Second opinions to AM?

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Tortuga
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Second opinions to AM?

Post by Tortuga »

I've been using this site for a while now, not as long as some others here, but still. It's been a godsend when it comes to creating my own personal music collection project: carefully choosing the single best albums by 500 different primary artists between 1953 and 2013 (exactly 6 decades). By now, I know that more often than not, AM is right in this matter.

However, I've always felt the need to verify its "opinion" via a second website because I also that occasionally, it's probably not right. What I've done with each artist is compare their best album according to AcclaimedMusic with their best album according to BestEverAlbums. If they match, there seems to be a strong consensus among both critics and fans that, for example, "Yes, Master of Puppets IS Metallica's best album."

Sometimes, these two websites don't agree. For instance, AM says that the Prodigy's best album is Music for the Jilted Generation while BEA says it's Fat of the Land. Also, AM says that Prince's best album is Sign 'O' the Times while BEA says it's Purple Rain. In both of those cases, I'm more inclined to agree with BEA. But then again, BEA also claims that Madonna's best album is Ray of Light (sorry, but no) and Bob Marley's best album is Legend (ROFL).

AM is pure critical consensus while BEA is sort of a mixture between critics and fans. So my question is: do you guys know of any other website that can provide a worthy "foil" to AcclaimedMusic, in terms of best album opinions? BEA has been doing the job for me so far, but sometimes I'm not so sure about it...

P.S.: Would you say that MetaCritic is a good place for choosing current best albums? They're very up-to-date, but they don't go before 2000, and according to them, Random Access Memories is Daft Punk's best album, and I just don't think that's true...
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StevieFan13
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Re: Second opinions to AM?

Post by StevieFan13 »

Just look at each individual list, if you want second opinions. I disagree with a ton of the consensus on songs, for instance. (Can't say much about albums, since I haven't heard enough).
Music is a world within itself, with a language we all understand - Sir Duke (1976)
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BleuPanda
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Re: Second opinions to AM?

Post by BleuPanda »

MetaCritic is flawed for this due to it only collecting contemporary reviews (opinions change, even among the same source; hence Discovery being so low there but so high here).

The best option is to probably check a bunch of sources. Though some bands are naturally going to not have a consensus. The Prodigy is a good example, as their two key albums really have quite different sounds. The KLF might also be interesting; though The White Room is quite a bit higher on AM, Chill Out is in an entirely different genre. How do you pick just one album to represent a band that explores different sounds?
Harold
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Re: Second opinions to AM?

Post by Harold »

Tortuga wrote:AM is pure critical consensus while BEA is sort of a mixture between critics and fans. So my question is: do you guys know of any other website that can provide a worthy "foil" to AcclaimedMusic, in terms of best album opinions? BEA has been doing the job for me so far, but sometimes I'm not so sure about it...
I like BEA quite a bit, but calling it "a mixture between critics and fans" is a bit of a stretch - they do incorporate some critics' lists, but for the most part its rankings come from lists uploaded by fans. Fortunately, they tend to be well-informed fans, so there aren't as many head-scratchers as you might expect.

Of course, there's also RateYourMusic, which has been discussed here quite a bit. The most significant difference between BEA and RYM is that BEA's ratings are from favorite-album lists, so they all come from a place of positivity; RYM's users rank every album, so if you have an artist that a lot of people hate (often for no good reason), their album rankings will suffer (cf. Coldplay or Oasis or Arctic Monkeys). That said, there's a fair amount of overlap between the top rankings on the two sites, particularly when it comes to genres like prog or metal (or however the hell you classify other artists like Fishmans or Have a Nice Life) that don't do that well on AM.
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BleuPanda
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Re: Second opinions to AM?

Post by BleuPanda »

Also, for RYM, even if an artist is generally disliked, if you're only looking within their individual works, you'll still likely find a consensus pick among that base.
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spiritualized
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Re: Second opinions to AM?

Post by spiritualized »

I am a big RYM user. I concur with Harold and Bleu !
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PlasticRam
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Re: Second opinions to AM?

Post by PlasticRam »

At the end of the day you decide yourself what is the band's best album and what is not. These sites that rank things are only recommendations.
I feel like that
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bootsy
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Re: Second opinions to AM?

Post by bootsy »

I like metacritic a lot more than others on here it seems. It's pretty to me and there isn't much bias unless you take the weight of some of the sites that give a higher weight than others as bias. I don't use RYM that much. Something about that site seems generic to me. I also just like getting the opinions of people on forums like this one, kanyetothe, and some other forums. Once I get a general consensus positive or negative I sometimes trust it. I'm 42 so sometimes what a people half my age either way that is outside of my demo likes that I'm not aware of on a forum might persuade me to give an album a chance. I like Allmusic too. They are pretty reliable most of the time.
Last edited by bootsy on Tue Apr 18, 2017 5:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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prosecutorgodot
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Re: Second opinions to AM?

Post by prosecutorgodot »

Make your own opinions. You don't need these charts and lists for anything other than recommended listening.
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spiritualized
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Re: Second opinions to AM?

Post by spiritualized »

Actually for more recent stuff, i also use AOTY.org but i hardly see any mention around here. It seems to have a fair spread of sources, including electronically which is mainly ignored in these forums...
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bootsy
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Re: Second opinions to AM?

Post by bootsy »

spiritualized wrote:Actually for more recent stuff, i also use AOTY.org but i hardly see any mention around here. It seems to have a fair spread of sources, including electronically which is mainly ignored in these forums...
Yes that's a good one that I forgot about.
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Moonbeam
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Re: Second opinions to AM?

Post by Moonbeam »

I tried to get into BEA, but I came away really disliking it. The forums when I visited were filled with people claiming here to be an objective ranking of things, which really doesn't jibe with me, especially when the combined list is so dominated by white guys with guitars.

I mean, look at their top artists list! https://www.besteveralbums.com/bandstats.php
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StevieFan13
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Re: Second opinions to AM?

Post by StevieFan13 »

Moonbeam wrote:I tried to get into BEA, but I came away really disliking it. The forums when I visited were filled with people claiming here to be an objective ranking of things, which really doesn't jibe with me, especially when the combined list is so dominated by white guys with guitars.

I mean, look at their top artists list! https://www.besteveralbums.com/bandstats.php
White Guys with Acoustic Guitars, you say?
https://vimeo.com/149245994
Music is a world within itself, with a language we all understand - Sir Duke (1976)
jimmyj
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Re: Second opinions to AM?

Post by jimmyj »

I like AllMusic. It seems to have interesting rankings by both the site and users. And also has a lot of good information about the artists and albums.

I usually pick an artist I want to explore. Search on AllMusic, and then check out their Discography and Catalog of music from there. You can sort by AllMusic ranking and user rankings for Full albums as well as complilations.
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