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[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

WHY OH WHY have I just spent an hour of my life looking at the METACRITIC FORUMS.

FFS.

If there's a worse music site than metacritic I don't want to know about it. And it's not really even metacritic's FAULT, though I hate the way they allocate a "score out of 100" to reviews that don't give one.

Comments

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

why's it not their fault that no one's worse than them?

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I just mean that what makes MC bad is the way they're an aggregated repository for all other badness. The basic idea of the site is one I disagree with but the input has to take some blame too.

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

I had a look at the "Why is metacritic so indie?" poll, which has posts that read

Because indie people love and care about music. For most people who listen to mainstream stuff, it's a social or popularity thing.

But also some fightback from Dork. I suppose I'm glass-half-full on this.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Actually reading that thread I was thinking "well at least they admit that's how they think!" but as an aggregate the site and forums really make me think "what's the point?"

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

Happily I have only encountered MetaCritic whilst trying to find out what the fvcking hell the lyrics to a pAper chAse song are. What exactly is its mission?

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

For lyrics you want songmeanings.com which is the BEST music site on the interweb instead!

The idea of MetaCritic is that it takes reviews from "reliable" sources, puts their grades on a unified scale, excerpts half a paragraph of summary and then aggregates it all using some kind of weighting scale to reflect the 'importance' of individual critics. The resulting maths tells you that Stars Of The Lid have made the best album this year. (no, wait, Burial has overtaken it).

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

Haha, yes, I do like songmeanings.com a lot, I was committing one of my usual mishearings in lyrics though and all it threw up was the fact someone on metacritics doesn't pay enough attention to the vocals, either.

Good lord that sounds like an utter pile of tripe. I shall poke at it with the standard-issue bargepole when I have handed in my own pile of tripe later today.

teh awesoem

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

HOW IS "IMPORTANCE" MEASURED!!?

Re: teh awesoem

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

They refuse to say.

metacritic

[(Anonymous)]

Actually, I like Metacritic quite a bit. I have never looked at their forums or even wondered how they come up with their overall scores but as a one-stop shopping place for reviews on albums I am curious about, it's pretty good. Most recently I went there to see how the critical reception for the Alicia Keys album has been while considering purchasing it. I don't take all of the reviews that seriously (Entertainment Weekly pulls little weight for me) but there are a number of review sites covered on Metacritic that I like but don't go to daily and can easily miss their reviews of new records. I also use it for video games, which I collect for the library at which I work.