Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Rate Your Music

When asked if I'm on Facebook, my standard response of "No, but I am on Rate Your Music" is usually met by a blank stare that seems to say this.

So, what is Rate Your Music (RYM)?
To put it verbosely, it's a delightfully handy online wonderland of user-driven musical minutiae in which ratings yield recommendations, like-minded pop/rock/soul mates are unearthed, and “critics” (i.e., paid music nerds) take a backseat to "normal people” (i.e., unpaid music nerds) like me (visit my profile here).

Or, to put it simply, it’s a great way to discover new music. Here’s how:

First, if you invest a little time and “catalog” (aka make a list of) and rate (on a scale of 0.5-5.0 stars) your music collection, RYM will (much like Netflix’ website) generate custom recommendations based on your input. It will also create a “compatibility list” of other RYM users whose tastes most closely resemble your own, and then allow you to peruse their collections. More recently, they’ve implemented a “predicted rating” feature which “represents how strongly RYM thinks you will like” any given album. Using this tool, I can tell, for example, that I should heed a friend's recent advice that I check out
Ágætis Byrjun by Sigur Rós (predicted rating: 4.46).

Second, it’s also interesting—and this doesn’t require making any ratings—to simply look and see what “average” people think is best. For instance, this list of the RYM users' top albums of all-time has led me to many a gem (such as Odessey & Oracle by The Zombies). This can also prove useful in deciding where to begin with a certain band (like when a glance at The Cure's discography led me to start with Disintegration). And then there are the inevitable surprises, like when I learned
that—shockinglythe top-rated single of 1985 is not Eddie Murphy's immortal classic, "Party All The Time" (video here).

4 comments:

axe said...

Shameless plug to try and get Pete to comment. It seems one big hole in your music (and my) collection compared to all ratemymusic users is jazz.

Peter said...

I was having a mediocre day at best until I watched that video and was reminded of the musical genius known as Eddie Murphy.

I'm really intrigued now by RYM. I hadn't known of it before, but I might just have to set up a profile of my own to connect with all the other Eddie Murphy fans out there.

brumpelstiltskin said...

Look, will I do whatever it takes, even take a swig of whisky, to get a comment? Yes. But would I deliberately exaggerate my sincere adoration for “Party All The Time”? Absolutely not. To suggest otherwise just hurts my feelings.

Anonymous said...

I have that Sigur Ros album if you'd like to check them out - it's fantastic. If you like them, I'd also recommend checking out Johann Johannsson and perhaps talkdemonic. ...I'll just bring my ipod to your office.