): Yes, it's genocide. It's so difficult and painful to admit it, but we can no longer avoid this conclusion. |
Posted By: Stressed Cheese
Date Posted: June 04 2023 at 07:57
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Please note that I was typing this post and then 3 more posts appeared after I finished it, so this is mostly just in response to Lewian...
I don't see why, given an artist that has enough ratings, you can't say that an album's RYM rating isn't a pretty good indication of what the average person thinks of it. Yes, not everybody uses RYM, certain demographics won't be as represented (it's a western website, and people over a certain age don't use the internet as much). You can see this reflected in the amount of ratings (e.g. Fishmans' most rated album actually has more than U2's most rated album, even though U2 on the average still has more, so Fishmans was kind of a bad example on my part). But I think that this has more of an effect on the amount of ratings, than on the actual rating itself. Because there isn't really such a thing as "RYM users" as a general group. I mean, there might be, to some degree, but it doesn't translate over to the album ratings as long as each album/artist still attracts only the appropriate sub-group of users. E.g., there might not be that many people on RYM who grew up in the early 70's compared to people in their 30's (just guessing, but I think it's safe to assume), but as long as prog albums get rated by people who appreciate prog, metal albums get rated by people who appreciate metal, etc. I don't see how this would skew things too much. Now maybe I'm wrong. Maybe The Who's Tommy would have a much higher rating than 3.73 if there were more retired people on RYM, I don't know. But the fact still is that you wouldn't rate that album if you didn't at least have an interest in classic rock. Plus, I don't think RYM is by any means perfect, and they're transparent about the fact that the ratings reflect the here and now. If an album used to be really beloved or hated, and people now view it as overhyped or a hidden gem, that'll be reflected. But then again, you can only rate stuff based on your own perspective.
I do think the ranking is somewhat affected by popularity, yes. The RYM faqs only mention user activity/reviews, but it wouldn't surprise me. At least for the ranking, rating I have my doubts. I would be interested to find out as well. For example, Tommy should be a couple points higher if you count every rating equally (yes I just calculated that...), but can the fact that inactive users and users who only rate at the extremes get discounted account for this entire gap? Probably an easy way to find out is to calcuate the average by hand for a couple of albums and see if they all end up being higher than what RYM gives as the rating. I assume that would be the case but I don't feel like doing that now, tbh.
Ok maybe I was talking out of my ass a little, and the validities I am experienced with from my studies don't really apply here, truth be told. I'm kind of struggling to express this properly in english for some reason, but what I was trying to get at is that if you look at a RYM chart, that'll more likely reflect people's overall opinions than a more curated list from music critics. I am certain of that. Like, if someone gets more out of a list by Rolling Stone or whatever, that's fine. I think it's not very valuable (though possibly interesting to read through), but it's ultimately just for fun, and RYM ultimately is just for fun as well. Nobody is going to enjoy their favorite artists more or less because of what RYM thinks of them. But asking X amount of people from the music industry, or who write music review for a living what they think are the best albums, while interesting, is not going to translate over as well to what people think in the real world. But anyway, that's enough sounding like a RYM shill for now.
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Posted By: Logan
Date Posted: June 04 2023 at 08:20
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^^^ Regarding your proposal, Lorenzo, ^ I like that kind of proposal, and I think that is worthy a thread rather like the I.P. team thread to thrash it out. One could start it in the collab zone, then a more public forum -- that would be up to you. 200 is fairly ambitious. You might want to get that going and host the conversation. I would make it less ambitious. I don't know if this site will be around in three years, and collabs come and go.... Some pass on. I am more focused on what I like at any given time, not what I think is objectively good by metrics and most of the music I care about these days is not in PA and is contemporary. I would prefer 1967 as the starting year, one can see the pangs of Prog before then. i would include music we consider to be Proto-Prog. It could be a very interesting exercise.. I definitely like the restrictions on limiting albums by artist. On a side-note, I had suggested, not knowing at the time how difficult is to make any major changes to this site, that for rating we use a 100 point system. That 100 point system is broken up into ten scales according to ten criteria. For instance, you click on one to ten based on Innovation, Originality, How Much You Enjoy It, The Yowza factor. Similar to some of those "rate your satisfaction" surveys you get Then an average value is calculated and you can view all of that, we get combined users calculations for charts, and can see the charts in various ways. Like if innovation is not important to you, like say with The Flower Kings you can eliminate or minimse that, and if a factor like tasteful is not important to you, like with Dream Theater (I kid), you can minimise that. I like the idea of using various criteria in ratings and have the flexibility to view charts which are calculated according to what'; important to you. Some people told it was way too complicated, and I was silently like, yeah for simple minds, which ideally would then have had Paul posting a Simple Minds track (what with his New Wave poll) in his imitable style but he would not join this site for many years. Then we got the quick rating feature, which is like the opposite of my very involved process. The idea was partially borne out of those many one star and five star raters who people were concerned wit, with quick rating that got worse. I like charts that can be customised. I wish we had the option to view the charts without weighted ratings for instance. Then later form this complicated 10 criteria, 100 overall point proposal, I simplified my idea to a five point scale to replace our current descriptions which went something like and was explicitly based on your enjoyment of the album: 5 stars: Yowza! 4 stars: Zing 3 stars: Yeah 2 stars: Meh 1 star: Blech Anyway, I guess you might want to make a topic on that. Sounds intriguing and it might breathe a little more life into this forum and site. Often I see all these usernames online yet there's no activity. I imagine the tumbleweeds rolling by as I'm waiting for something to happen. The forums used to be so lively with chat, discussion, debates, classic Ivan and his blue font of death, oops, me pining for the not so good old days -- sign of getting old, but I do appreciate the very lively discussion in this thread. I t has been interesting, and sorry if I had a little too much fun with it on the sometimes joking around front -- I do that, some really hate it, others just tolerate it. ------------- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXcp9fYc6K4IKuxIZkenfvukL_Y8VBqzK" rel="nofollow - Duos for fave acts |
Posted By: Saperlipopette!
Date Posted: June 04 2023 at 12:35
Well I think of the
ratings at RYM is quite representative. Not so much for the average person,
but for the average music obsessed person in the last 20 years or so.
The data is massive enough to give an indication as to what albums and
artists are considered of a having lasting quality - and those
considered a child of their era. Pink Floyd never lost their relevance,
while the 8xPlatinum (in the US) Frampton Comes Alive! is found
in every cheap bin, flea marked and garage sale - practically for free.
My Bloody Valentine's influence continues to grow, while a more
commercially successful group like Jesus Jones is merely a footnote by
now (edit, not the best examples as you don't need RYM's help to tell you something as obvious, but you get the idea maybe?). U2, Coldplay and Red Hot Chili Peppers are still popular but also
loathed and devalued, while Radiohead and say Sufian Stevens + GY!BE are
respected and still loved by those who grew up with them and by a new generation of music listeners. RYM (and PA) tells us more about what is currently held in high regard by the average active music listener (not just any person) than a curated list in a magazine or similar. If I were to re-release an album and needed info about how it would be recieved, and get a feel for the general interest in regards to the specific artist or group in question - I would do my research in such online communities. A curated list made by an individual wouldn't help me much either - unless it was widely shared in places such as RYM.
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Posted By: jamesbaldwin
Date Posted: June 04 2023 at 19:24
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Greg, if you want, we could write together our proposal in order to specify every detail and then open a thread in the collaborators zone. How About it? ------------- Amos Goldberg (professor of Genocide Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem): Yes, it's genocide. It's so difficult and painful to admit it, but we can no longer avoid this conclusion. |
Posted By: Logan
Date Posted: June 04 2023 at 21:23
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^ I appreciate the offer, Lorenzo, but could not commit to it. ------------- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXcp9fYc6K4IKuxIZkenfvukL_Y8VBqzK" rel="nofollow - Duos for fave acts |
Posted By: Logan
Date Posted: June 05 2023 at 11:50
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I was thinking of doing anew topic on this, but I was looking through the top 100 at RYM again, I mean I have gone tough way more than that carefully, and thinking this really is a quality list -- by my standards which is quite subjective as well as based on a certain level of inculcation. There is quite a lot represented that is Prog by PA standards, but I was more interested to look at the non-Prog ones that I love or respect (most of these I love, including what are generally considered to be fantastic jazz albums). Mingus - The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady (14) The Velvet Underground & Nico - s/t (15) John Coltrane - A Love Supreme (16) The Cure - Disintegration (22) The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds (27) Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (30) Nick Drake - Pink Moon (31) Fishmans - Long Season (32) Stevie Wonder - Songs in the Key of Life (34) The Smiths - The Queen Is Dead (36) Portishead - Dummy (37) Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures (38) Cocteau Twins - Heaven or Las Vegas (51) Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited (54) (three in the top 100, and I admire more than like this) Pixies - Doolittle (55) Television - Marquee Moon (57) Sufjan Stevens - Illionois (65) Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works 85-92 (70) Pharoah Sanders - Karma (78) Leonard Cohen - Songs of Leonard Cohen (81) I mean, that's a pretty fine list by my standards. And I did go down the list more with your concerns, Lorenzo. I don't know how far you went or how focused you were on the numbers of ratings and not just the rankings, but how both correlate... Comparing the overall numbers of say the 130th ranked album with the 129th and 131st is an obvious thing to do to see better how things are calculated for the ranking placement (numbers of ratings, average ratings, plus rankings). Looking at the numbers and comparing the placements obviously gives a better feel for the process. And as I said in another thread, the process is as as interesting in and of itself as the results often, but also to understand the results one needs an understanding of the process. That is an essential element of evaluating the rankings -- the list alone without the other values given loses context. I observed that Led Zeppelin's first is 3.92 with 33,054 ratings. That's a lot of ratings even by RYM standards and is a high rating by RYM standards. It's ranked at 230 which might seem a low ranking to some on the face of it, but isn't as that is all-time all albums, all genres. To get into the top 5000 requires A Whole Lotta Love (groan!). If you look at the next highest ranked album, it is Harvest by Neil Young which has a 3.98 with 18,328 ratings. There is a 0.6 difference in the average rating, but there's almost 15, 000 less ratings! At 229, ranked one higher than Led Zeppelin, there is Construção by Chico Buarque -- seems a lot of Brazilian and Spanish language albums are well-ranked there.. It has a 4.03 average rating with 6,634 ratings. So it is ranked one place higher than Led Zeppelin with a .11 higher average rating and a whopping 26,420 less ratings! This puts those values more into perspective. SO one might not like the charts or vice versa partially because one does not appreciate the algorithm being used to generate the placement. It's complex, and it does often favour the lesser-known. I take no issue with the the input, individuals can rate as they like, but I would appreciate flexibility in how I can view the output. In other words, I wish we had a choice of ways that the results are calculated. I have said this at PA too, that I would like to see the charts with no weightings, maybe one where all reviews are given the same weighting. A fine analysis of the charts would require understanding the way those charts are calculated. And without that understanding I would think that critiquing the results of the chart would be misguided. ------------- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXcp9fYc6K4IKuxIZkenfvukL_Y8VBqzK" rel="nofollow - Duos for fave acts |
Posted By: jamesbaldwin
Date Posted: June 05 2023 at 12:50
Ok, so I'll post my proposal in the collaborators zone as soon as I can. ------------- Amos Goldberg (professor of Genocide Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem): Yes, it's genocide. It's so difficult and painful to admit it, but we can no longer avoid this conclusion. |
Posted By: jamesbaldwin
Date Posted: June 05 2023 at 13:28
Well, Greg, I dont the algoritm (I suppose it's the same used by the editors of the site), but this is the ranking of the 70's for Ondarock forumists. And it seems to me very well done (three Bowie's albums are too much for my tastes, but "You cant always get what you want...). I'm not so fond in algorithms, in the sense that I'm interested in finding a clear, transparent algorithm that leads to good results, i.e. a ranking of the beauty of music based on certain criteria.
------------- Amos Goldberg (professor of Genocide Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem): Yes, it's genocide. It's so difficult and painful to admit it, but we can no longer avoid this conclusion. |
Posted By: Logan
Date Posted: June 05 2023 at 14:08
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Thanks for that. I find understanding how all of the numbers were calculated crucial to understanding the process, and therefore understanding and really appreciating the results. To understand the value of something given by someone or a collective, you have to know something about how it has been valuated. Like seeing Led Zep's first at RYM ranked at 230 with a 3.92 an 33,054 ratings and the one ranked at 229 229: Chico Buarque - Construção 4.03 / 6,634 ratings/ 76 reviews 230: Led Zeppelin - s/t: 3.92, 33,054 ratings, 603603 331: Neil Young - Harvest: 3.98 / 18,328 ratings / 603 reviews Led Zep IV is considerably higher rated, with 4.09 / 5.0 from 41,923 ratings and higher ranked at 64, but I am just using the first as an example when you see three in a row with such different numbers of ratings. That's a huge discrepancy in the numbers or ratings. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, the numbers are something else. Which of these three is actually the most appreciated? I would say Led Zeppelin because it has the most appreciators even if it has a .11 lower rating than Chico's album. I think I'm going to make my own program for calculating those values in various ways. It might come up with a list that you think has more value and makes more sense to you while being based on the exact same data. I might do it for PA too. I have used the system that Ondarock used for say coming up with the top 70s albums, with multiple users to generate a top list at this site before. I do like the simplicity and transparency of it, but a list like that represents something different and has a different purpose than the RYM list. The beauty for me is more in the method than the results often -- like is this a good way to get results, and are the results derived at by the formula representative in a way that the results would appear sensible to others. I'm way behind on things, maybe I'll do some of own calculations with the Ondarock forumist list later (would want look at the source webpage). It's missing some info that I would want to interpret the results, and/or I am missing something in the numbers. I mean, it's pretty simple and I don't really need to, but otherwise it's just another list of albums to me. A lot of albums I like, but still just another list. ------------- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXcp9fYc6K4IKuxIZkenfvukL_Y8VBqzK" rel="nofollow - Duos for fave acts |
Posted By: Stressed Cheese
Date Posted: June 05 2023 at 15:08
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^That's the tricky thing. Ideally, if you're a site like RYM, you'd want to take quality into account above all else. But you'd also not want really obscure stuff to infest (for lack of a better word) the tops of the charts too much. I know that they won't consider the average rating of a release with a single rating a true average, but they could do something like Letterboxd, and just not show an average at all until there are an X amount of ratings. Then again, their ranking system already filters releases like that out, so I guess it doesn't really matter at that point. I'd be interested to see how much the amount of ratings is taken into account, or what the differences really are between the average rating and the ranking. As I showed with my Tommy example, the average rating shown and the true average when weighing every rating equally isn't the same, so clearly for the rank there's another round of calculations that goes on. So there's essentially three averages for each album, one visible, one visible if you go through the trouble of getting out a calculator, and one unknown but which decides an album's rank. Which I suspect has to do with the amount of ratings. Anyway, I respect their decision to not make the algorithm public, and I get why, but it'd be nice to be able to sort a chart purely by the average rating shown, not by rank. PA could also use that. You could filter out albums with less ratings than a certain amount and let people pick that amount for themselves.
I don't work for RYM, lol. I'm just trying to make clear what I think is the purpose and value of using that site. A tautology it is not - I'm just trying to get a point across as clearly as I can, and if it was, you're the one who started to talk about "logic", so I wouldn't expect you to object. I just find it an interesting topic.
That's not an algorithm though, that's a ranking system. An algorithm just takes inputs and then does something with it to create an output, in the case of RYM taking user ratings and then creating an publicly displayed average rating, and taking user ratings and probably the amount of ratings or something to create a rank. By that time the judging by criteria is already done. But even beyond that, everybody has different ways of evaluating music, gets different things from music, and some people might not even be able to really quantify different aspects of the music they listen to. I mean, you mention "beauty", but I don't consider that really relevant for my enjoyment of a Ramones album, and yet I enjoy their Rocket to Russia just as much as the very "beautiful" Topograhic Oceans. That's why a widely understood star-system or rating stuff out of 100 or 10 is pretty much the best you can ask for. Even then, everybody will have different systems of some sort (RYM even acknowledges that by letting you choose what different ratings mean to you - something PA could really use since some people rate prog and non-prog albums very differently on here), which is fine as long as that doesn't lead to systematic differences. Which it doesn't. And sure, that Ondarock list can be interesting to look at, but that reflects what a rock-oriented website only italians will visit thinks. That doesn't generalize to the rest of the world. I mean, nobody in a million years would put their money on Marquee Moon placing 1st, or Suicide placing 4th. Surprises are one thing, but this list clearly reflects a specific community of people. Which is fine, but it is what it is.
I think this is a good way of phrasing it. That's ultimately what any list or chart or whatever created in 2023 will be (even if you try to take into account what people thought back in the day), a list that reflects the here and now. |
Posted By: jamesbaldwin
Date Posted: June 05 2023 at 15:23
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@Stressed Cheese Uh I can't agree with much of what you write, and that you consider as obvious things ("it is what it is"), from there comes the problem in answering you. ------------- Amos Goldberg (professor of Genocide Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem): Yes, it's genocide. It's so difficult and painful to admit it, but we can no longer avoid this conclusion. |
Posted By: jamesbaldwin
Date Posted: June 05 2023 at 15:29
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@Greg: "229: Chico Buarque - Construção 4.03 / 6,634 ratings/ 76 reviews 230: Led Zeppelin - s/t: 3.92, 33,054 ratings, 603603 331: Neil Young - Harvest: 3.98 / 18,328 ratings / 603 reviews Led Zep IV is considerably higher rated, with 4.09 / 5.0 from 41,923 ratings and higher ranked at 64, but I am just using the first as an example when you see three in a row with such different numbers of ratings. That's a huge discrepancy in the numbers or ratings. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, the numbers are something else. Which of these three is actually the most appreciated? I would say Led Zeppelin because it has the most appreciators even if it has a .11 lower rating than Chico's album." Greg, I know very well Led Zeppelin, I never listened to Chico Buarque. Perhaps, if I listened carefully to it, I might like it better than Led Zeppelin. Or maybe less. Therefore, I would not really say that Led Zeppelin has more appreciators than Buarque, I would only say that he is better known in the north-western world, where most of RYM's users reside, and therefore, being more listened to, it has more ratings. The number of ratings, in other words, has very little to do with an album's score. The Quality Score can go up or down by making the number of listeners the same for each album. And this is the reason why, as I have already written, to obtain a coherent ranking of quality (beauty) of the music, it is necessary to make sure that all the voters have listened to all the nominated albums, as happens in film or song festivals. ------------- Amos Goldberg (professor of Genocide Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem): Yes, it's genocide. It's so difficult and painful to admit it, but we can no longer avoid this conclusion. |
Posted By: Stressed Cheese
Date Posted: June 05 2023 at 15:38
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If you can't agree with what I write, I'd appreciate it if you'd point out which of the points I made are disagreeable to you, and I'd be interesting in hearing your perspective on them. I don't post here to just hear myself talk out of my ass for paragraphs, I'd be curious to see why you disagree. I've explained the difference between algorithms and rating systems, and tried to put into words why I think RYM is valuable. You surely can put into words what's wrong with my reasoning. You've basically posted that Ondarock chart with nothing more to comment on it than "it seems well done". Again, I'm not trying to argue against getting any value from lists like that. But they don't serve the same purpose. Nobody is mandated to reply to my usually too-long posts if they don't feel like it, but I've responded to things you posted in here multiple times and every time your replies have basically come down to a simple "no". That makes me feel a little silly for typing so much, lol.
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Posted By: Stressed Cheese
Date Posted: June 05 2023 at 15:45
That might work for very specific niches, but if you mix audiences too much, that won't result in a fair fight. Imagine if, in order for my Led Zep or King Crimson ratings to count for a chart like this, I'd also be forced to rate the album "Scaring the Hoes". I'd rate that low because it's not my kind of music. That means the less a genre is appreciated by people, the more people would give those albums low ratings. RYM ratings are based on how much people who fall into the audience of an album like them. Even for PA - why should someone who isn't into VdGG be discounted on their ratings for Yes?
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Posted By: dr wu23
Date Posted: June 05 2023 at 15:54
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Well...based on my own opinions/taste....don't care what RYM thinks....and I assumed thats what the op was interested in; I like both about the same in that there are 2or 3 lps by both artists I like and the rest I can take or leave. ------------- One does nothing yet nothing is left undone. Haquin |
Posted By: jamesbaldwin
Date Posted: June 05 2023 at 16:12
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@Stressed Cheese No problem with you. Having written a lot (me and you), and making various observations that start from opposing assumptions, I would like to answer you in an orderly way, and this takes time. ------------- Amos Goldberg (professor of Genocide Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem): Yes, it's genocide. It's so difficult and painful to admit it, but we can no longer avoid this conclusion. |
Posted By: jamesbaldwin
Date Posted: June 05 2023 at 16:54
In fact I believe, as I have written many times, that rankings made by an editorial team of people are much more valid than those made by a community to established the value (the beauty) of the music albums. When I joined PA, for 2-3 years I just read the forum and listened to a lot of albums I didn't know about or that were in the Top 200. Then, I started posting when I felt I was sufficiently knowledgeable on the subject 'prog'. Now, as a reviewer, I am writing the Top 100 reviews. My goal is precisely to write reviews of the best albums in each genre. Obviously I will like some genres more than others, but I believe that an experienced music connoisseur (I think I am sufficiently knowledgeable about music up to the year 2000, but there are plenty of forum members here in PA who are much more knowledgeable than I am) is capable of making balanced judgments about albums in each genre. When you listen to a lot of music, you can no longer be a fan of a specific artist or genre. A fan listens to a few artists, always the same albums, always the same genre (or a few genres). If you aim to know the prog, you will also listen to the albums that inspire you the least, if you see that they are praised by many forum members you respect. For example, I have seen that there are three genres of heavy metal prog here in PA: I have made an effort to listen to most of the best rated albums, and to inform myself about that bands and genres. Now I believe I can make a considered judgement. So, just as I do reviews on Van der Graaf, whom I greatly respect as a band, I also do reviews on Yes and Dream Theater. I couldn't listen to Yes when I was 20 years old, because I was mainly a heartland rock fan, and I couldn't stand Anderson's voice, but with time, listening again to Yes in my 40s, I can say that I really appreciate them. I put 5 stars to Relayer. They are not in my Top 20 and maybe not even in my Top 50. But many other artists I couldn't stand at 20 are now in my Top 20. I have tried to have a musical education. I also believe, unlike you, that the best prog records are those appreciated by lovers of traditional rock music, or roots rock, or heartland rock, or jazz, in short, by lovers of non-prog music. Fans of prog which dont like easily other genres, they will tend to select as the best prog albums that have all the canons of prog, often in a pedantic way, whereas true art is to transcend a musical genre. Rock Bottom is appreciated by all the non-prog music connoisseurs I know. In fact, I consider it an absolute masterpiece of contemporary music, beyond any genre. Thick as a Brick hardly appeals to a non-prog listener. I, having joined RYM (I did so because I've heard a lot about it here on PA, otherwise I wouldn't have known of its existence), went to listen to that musical genius who occupies the number one position on the all-time chart, Kendrick Lamar (whose songs I had only heard distractedly). I did it carefully, read up on him, and finally gave my verdict (two stars). Disappointment, even though he has potential. Did I lower his rating? I'm glad: I think he is extremely overrated in RYM. We'll talk about him again in 20-30 years, we'll see what place he will have in the rankings. I don't spend a lot of time on RYM but if RYM can give me something, it's introducing me to unknown or almost unknown artists who occupy the top positions: if I have time, I will go and listen to them and rate them. Evaluating well Pink Floyd or Radiohead, which are already too highly represented in the charts in my opinion, is of little interest to me. If anything, I will go and give 5 stars to some U2 albums, poor guys. ------------- Amos Goldberg (professor of Genocide Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem): Yes, it's genocide. It's so difficult and painful to admit it, but we can no longer avoid this conclusion. |
Posted By: Logan
Date Posted: June 05 2023 at 18:14
I just meant something that doesn't need saying, that Led Zep has more appreciators at RYM, not talking quality (that has not been my focus, my focus has been in trying to interpret the numbers and what one can infer from them). I just find it interesting that sequentially ranked albums have such variance in numbers of ratings while having similar average ratings, plus or minus .11, or .O6 out of 5. Okay, that can be considered a lot (liken it to the miniscule difference in time sometimes between three people in an race). We had been talking about appreciation, Led Zep has come into the conversation before, you felt a lack of appreciation or recongition as I recall for Neal Young (sorry if I now misinterpret you), but it is such a numbers game. The charts are really complex things, and when dealing with the kids of numbers they do, try to balance known-ness (number of ratings) and the perceived quality or appreciation of an album (average ratings). The numbers determine the ranking, but one can weight things differently to achieve at different rankings. M@x once changed the algorithm at PA and it resulted in very different rankings. There's more to the story when judging the cumulative appreciation index than just viewing the rankings.
And the number of ratings can have a huge affect on the ranking depending where. At PA, it makes a very big difference, and at a certain point having more ratings can hurt your ranking. It can be counterintuitive but mathematically sound.
Yeah, if you use some systems, but some systems don't work well for huge numbers of users raters. I'm not trying to make points about preference or what system is better, I'm submitting some of my observations of one specific system based on a very limited set. What is the better system depends on many factors, like obviously what you are trying to accomplish, what the data is meant to represent, how the data is taken etc.
Beauty is in the the beholder and therefore it depends on the individual is how I tend to think of beauty in art.. Some systems are better to find consensus. That can be a better approach when trying to come up with a best of list, and I shared my thoughts on that earlier in the thread. Now I still have major issues with groups who listened to shortlists based on larger list which is itself limited yearly list because then I would think everyone should have listened to all albums, otherwise it's just a best of whatever albums were considered and listened to. I'm not a great admirer of best lists period, especially when it to arts that is so subjective. I don't take best list or ranking that seriously even though they can be a useful too, for me discovering music if I narrow my parameters, and still I might have to check out many myself before I find one that resonates with me. What matters to me most is if I like it, but if many others like the same, then it does become easier to find usually. So if by coherent ranking you simply a consensus based on an agreement of the qualities of a set that all are familiar with, then okay. I don't treat RYM's list as a list of quality despite the fact that I find plenty of good qualities in the music. I don't claim, and I hope I don't act like. my tastes are better than others. With what you quoted maybe this better expresses my interest, and offers insight on what I was trying to bring up. It's about getting that balance where they want it. To sum all of this up, I would rather focus on a quantitative analysis of RYM's charts than a qualitative analysis. I think when talking about RM's chart specifically that makes more logical sense if one is interested in logic.
------------- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXcp9fYc6K4IKuxIZkenfvukL_Y8VBqzK" rel="nofollow - Duos for fave acts |
Posted By: Stressed Cheese
Date Posted: June 06 2023 at 04:03
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Thanks for coming up with a more concrete respond. I'll try to do the same.
Ok, but why? Why would a list made by a small team be more "valid" than the opinions of thousands of listeners? And what is your definition of valid in this context?
Enjoyment of music, and thus rating an album, is subjective. I absolutely cannot stand screaming death metal vocals or blast beats, so how would I be able to review a death metal album that features them? What would the value of me reviewing or even rating an album like that be? Most people will simply not like all genres, and I don't see the point in devaluing their opinions. That doesn't reflect the opinions of real listeners anymore, that just reflects how accessible something is.
Sure, I could give VdGG or Magma another chance. Maybe I'll like them this time around. But what if I don't? I'm not going to review them then. Because if I did, I'd give them a low rating, which is a result of my tastes, not the quality of the album. That's not fair towards them.
Ok, but what if someone were to do this with a genre they don't like?
That's good, and I wish more people would do this instead of sticking to what they know (obviously that's not really the case for most posters here), but when I branch out and educate myself musically, I still run into the limits of my tastes. Those don't go away simply because I try to force myself to listen to something.
Are you normally appreciative of the kind of genres he operates in? Because I'm not. Would you still like me to review him? If so, what would the value of that be?
Doesn't that kind of go against your whole point? If you want to be fair and review everything that's highly ranked, even those you think are up too high, but would get a high rating from you, should be reviewed, then.
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Posted By: Saperlipopette!
Date Posted: June 06 2023 at 04:34
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One thing I do know about RYM's algorhythm, is that in addition to
the rating distribution and the sheer amount of ratings -an album's rating trend
will have some influence... beyond the obvious fact that the rating of
an album will be affected by it. A rising trend will be "awarded" and
vice versa. I don't know the details, and for all I know maybe those
Track rating sets are included in one way or another as well. As an example here's The Residents Eskimo:  |
Posted By: Lewian
Date Posted: June 06 2023 at 05:50
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One possibility regarding the simple number of ratings in RYM is that generally more ratings translate into a higher score (I assume the will somehow compute a score for each album from which to determine the ranking, and obviously generally higher ratings will mean higher score), but in a very nonlinear way, meaning that a difference between 20 and 100 ratings makes a huge difference but a difference between 5,000 and 30,000 does very little. This would make some sense to me as it's saying that there needs to be a certain strong ratings basis to appear high in rankings, but if that is reached many further ratings don't say much about "high rankability" anymore. This will of course interact with any other information they use, obviously average rating or even the whole distribution, connection and maybe weighting of ratings for various reasons such as writing reviews or very prolific rating, trends over time in both number and value of ratings, discounting suspicious raters etc. By the way, to everybody who says "ranking X is more valid than ranking Y" - what is your definition of valid? I somehow suspect that there is some circularity in this, like "RYM has so many raters that it must be valid because it has so many raters" or "proper expert rankings are more valid because these are proper experts". But actually a more scientific use of "validity" should refer to an outside criterion. I don't think there is such a thing, so I don't think any validity statement here says much really, which from my point of view obviously applies to the pro as well as to the against RYM "fraction" (that latter may just be Lorenzo
). |
Posted By: jamesbaldwin
Date Posted: June 06 2023 at 06:39
I agree with Lewian. RYM ratings only tell us what RYM users think, which is certainly different from the average western user. I believe that RYM attracts a precise group (or groups) of music listeners. Definitely westerners, definitely not of a high average age, definitely fans of certain genres of music more than others. I think traditional rock (heartland, roots post-punk rock etc.) tends to be devalued, and in fact The Rolling Stones, The Who, Creedence, Reed, Young, Sprinsteen, Van Morrison, Waits, Cave, U2, Rem are absent from the top 100 charts of all time. I think the audience is more related to more modern alternative rock and certain rather famous bands (Lamar, Radiohead, Pink Floyd, King Crimson, Bowie, Black Sabbath, Joy Division etc); then, unpredictably, certain cult bands (My Bloody Valentine) also appear in very high positions (but many other cult bands, that some music critics and other forums put in the top places together with My Bloody Valentine, are on the contrary quite neglected: Tortoise, Husker Du, Pere Ubu Suicide, Morphine, Jesus and Mary Chain, The Dream Syndicate etc). As Saperlipopette wrote, some bands are devalued (he mentioned U2 and Coldplay). You write: as long as prog fans will review prog, metal fans will review metal etc you don't see how things can be distorted. Well, that's the sentence I quoted in my previous post when I wrote that I, unlike you, believe that the best judgement of prog is made by non-prog fans. However, U2 and Pink Floyd, given their popularity, will not only get reviews from those who love them, but from many who grew up listening to that music for generational reasons, and so, given that U2 don't go beyond 2552 place, and Pink Floyd are in the Top 100 with several albums, we have to draw two possible conclusions: 1) Pink Floyd are much better than U2, who evidently got too much success compared to their merits 2) U2 were voted by many who are not their fans, just because they are very famous. That is to say: there are in RYM relatively few fans of the U2 music genre and relatively many fans of the FLOYD music genre. One of the two hypotheses must be right. Both can also be right. Personally, I believe that the quality of all U2's albums up to Achtung Baby is high (after that it plummeted), and that they have had great musical growth. The same can be said for Pink Floyd, particularly from 1967 to Wish You Were (then the quality dropped but remained good until The Final Cut). So I consider U2 very underrated, devalued in RYM, and not only for The Joshua Tree at 2552. In their genres, U2 and Pink Floyd were great artists. In my opinion, Pink Floyd with their early albums contributed more to the evolution of rock music than U2. But that would be another matter. The Who, with Tommy, made rock history. If a RYM reviewer is interested in his musical education, he should study the history of the sixties, listen to Tommy and evaluate it. Could the critics make lists that deviate so much from the average person's tastes? More than RYM does? Yes. But, are we trying to create a 'community' here to have a 'statistical sample' of the average listener? The larger and more homogeneous the community is in terms of geographical distribution and age and genres preferences, the more statistically significant a sample it will be, but is this an ideal to seek? I generally think that the average listener, as well as the average reader, as well as the average movie goer will have tastes that are NOT the best in music art, literary art, film art. When I think of my country, Italy, much of the cinema that sells the most, much of the music that sells the most is very poorly appreciated on an artistic level. So, I very much hope that a music critic will make a different list from the average listener: in Italy, especially in southern Italy, the average listener only listens to melodic music in the style of the Sanremo Festival!!!  So, I criticize the RYM Chart of all time, but try to imagine: 1) Madonna - Loke a virgin 2) Oasis - Morning Glory 3) Rod Stewart 4) Bee Gees 5) Tiziano Ferro 6) Oasis - Stand 7) Oasis - Definitivle.... If the firsts 7 positions were these... Would you still got interest in RYM? I would regret the current RYM.
------------- Amos Goldberg (professor of Genocide Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem): Yes, it's genocide. It's so difficult and painful to admit it, but we can no longer avoid this conclusion. |
Posted By: Saperlipopette!
Date Posted: June 06 2023 at 06:53
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Posted By: Lewian
Date Posted: June 06 2023 at 07:01
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^ That's all fair enough, but saying "It is what it is and I like it for that" is very different from making a supposedly (more) objective validity claim. By the way, regarding how "representative" RYM raters are for any bigger group than themselves, all we really can do is speculate. There are many which is fair enough, but that doesn't necessarily make them a valid (!) sample of any bigger group. In the last German elections, the SPD had 25.7%. Now if some subgroup of voters is selected by any means, there can be a very big group of people that all vote SPD! 25.7% of 50 million voters is still a lot. Polling companies who want to predict an election outcome will not just put up a website and whoever bothers to register can give their opinion. Self-recruitment of participants is known to often give very biased predictions. They will make an effort to reach people who are difficult to reach, and apply all kinds of correction techniques. Also they will start from a methodologically well defined stratified random sample, and correct if some people in the sample don't take part. There is much experience about how things go wrong if you don't do this. RYM does no such thing. Of course also the opposite claim, namely that RYM raters are specifically biased in certain directions is just speculation unless you actually have the data. In fact we don't really want RYM to be representative opinion research, as for our personal use some opinions are more valuable than others. On this basis we may well argue that RYM is pretty good (large number of people who really care with possibly certain biases that are somewhat well though not perfectly aligned to my personal tastes), or that it isn't, because many of the people there rate things too casually without paying enough attention, as Lorenzo seems to imply. Which is all well, but we're really only talking about personal tastes here (and be it personal taste regarding whose opinion we value, potentially beyond just our musical taste). Sorry, guys! |
Posted By: Stressed Cheese
Date Posted: June 06 2023 at 08:27
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I really should be doing something more productive with my time instead of posting another chapter worth of ramblings...but I'm too invested now, lol
At the same time, I am also of the opinion that you'd need some kind of reasoning as to why a certain sample wouldn't be representative for the larger population. I did my BA thesis in psychology last year, and about 70% or so of participants were university students. But for our study, there wasn't any reason to assume that this would reflect poorly on the generalizability (within the western world, at least). RYM has a bit of a baked-in correction in that sense. Let's say that there aren't a lot of 60+ y/o people on the site. That means that the kind of music they tend to listen to might not get as many votes, but I don't see why it would necessarily lead to much lower ratings. Since it's more likely that music outside of RYM's userbase gets ignored (relatively) than panned. Because at the end of the day, most people will just rate stuff they already have an interest in, and won't go out of their way to rate stuff just because they hate it. But again I'll give you that validity isn't really a good term for this at all. I guess generalizability might be more accurate. Idk, but hopefully you get the point I'm trying to make and indulge me for a second. And again, RYM is what it is, in the sense that it's not perfect, and that it's trying to be a reflection of the here and now, of active listeners. And let me stress again that if people get something out of critic lists, that's fine with me. But I do strongly believe that RYM is the more accurate evalution of music, in the sense that it reflects the average person better than any curated list can.
First of all, I'm not really sure why you suddenly respond to this old post, when I took the effort to type up a resonse to a later post you made where I asked some very concrete questions. But ok.
I mean, I disagree with that. Again, it's not perfect, but it's as close to perfect as we can hope for, realistically. But if RYM tells us what (thousands of) RYM users think, surely a list made by a small group of critics will tell us something about an even smaller sample.
Top 100 of all time. That's 60+ years of music across all genres. To not fall into that extremely tiny fraction of all music made is NOT a sign of being devalued. A U2 album being in place 2552 or whatever it was still means it's in like the top 1% albums ever made. Is that supposed to be bad?
If they're into famous bands, then why do some famous bands score high (Floyd), and some low (U2). Also, you can go to any more obscure artist on RYM and see for yourself that they still recieve high rankings. Seriously, go on RYM for a bit and you'll see that fame doesn't correlate with higher ratings. Again, this has nothing to do with the supposed value or worth of RYM, this is just a misunderstanding of the website.
They're not devalued. They're just not seen to be as good as you think they are. U2 isn't as highly regarded as Pink Floyd, even outside RYM. Traditional rock isn't devalued at all, rock is by far the most common type of music in the top 10.000 (even if you go by just the higher ends of that), and a lot of that is rock from the 60's, 70's and 80's. Again, this is plain to see to anyone visiting the site.
Well, that makes ProgArchives one of the most worthless sites on the web. The fact of the matter is, most people listen to music that falls into their interests, and thus will review/rate music that falls into their interests. If you want people to review music outside of their interests, you'd have to create an all-new site for that I think (would honestly be interesting if such a site existed).
It's got more to do with the percentage of people who listen to X, who really like X. U2 concerts sold out like that, Pink Floyd concerts also sold out like that. But it's very possible there's just more people who like Floyd than U2, and thus their ratings are higher. That's not that hard to believe, in fact, it's kind of common sense to say that Pink Floyd is more highly regarded than U2.
That's fine, and then rate those albums highly. But that doesn't mean the average ratings aren't accurate.
It's a historically significant album, and I tend to make a point of listening to those, as long as they're in my areas of interest. But ultimately, people listen to music they want to listen to, it's something you do for fun. Not everybody is interested in educating themselves in music history. I'm still waiting for you to explain the value of someone evaluating an album they have absolutely no interesting it. Should I go around reviewing historically significant rap albums?
Why wouldn't that be ideal to ask? If you want a list that reflects the real world, why wouldn't you want that?
That's subjective. Best is subjective.
And that's exactly what RYM also does by having people literally rate things. It's not a popularity chart, it's a chart based on people's supposed quality of an album. Keep in mind that when something is very mainstream, more critical and "refined" people also get a taste of it, and will thus rate/review it. Hence why a lot of superhero movies, despite being box office successes, get low user ratings on Letterboxd or IMDB. if it was about mainstream tastes, wouldn't those mainstream tastes actually chart highly on RYM? They don't., so if anything, this should make you love RYM.
No, but this isn't what the top 7 is on RYM, so literally what's the point of this comparison? Again, you're arguing in favor of RYM now, so I'm getting a little confused here.
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).Posted By: Saperlipopette!
Date Posted: June 06 2023 at 08:45
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^^ (to Lewian) I just tried to explain my thoughs. "It is what it is and I like it for that" is
not how I would phraze it, because it's not what I believe to be true. I
don't think like you do. I don't doubt for a second that the collected
knowledge of a music community like RYM is of a greater value than 650
000 random people. -To me it's a little like stating that
Bach is better than Limp Bizkit. Which I'll gladly do. Some may
disagree and guess I can't really prove that I am right and they
are wrong. But it won't stop me from believing it. Or knowing it,
really. So I'll continue thinking the way I do, without being able to
give you a fully satisfying explaination as to why. One can always be
met with a "yea but that's purely sujective". But it's not how I think.
Knowledge and experience is always a plus. I will give the opinions of a
knowledgable person greater weight than the inexperienced. Although
it's fully possible to agree with the latter and not the former. -I
can't really relate this to your German election comparizon. To be
honest I didn't really read it. It's too warm, and my head works kind of
slow.
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Posted By: jamesbaldwin
Date Posted: June 06 2023 at 10:15
-----I have some doubts, if I think of the charts of all times. But overall, I think if we were to compare RYM's ranking to that of the "average citizen", RYM's (with all his defects) would probably be better.
I totally agree. And this is exactly why I believe that a serious and coherent ranking should be done with an editorial team that is committed to listening to a series of albums and evaluating them according to certain criteria, and not left to an algorithm of all the votes of people who perhaps they just vote for their favorites. ------------- Amos Goldberg (professor of Genocide Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem): Yes, it's genocide. It's so difficult and painful to admit it, but we can no longer avoid this conclusion. |
Posted By: Logan
Date Posted: June 06 2023 at 11:42
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With all this talk, I registered at RYM again. I had an account years ago. My user name is LoganPA1 (same as I had for a youtube channel which I cannot access anymore). The Logan is for my PA username which is a reference to Logan's Run due to my propensity for run-on sentences. The PA is for Prog Archives, and the 1 is because I am number one (big The Prisoner fan). I will start rating and reviewing some of my favourite things. I'm not interested in rating that which I don't like generally or from genres I don't appreciate. I don't think that rating albums from genres which I don't "get", am not that familiar with would be of value to myself or anyone. I value reviews and ratings more from people who can appreciate the idiom and are familiar with much related music. I do value the opinions on and the valuations of music, arts, sciences etc. from people who are well-versed in the subject matter/ genre/ field. I generally would rather a medical diagnosis from a medical doctor than an auto mechanic, and I generally would rather the opinion on the worth of, say, a hip-hop album coming from someone who appreciates and has explored plenty of hip-hop. And, not surprisingly, I value those who have similar tastes to mine. I don't care much about best lists unless they are best for me, and actually find ridiculous levels of focus on best lists, especially those that imply an unreasonable level of objectivity in the assessment. I have found it wonderful how well-rated so much music that I love is at RYM, and I have discovered so much great-for-me music through going through those charts (mostly custom fitted so maybe less surprising). It does attract many into quirky artsy music. I was listening to Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly earlier, which I do find to be a very interesting and eclectic album, and at times I found myself comparing it to black midi, which is popular at RYM. It took me a while to really appreciate black midi but I now love various albums -- Cavalcade is still my favourite. I could well see a big overlap in the audiences despite the differences. Like many, I prefer to rate that which I like, and it is Rate My Music, which implies to me rating the music from my collection and the music I like rather than evaluating the music others like. Rate Another's Music (RAM) would be cool. The Tagline could be RAM, for the music other's wish to RAM down your throat. I have tried to make topics like that at this forum, but they did not work as well as I hoped they would. A lot of PA users are a very tough crowd. ;) ------------- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXcp9fYc6K4IKuxIZkenfvukL_Y8VBqzK" rel="nofollow - Duos for fave acts |
Posted By: Lewian
Date Posted: June 06 2023 at 16:18
See, I'm fine with that, and I even agree. But I also have thought (and read and discussed and listened) too much about objectivity to think that it could apply to such stuff. Our points of view can still make sense and be attractive to others if we acknowledge that they're just our points of view. I mean, if your point of view is convincing enough as it is, you don't need to claim that it's more than just your point of view to give it more authority.
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Posted By: Saperlipopette!
Date Posted: June 06 2023 at 23:36
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^ Well this isn't primarely about me but the biggest music community on internet. No other place elsewhere will you come closer to locating info and evaluations of all the music that has ever been released*. But personally, all my life has taught me that this relativist way of thinking that everything is subjective and it's all just a point of view - isn't fruitful. What can I say, I don't believe it. It's the ever useful/never useful, laziest non-argument ever. I see people losing their ability to state that a work of art that's obviously so bad it's an insult to one's intellect - isn't any good, as a result. Like "how can I tell if this bag of dogsh*t is great art or not? It's all in the eye of the beholder". I would a call a bag of dogsh*t on a pedestal bullsh*t - and objectively speaking a piece of crap. I believe some learned and experienced opinions are closer to objective truth than other opinions. And pretending that I don't, would be a lie. I do mesure the value of art to an extent. Sometimes it's a no-brainer: like Bach vs Limp Bizkit. Often two expressions are so different it feels both impossible and irrelevant to place one above the other, and most of the time comparing/choosing feels plain unessecary, but still I believe that it's true that Bach is objectively both better and greater art than Limp Bizkit. I measure the value of opinions as well. *by either a few, several, many, hundreds or thousands quite knowledgable people from all over the world in one place. The representation isn't perfect, there's still plenty of "lost" music out there, but it's the best we got. RYM's the closest I can get to something that's appears to be "fair" to all music. Music from all over the world has a better representation than everywhere else (that's not specialized and ignore "western mainstream music"). That, among other things makes it closer to something objectively true than something a group of rockers in an editorial office somewhere in the USA can come up with. This is relflected in the actual charts. And that's why it's so obviously more interesting, more eclectic and richer, and the perfect place for discovery etc... Btw: Both in this post and several others, I'm writing about two seperate, related things. Because we've ended up discussing both a community of knowledge like RYM and other, more "personal beliefs"
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