www.allmusic.com

stateoflove79

Dunno if this site is well known yet or not, but a buddy of mine showed it to me. It is the be-all end-all for music knowledge. Just thought I would spread the word.

soulsinging

i use this site religiously. allmovie.com is good too.

keeponrockin

It's AMAZING!

DOSW

I agree with the previous two posts. It's the best website I've ever been to for truly reliable reviews.

CM1847

it is like an encyclopedia of music. The only thing I wish they would do is consider dropping their own personal reviews and use a Metacritic style compilation. It is the easiest and quickest way to find out information about an artist and their entire discography, but sometimes some really, really unfair reviews will put people off of certain albums.

I guess my point is that as great of a resource the site is, I think it would be the ultimate be-all-end-all of musical knowledge if they used a compliation system for new albums and possibly let users rate albums RYM style(along with a separate critical review rating). I go there to check out the discography of any new band I hear about, but I have to go to other places to find reviews because it is hard to base decisions off of a single review. Give me a bunch of different reviews on that site and I would rarely ever use some of the other review sites I frequent.

audiodave

Been using this site for years. It's a good'un.

soulsinging

CM1847 wrote:

it is like an encyclopedia of music. The only thing I wish they would do is consider dropping their own personal reviews and use a Metacritic style compilation. It is the easiest and quickest way to find out information about an artist and their entire discography, but sometimes some really, really unfair reviews will put people off of certain albums.

I guess my point is that as great of a resource the site is, I think it would be the ultimate be-all-end-all of musical knowledge if they used a compliation system for new albums and possibly let users rate albums RYM style(along with a separate critical review rating). I go there to check out the discography of any new band I hear about, but I have to go to other places to find reviews because it is hard to base decisions off of a single review. Give me a bunch of different reviews on that site and I would rarely ever use some of the other review sites I frequent.

that's what i like about it. their reviews are by and large very fair i think. even if they slam an album on the stars, you can get a pretty good read on it from the actual review. ive bought cd's slammed by there becos i could tell from the review that the things they didnt like about it were things i wouldnt mind. i like that it isnt cluttered by some dorky ass music geeks who want to think they're brilliant. you can get user reviews at amazon if you want them.

CM1847

soulsinging wrote:

that's what i like about it. their reviews are by and large very fair i think. even if they slam an album on the stars, you can get a pretty good read on it from the actual review. ive bought cd's slammed by there becos i could tell from the review that the things they didnt like about it were things i wouldnt mind. i like that it isnt cluttered by some dorky ass music geeks who want to think they're brilliant. you can get user reviews at amazon if you want them.

I don't mind their reviews, they are usually good(except Stephen Thomas Erlewine(sp?)'s reviewis, he SUCKS, I never thought it was possible to write over 1,000 words on an album and only mention one song). I would want them to keep their own reviews, but also offer a compliation score from a lot of other critical reviews(Metacritic style) and the option to have user rates ala Rate Your Music would be cool, but not necessary. It is clearly the best site out there to instantly find out about any band or artists entire discography, having only one opinon on which are the best seems counterproductive IMO. I always use them to find out about a band I am interested in, but I always have to check other places for reviews, placing a compliation of reviews on that site would make it the only site I would need.

FreshTendrils

I like to use allmusic.com in conjunction with rateyourmusic.com. I don't really pay attention to how many "stars" AM gives an album anymore, since I feel like the reviews (for the most part) provide an accurate overview of the album.

soulsinging

CM1847 wrote:

I don't mind their reviews, they are usually good(except Stephen Thomas Erlewine(sp?)'s reviewis, he SUCKS, I never thought it was possible to write over 1,000 words on an album and only mention one song). I would want them to keep their own reviews, but also offer a compliation score from a lot of other critical reviews(Metacritic style) and the option to have user rates ala Rate Your Music would be cool, but not necessary. It is clearly the best site out there to instantly find out about any band or artists entire discography, having only one opinon on which are the best seems counterproductive IMO. I always use them to find out about a band I am interested in, but I always have to check other places for reviews, placing a compliation of reviews on that site would make it the only site I would need.

1) there are probably legal impediments to them compiling other critical reviews that would make it impractically expensive.

2) i maintain that user reviews are annoying as shit. you'd have 3 stars for every album becos every fanboy weenie would go in there to give every pearl jam album 5 stars while every hipster snob would give them one cos "ed sucks." like i said, i much prefer it's current format to including either of those features.

FreshTendrils

soulsinging wrote:

1) there are probably legal impediments to them compiling other critical reviews that would make it impractically expensive.

2) i maintain that user reviews are annoying as shit. you'd have 3 stars for every album becos every fanboy weenie would go in there to give every pearl jam album 5 stars while every hipster snob would give them one cos "ed sucks." like i said, i much prefer it's current format to including either of those features.

1) I'm not sure how much it costs to run Metacritic, but it seems to be working.

2) It really depends on the site. I think RateYourMusic.com's ratings are pretty fair.

intodeep

soulsinging wrote:

i use this site religiously. allmovie.com is good too.

ditto

CM1847

soulsinging wrote:

1) there are probably legal impediments to them compiling other critical reviews that would make it impractically expensive.

2) i maintain that user reviews are annoying as shit. you'd have 3 stars for every album becos every fanboy weenie would go in there to give every pearl jam album 5 stars while every hipster snob would give them one cos "ed sucks." like i said, i much prefer it's current format to including either of those features.

1-Metacritic seems capable of running with that kind of system. List the scores, add in a select quote from the review and provide a link to the site which reviewed it. It is a win-win, I've discovered review websites from using Metacritic. There are also separate sites that do this for videogames and movies, I can't imagine linking to reviews is a major hurdle

2-I'll give you that, which is why it woudl be near the bottom of my list of improvements for AMG. I do think that if you get a large enough group of people rating/reviewing the album, it will even out. RYM is an example of this, you have the idiots that give a new album 5 stars before it even leaks, but you have just as many idiots who give it 0.5 at the same time. Like I said, a user rating/review would be a neat side feature, but I would certainly prefer the critical review compilation instead.

soulsinging

CM1847 wrote:

1-Metacritic seems capable of running with that kind of system. List the scores, add in a select quote from the review and provide a link to the site which reviewed it. It is a win-win, I've discovered review websites from using Metacritic. There are also separate sites that do this for videogames and movies, I can't imagine linking to reviews is a major hurdle

2-I'll give you that, which is why it woudl be near the bottom of my list of improvements for AMG. I do think that if you get a large enough group of people rating/reviewing the album, it will even out. RYM is an example of this, you have the idiots that give a new album 5 stars before it even leaks, but you have just as many idiots who give it 0.5 at the same time. Like I said, a user rating/review would be a neat side feature, but I would certainly prefer the critical review compilation instead.

yeah, but i like the fact that this isn't a snippet of a bunch of reviews. if you have metacritic, what dyou need allmusic to do that for? you say you want it all in one place, but then you say you want to end up bouncing around to read dozens of reviews anyway? it'd end up likc book jackets... 3 pages of one sentence quotes out of context. i like that they have a pretty consistent quality standard with no distractions or contradictions. i prefer that to having 15 different reviews with half calling something genius and half saying it sucks and me wondering which one to believe. it's why i use allmusic and never metacritic

CM1847

soulsinging wrote:

yeah, but i like the fact that this isn't a snippet of a bunch of reviews. if you have metacritic, what dyou need allmusic to do that for? you say you want it all in one place, but then you say you want to end up bouncing around to read dozens of reviews anyway? it'd end up likc book jackets... 3 pages of one sentence quotes out of context. i like that they have a pretty consistent quality standard with no distractions or contradictions. i prefer that to having 15 different reviews with half calling something genius and half saying it sucks and me wondering which one to believe. it's why i use allmusic and never metacritic

Allmusic has everything every artist you can imagine has ever done. Metacritic has only new releases going back a few years when they were started. The nice thing about metacritic is that most of the links have links provided so you can use those one sentence quotes to decide which 500 word revies you want to read. If there is an album I'm wondering about, I read the top two or 3 reviews and then one of two of the lower ones as well to check the complaints and praises between the two.

My point is that I am lazy, I would much prefer to fire up AMG and have everything I want at my fingertips about any artist and their albums. They are quite close to this goal, I think providing a compiled score or something along those lines would pretty much make it the perfect music site.

artjam

allmusic is the greatest. I have found so many new great bands because of the similiar artist feature. I am on there at least 10 times a day. This and last.fm are the only sites i need to find new music. Jeez, this sounds like a commercial. Yeah, allmusic fucking rocks.

glasshouse

my music info bible
fantastic site

brianlux

I'm glad to have found an AllMusic thread.  Prompted by pearljammr78 thread about Discogs, I was going to start one, but here we are!  I like AllMuics website a lot.  And I still have their big fat music guide books on Country, Blues, Rock, and Jazz.  The same (and more) information is on their website, but I love browsing those guides!