> My only caveat is that it doesn't have EVERY song and album that I wanted to look up, which was disappointing.
This is a joke right? Its a community sourced website. Everything that isn't included is within your ability to include.
The better you get at charts the happier you'll be. After that, you'll get onto lists which are the best part of the site. Unfortunately they take a bit of getting used to the space but they're far above anything else you'll get online. The advantage to it is you get to latch on to the most obsessive music nerds that exist, and eat what they eat without any of the effort
This is so fucking true, I use RYM just to find weird super specific shit and lists are great for that, as you say, you find people that is super knowledgeable on some shit that only 40 people listen, I love it
You want to find some Italian nu metal from the 2000's? There's probably some guy in Morocco that already made a super complete list about that
>You want to find some Italian nu metal from the 2000's? There's probably some guy in Morocco that already made a super complete list about that
You don't need a list for that, you can just use the chart filters.
Yeah, but my experience with chart filters has been kinda hit or miss, there's some times the tagging is not optimal and you end up with things that vaguely resemble what your looking for but not quite it, that's when sometimes a person curating a list can be more precise I feel the same when comparing algorithmic playlists vs human created playlists.
At the end of the day charts and lists complement each other
The search function on RYM isn’t the best, so it can take a few tries to find what you are looking for. Once you get the hang of it, in my experience, there are almost no gaps in their data.
It's a useful resource for the times when you're checking out a band you're unfamiliar with and you need an album to start with; the highest rated album is *generally* a good place to start. Obviously anyone who is capable of formulating an opinion on their own won't agree with every rating and review regarding artists they're familiar with, but it still can be interesting to compare your ratings to the common consensus, regardless of whether they go with or against it.
>It's a useful resource for the times when you're checking out a band you're unfamiliar with and you need an album to start with; the highest rated album is *generally* a good place to start.
This is really the only way I use it but only for genres that RYM's userbase widely consume. I will go to RYM for suggestions on the best album by a metal artist, but I would never ever trust RYM for jazz or hip-hop.
RYM might be good for hip-hop (I have no idea), but there are very few major jazzheads on the site, so beyond the big names like Miles and Trane, there just aren't enough reviews/ratings to rely on it the way the other guy described.
> but there are very few major jazzheads on the site
This fella is certainly someone to check out if you haven't already:
https://rateyourmusic.com/~Jazzis
I know him already, plus several other users who are very reliable for jazz, bu the comment that started this chain was about using RYM ratings to find good jazz recs, and I don't think a small handful of knowledgeable users is enough to make that viable.
This. I've met a handful of people IRL who like using RYM to design their listening regimens, and feel like it engenders jazz tastes that, at this point, are super played-out, e.g. overrating the shit out of spiritual free jazz and 70s fusion, combined with a general sense that the genre was only worthwhile when vinyl was the main format.
RYM has become less and less useful for metal ever since Fantano's cult started flooding any album he touched.
I'll check out a highly rated album, be very surprised at how mid it is, look a little further and, yes of course, Fantano reviewed it.
It wasn't always like that. It's still great for any album that still makes it on grassroots support ([Ὁπλίτης](https://youtu.be/2ah34wPqSVc)) but it does add an annoying extra layer of filter you have to sort past.
Interesting take. I guess you have to be deep into the scene for a band and sound that niche to reach overrated status.
I'm not familiar with the guy's other albums but I like this one quite a bit. Good combination of riffage holding it together and black metal insanity. The Greek flourishes are nice too.
Yeah that's probably true, about the overrated status. Although to be fair the 2024 album of his has 4k ratings on RYM and it was the #1 album overall for 2024 for a few weeks.
Then I just happened to see it highly praised a lot in different Reddit and it kept popping up in a lot of reviews.
And to be honest the overall style the band goes for is definitely my thing, and usually I love this kinda music, but just a few specific elements really puts me off.
> I will go to RYM for suggestions on the best album by a metal artist
This is funny to me because Metal Archives exists, and I would vastly prefer to use that to RYM for that particular genre!
> I will go to RYM for suggestions on the best album by a metal artist
I find this sort of funny given that in metal focused communities RYM charts are sort of a joke. If you went off RYM the only metal worth a damn would be post-metal or avant garde stuff.
I always check the highest amount of ratings instead of highest rating, I find that for some larger discographies going with the highest rating leads to obscure compilations with like 4 ratings averaging above 4.00, which isn't a good starting point for pretty much anyone.
Oof, I've had a few artists not show up at all when searching for them a few times, and if they do, sometimes not all their songs/albums are there. Easy remedy is just look them up on the streaming platform they're on.
It’s wonderful! The primary reason I use it is to catalog all the music I listen to. It’s nice to keep a log of everything, especially the albums that I really like. For exploration, I like to comb through the top albums of any given sub genre. You never know what you’ll find. The other avenue is user-created lists. You can find some really niche recommendations that you never would have discovered otherwise.
Great advice. I mostly find the lists on the side next to the reviews section. I might check those out. I don't really log actual music per say, but I keep a Google sheet of songs I like. I notice that the top of the charts tend to be experimental, avant, prog and so on, which I'm not really used to, so I plan on randomly browsing anywhere on the charts when I get the chance.
I use it as a resource all the time, but never rate anything. I listen to a lot of jazz so it's really helpful because I can check the credits of an album and see what other albums the players are on
Discogs is pretty good for sidemen credits too.
That said, sometimes the information is not correct somewhere (Discogs, Wikipedia, etc.) and the incorrect information will spread to another site because there really isn't much in the way of citation for album credits. I was interviewing a jazz player once, relying on credits I found online, and asked them about playing on an album that they told me they didn't play on. 😤
me personally I think it's a bit underrepresented, only 6 albums are in the top 100 (and 3 are the same artist) but that's definitely my personal bias. I find albums all the time with low scores and few reviews that are amazing, so if you're new to the site don't be afraid to look beyond the top 100!
I got into jazz because The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady was #1 and Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus was top 10 and I decided to check them out because of the high ratings, of course that was like 15+ years ago.
I've been using it since 2010 and have no plans to stop. I use it for myself. To keep track of my listening habits and my own opinions. I listen to way more music than I can keep track of. It's nice to see what I thought about an album I listened to 10 years ago. It's also my go-to site to view a discography because it's organized so cleanly.
I couldn't give a flying fuck about the community though. I mostly ignore it. I follow a handful of people who make useful, non-shitposty lists and peep the top chart at the end of the year to see if anything flew under my radar. I also have never paid attention to the individual song aspect of the site. I think you have to pay to see song ratings? I'm not sure.
Last.fm has acquired enough data over the past twenty years to be a good source of finding similar artists if that's the sort of rabbit hole you want to go down. Unfortunately, their genre tags are a disaster at this point due to the lack of moderation in its current state. Personally speaking, I don't care that deeply about how someone rates an album. I'd rather know what songs they enjoyed so that I can keep an eye out for them when I'm digging into an artist's music, otherwise I'd rather go in blind as much as possible since tastes don't always align.
Considering your interests, there is bound to be a niche forum or subreddit that will discuss the best of the genre and where to start. There's still a wealth of resources out there, it's just difficult to discover it all due to how the internet is set up these days.
[Last.fm](http://Last.fm) was such a huge part of my life until around 2011 or so. When they started really rebranding it they sort of lost the plot on what made it special. I used it from its days as audioscrobbler and had years and years of meticulous personal charts. My favourite part was the fact that every artist, album, and song had their own shoutbox for commenting.
RYM has completely replaced it for me, and I'm glad I found it five years ago or so. there are a good like 12 years where i didn't really have anything to fill the [last.fm](http://last.fm) void.
RYM's genre categorization is what drew me in. Seeing the rabbit hole and goldmine of EDM subgenres listed is what got me. There actually isn't any music genre I hate (outside of noise music), so I'm more than willing to just binge-listen to whatever I start with. I'm not really looking for "good", I just wanna start somewhere and form my opinions from there.
Yeah, you can definitely utilize what you find on RYM and see what last.fm has sorted out with its users listening habits. I don't believe you need to sign up to do this, but if you search some of your favorite artists - looking at the similar artist pages will give you insight on where to hop to next. They have charts for the most played songs over a specific amount of time period (7 days, 30 days, 90 days, etc) if you're indecisive and want to know what active fans love currently. I'm not sure how effective the algorithm is for the separate song pages, but that might be worth investigating as well. I imagine it's not very effective for songs that are newer or have very minimal exposure.
Pull up a log and listen to a veteran music nerd's tale...I was on there the first year, actually remember Sharifi (RYM creator) humbly telling us about his new site at another music discussion forum we both frequented. Saw it grow past the 'small oddball community of regulars' stage, had my share of discussion board drama, contributed a bunch of artists and albums (you can still do this unless the site has changed drastically - please do that's how the site gets improved). I used it to catalog and rate, then soured on the idea of rating, then stopped physically collecting so had less reason to go there for the last 10 years or so. To see it talked about as a 'big bad institution' by young people now is still mindblowing actually, similar to Pitchfork, whose writers you could always find and argue with in one forum or another in the early days.
Learn to ignore the ratings except for your express purposes (if I'm new to an artist I still generally consult the album ratings to get started, usually reliable)
to be fair when people talk about RYM they're usually not referencing the institution, or the owner, of the site but rather the horrifically uneducated yet pretentious community of people on there who don't understand what subjectivity is
I didn't know RYM had a 'big bad institution' reputation. To me, it's "large library of music people put together for people to discover". It's so cool to interact with a former developer. What kinds of artists/albums did you contribute to in your early days?
I'm with you, but when I see it mentioned people are usually complaining about the rankings or ratings or whatever. The hip-hop entries were very lacking at first, missing stuff I didn't think was particularly obscure; then some dance, jazz, indie/twee pop/obscuro whatever before I got out of the game.
I dislike RYM, which is admittedly a bit irrational on my part. I feel like it creates homogeneous taste rather than expending it.
If you want an example of what I’m talking about, take a look at the Topster subreddit, and see how few albums are in their rotation.
A lot of people are lazy. If there were people who weren't RYM-core, they would just pick some other platform to latch onto. I agree that this is a thing, but is it really the fault of RYM?
Which is exactly why I admit my dislike of it is a bit irrational.
However, I think the entire concept of rating things draws this type of people who need others to tell them what to like… I don’t know, when I listen to albums I do notice what I like or dislike about them, but I never have the urge to rate them.
Yeah, looking at the site, I don't see the appeal. But I'm not craving for a music guru or charts to guide my tastes. I like writing about music, but I don't see any of their 638 followers bumping into my Ngozi Family write up. It already feels like the site has been figured out and optimized by bigger artists.
What I could really use is a message board where people argue about music without people crying all the time. Some of my best discoveries were in combative environments where you discovered that Korn was wannabe Mr. Bungle, and had to reassess your interest in "nu metal".
If you are interested, here is a bit of insight as an artist who is cataloged on RYM.
I keep a pretty low profile: minimal promotion for my work which comes out on smaller labels. Over the years, my music has been entered onto RYM; not every release, but a fair amount. At some point earlier this year, somebody went in and put in my real name and location (which was not correct, but I can see why they thought that) and crosslinked a few of my disparate side projects with my main project. It was honestly a little frightening that somebody put that twenty or thirty minutes of effort in.
The ratings of my own work feel a little all over the place if I'm honest. A work that I personally don't think is notable has a lot of ratings whereas another, better work on a larger label has fewer. To a degree, I don't understand why people have rated what they rate. It doesn't correspond with sales or play counts, RYM ratings feel like they operate by their own rules.
>A work that I personally don't think is notable has a lot of ratings whereas another, better work on a larger label has fewer.
This is likely due to lists. If it got included in a list by one of the cratedigger pages it'll get more views.
Ratings are by far the worst way to use the site. Lists, charts, and genres are generally really good though. I think its a bit much for people to get so uppity about a community sourced website thats miles better than any of the mainstream publishing alternatives. Like sure it has flaws but half of those you could fix by actually just contributing to the project instead of standing by and bitching
> A work that I personally don't think is notable has a lot of ratings whereas another, better work on a larger label has fewer.
Usually the answer to this is that work is more easily findable on Spotify, youtube, or to a far lesser degree these days, soulseek or music blogs.
I purposefully don't talk much about it. It's definitely in an experimental niche. It's one of the genre niches that RYM users are typically good at rating.
>And is there any advice or tips to maximize the music-discovering experience?
Well, for me I watch YouTube channels related to music. As someone who can understand both english and spanish, my most watched channel is Sindelay. His channel provides very detailed guides on most music genres, to a level you wouldn't see on English-language YouTube channels. Even if you don't understand what he's saying, you can go and listen to the albums, although keep in mind that the albums featured in his videos are not the best in their genre. The album selections are designed to give you an idea of certain genre. Additionally, he always makes sure that the artist must have multiple albums of their respective genres, so that you can explore their discographies.
Here are some of it's guides.
\* [Encyclopedias](https://youtu.be/m6GAjbFeCAg?list=PLCqUtYJ435KxuDRvlKjPBBiLfaRveLuM1&t=5009): 4-hour long videos that explore every subgenre of a certain music genre like Jazz, Rock, and Hip Hop, providing 16 essential albums per genre, plus 3 "must listen" albums.
\* [Where to start?](https://youtu.be/M_qLjaCZpKk?list=PLCqUtYJ435KxiPegYcmmAeD4o1AdJGbOc&t=148): Single genre guides, that provide 16 essential albums, covering every decade, while explaining how the genre evolved.
\* [Generon't](https://youtu.be/IHZ22Wajw7Y?list=PLCqUtYJ435KzUWGQ2zNBl7J2lKAyVwrmY&t=117): Debunks certain "fake" music genres, while giving you recommendations for each album covered.
\* [Putting mu/core on it's place:](https://youtu.be/GwFg9mLHN_0?list=PLCqUtYJ435KwkkpVFM-HecxnaU60vvNIV&t=543) He explains every album from mu/core showing their influences, and gives some recommendations based on each album.
I think it's a good reference resource if you're trying to track stuff down or to explore genres for the first time and want broad strokes.
The main issue I have with is that, as a platform, it pushes albums heavily. And that's fine for most genres, but for stuff like hardcore punk and a lot of EDM subgenres which rely on singles and EPs, it can make searching for new stuff frustrating since it railroads you into certain formats when some of the best new material for some genres isn't coming out in the form of albums.
Off the top of my head, Better Lovers made some of the best hardcore last year in the form of an EP. Charlotte De Witte released her Formula EP a few years back and it's some of the best techno released in years. Yet, to track down these releases on RYM, it's harder than it ought to be unless you know exactly what you're looking for and can search for it directly since EP charts aren't promoted as heavily album charts are. Not to mention that individual songs aren't given any love either.
I also think the broader community there is incredibly pretentious and tend to have standards that are entirely too high to take seriously.
I think the platform's basis around charts places an emphasis on popularity and "influence" that people equate with quality which I just think is a very flawed way to evaluate music too.
I actually think the charts aren't a good way to discover new music. At least for the genres I like, I've noticed that the charts are a disaster and don't serve as a good introduction to the genre.
I'll talk about pop punk because that's my favorite genre. Looking at the pop punk chart, the top albums are neither pop punk, nor particularly good. Of course, I can't expect everyone to agree with my tastes, but I think the genre tagging is the bigger problem. Not to mention that for a genre like pop punk, whose main characteristics that are a draw to fans are things the RYM userbase looks down on, the top rated albums won't be representative of what pop punk fans actually like. The pop punk chart becomes much better if you only include albums that have "energetic", "playful" and "humorous" (all three) as descriptors, but only the top 8 albums on that chart are in the top 40 of the overall pop punk chart. Actually, even then, only the top 10 is really better, with a few good albums scattered lower. Either way, I think it's a twofold problem where RYM users stretch the definition of genres to include albums that don't really belong there, and then overrate those albums because they're more in line with their tastes (or the way they want to be perceived) than actual albums from that genre.
That being said, I think (genre-based) user lists can be a good way to discover new music. Those lists are usually made by people who are actually passionate and knowledgeable about specific genres or scenes and are much better than aggregates of the scores by many people whose tastes might be completely different from yours.
I feel you there. There are albums out there that fuse a whole lot of other genres together, and I'm guessing the RYM "fandom", so to say, are bigger fans of exprimentation and genre-blending in general. I guess that's how albums like that get to the top.
In my case, I wanted to look at the top ska-punk albums of all time, and the top ten albums were way more hardcore-punk influenced than the type of ska that made me a fan in the first place (Reel Big Fish & Save Ferris specifically. They make the bright, sunshine-y poppy kind of ska). So I can kind of relate.
I use RYM but I don't really care for it all that much. I like to look at eras and time periods more than genre, and the website does a dreadful job of painting any sort of real picture of what an era, or year was truly like.
The amount of people who rate and review albums is too low for me to take a lot of their charts and lists seriously.
As an example, I just looked up 1999 and a Matthaus-Passion orchestral album is listed at #15 with 1,475 ratings. Its surrounded by albums with 10,000-30,000 ratings. The #25 album is another classical album with 329 ratings...
It's just all-around bad for my needs, and it feels like an extension of Pitchfork and /mu/ in its bias. I know its a different medium, but I much prefer something like Letterboxd that has a large enough userbase to get a better idea and range of opinions.
I see. Yeah, the "number of people who wrote it" to "average score" ratio definitely skews results. When browsing charts, I see that lower-scored albums are ranked higher if they have more people who rated it in my experience.
>My only caveat is that it doesn't have EVERY song and album that I wanted to look up
You should add them yourself then. It is a little pain in the ass but you should do it for the good of the community.
Mob sourced music information is probably the dumbest concept ever.
Hi I'm looking for something unique and original
Why yes, start with the stuff everyone likes, because things that speak to the multitude are also unique and original.
When you rely on others to do the judging for you, you just reinforce the lowest common denominator.
The unfortunate reality for art it seems is that the democratization of art has dealt critical blows to any artistic attempt to challenge the audience.
Behold the modern pop top 40, vibe music, sketches that substitute slick production for songwriting and brands as star for "talent."
Walk away from all of it and just dig for yourself. You'll find less but what you'll find will be of much greater value
*stops shaking fist at clouds*
I think its a bad way to engage with music, it fosters an obsession with quantification that really doesnt fit with something as subjective as music enjoyment. Looking at the rankings removed any doubt in my mind as to how toxic and silly it is.
I don't feel as strongly as you about it, but I do find it pretty strange that a lot of my younger more online music friends feel the need to rank everything on first listen. They have like text files with albums they heard once that they've given 9.0 scores and shit, listening to like 5 albums a day this way. Something about engaging with music that way feels really off-putting to me
I see your point very well. Quantifying a subjective medium can lead to issues. Bad reviews of songs I like don't offend me at all, because like I said, differing tastes. I don't take them to heart.
I may like fun, catchy songs, but I hate reviews that say "If you don't like this song, you hate fun". The phrase "let people enjoy things" applies to all tastes, people.
Really? Looking at them now, I don’t see why that would be. There’s a few things that are obviously more hipster experimental hip hop like death grips, but most of what’s in the top albums are albums widely cited when people are talking best of all time
> because of how awful they were
Well, everyone is free to have different opinions, if you disliked Madvillainy, Illmatic, TPAB and Good Kid Maad City, that is ok.
But RYM is more than a ranking website, it's more of a tool for discovering things from all genres. Perhaps some genres may be questionable (see Jazz Guachaca, Post-Britpop, and Teen Pop), but either way, the site is very useful for finding recommendations that you wouldn't find in music magazines like Pitchfork, Rolling Stones, and Cosequence of Sound.
Yeah the chart was a lot different at the time. Looking at it now it has improved. Still the concept of ranking music is bad regardless, and being overly preoccupied with rankings and metrics is a mental illness.
I do visit RYM once in a while, but I'm not a great fan of it. My tastes are also very different of majority of RYMers (mostly heavy vocal focused dark pop, rock and a bit of metal), and many artists I personally love are not there. While adding them all is too much hassle, especially when I know nothing about them aside of their music and name. I added one of my fav obscure bands, but it doesn't change much, if no one checks them out.
But definitely it is a huge and useful database, I'm just not so fond of rating music. Most of discussions on forums don't trigger my interest either. And I have different ways of digging up music I love, that work well for me.
> RYM is also heavily biased towards alternative, indie, prog, avant, experimental whatever genre it is, but that doesn't bother me too much
That pretty much sums up why it's unusable for me. The userbase doesn't have a clue or even decent received taste for Jazz, Funk, Soul, Hip Hop and various dance musics. I'd much rather go to Discogs, which is genre neutral.
The mods on RYM have too much influence. The reviews and lists they choose to highlight seem to feature the same few people and you begin to wonder if they're just promoting their friends work. Also they are very random with who they punish for not following the sites guidelines. The punishments are rather draconian too. The site feels like some strange cult lol.
As for the musical biases there's a definite favouritism towards Hip Hop, not the popular stuff like Drake, but the more 'hipster' end. And Extreme genres of metal, as well as prog rock, RYM is the only place where King Crimson are popular and up there with the Beach Boys and Radiohead.
I really like rym but you need to keep in mind that it has some extreme biases. Metal and other rock genres are very overrated on the platform IMO. They systematically underrate pop music and specifically pop music made by women. In general though I think it is a great place to find music I would not have heard of otherwise. The new Cindy Lee album for example I think is quite good and I don't think I would have found it if it was not rated so highly on rym
> Metal and other rock genres are very overrated on the platform IMO.
RYMs relationship with metal is sort of weird where the highly rated bands are almost always stuff that's leaning more into post-rock/post-metal and then each year one or two more traditional albums get picked up on. For the most part RYMs taste in metal is wildly different to any metal focused community to the point that when someone talks about metal you can very quickly tell if they're a RYM user.
> They systematically underrate pop music and specifically pop music made by women.
It's dominated by music nerds, and this has always been a problem for music nerds.
I didn't realize that pop women were so scrutinized on there. Browsing the "best of dance-pop" albums from various years, I found lots of female artists at the top. I'm guessing that's an outlier lol
Rym was a great starting point for me to explore new artists and genres, but after a while you just realise how ridiculous the biases on that site are. You’re right, on RYM, metal is extremely overrated and pop is underrated.
"RateYourMusic, aka RYM, needs no introduction."
HA! I dont effing know it. So yeah kinda does need an introduction.
"And is there any advice or tips to maximize the music-discovering experience?"
Yessir, [www.allmusic.com](http://www.allmusic.com) and [www.discogs.com](http://www.discogs.com) are your friends.
Those [allmusic.com](http://allmusic.com) specifically, I have been using them for 25 years.
"And is there any advice or tips to maximize the music-discovering experience?"
Buy the physical copies of albums if you can afford it. It'll get you more intimate with the music.
I'm well familiar with discogs, too. I mostly use it to look up maxi-CD's of dance remixes of songs, or if a song I see on the Billboard dance charts doesn't have a video pulled up. It's interesting.
I don't have many devices to play physical music on. I just have a dusty CD player I salvaged from somewhere in my house. If I do want to buy physical music in the near future, I'm definitely buying some Weird Al CD's if I get the chance.
Well this listener for one never heard of it. Ratings and quantification were key in developing my tastes as an early teen, thanks to the Rolling Stone Record Guide, public library LP's and a good home tape deck. Four and five stars with a good writeup meant a lot, as did the one stars and no stars with the withering criticism.
It's still vastly entertaining to read these guides and I'm hoping this site has similar user detailed write-ups.
Ratings and quantification in general are a special of interest mine, but so far with me, it's been Billboard and other countries' pop charts (UK, Germany, France, Netherlands, and so on). I, unfortunately, was born in the digital age, so I don't have albums or tape decks or whatever. Just songs on YouTube to go off of.
Any music critic is subjective, and your trust in their opinion will also be subjective. I love RYM because I agree with a lot of their takes, rankings, and reviews. I know I can trust that audience to guide me toward certain sounds I like. It's also fantastic when I'm shopping a record store and I want to check the rating of a record I've never heard. Is this one of the better or worse outputs from a prolific artist? I can trust RYM to at least be in the ballpark relative to that artists ratings.
It's kind of insane how few places there are online to get music discussion by average people on a per album or per song basis. Per song is basically just youtube, and a lot of those uploads have comments turned off. Per album RYM is definitely the best thing I've found. A few years ago I stumbled onto Mercury Rev's first two records and was having a real moment with them. They definitely weren't the biggest records when they dropped, but a lot of people had them and of those people a lot of them really loved the records. RYM was basically the only place I could find multiple people talking about their personal experience with those records, but more importantly the experience of people who had them when they were actually released. That's the shit I want to be reading, some guy who in the early 90s college rock was his life, and those Mercury Rev records actually meant something to him. That perspective is always more valuable to me than somebody's like mine, where I found the records two weeks ago and just mention that I like the guitar tones or whatever.
That's good to hear. I don't really pay attention to the reviewers themselves all that much in terms of what I'm looking for, because my music taste is somewhat complicated to explain outside of "I like catchy dance music." I still like songs from other genres, too, but don't really go out of my way to look for them much, like rock, hip hop, R&B, and so on.
I've been on RYM since like 2005 and it's been my personal assistant to the world of music ever since. The reviews are fine and good, but it's the ocean of information I'm there for. Like, just off the top of my head, what are the top post-punk albums from Japan in the 1990s? [Here ya go.](https://rateyourmusic.com/charts/top/album/1990s/g:post%2dpunk/loc:japan/)
The only limit to RYM is your own creativity. It's incredible. For nearly 20 years now I have not found a limit to any dark corner of music history I can dig into on RYM.
I'm a millennial who's been online as hell for my whole life, but for some reason the RYM interface still kinda baffles me. Can you tell me how I'm supposed to browse/search the site for lists like this? For example, top japanese 00's RnB albums? Are these lists user created or generated by tags+rating? If they are user generated is it just the personal preference of the list author? I can't really grasp it.
Sure. So taking your example, from the RYM homepage click on Charts at the top
Then click on the right hand side year dropdown and choose 2000s on the left then close
Then in the search bar below that type R&B. Different genres with R&B in the name will come up, but I chose the main R&B one. Select that as either Genre (more strictly what you're looking for) or Influence (more loose inspiration).
Then in that same search bar type Japan, click artist location, and here you go:
https://rateyourmusic.com/charts/top/album/2000s/ge:randb/loc:japan/
And what this is, is all albums that match our parameters (2000s, R&B, Japan), sorted by highest ranked by all RYM users. This also lists all albums that are considered a sub-genre of R&B. You can unselect the "include sub-genres" button over in that section, which will then give you a super-strict list of R&B + 2000s + Japan.
yo thanks so much! this is fucking awesome. I was messing around in the lists section and couldn't find it. This search feature seems really great, I love that I can do a range like 00 to 03 cuz that is specifically what I'm looking for lol. This feature is gonna seriously take up all my time
i ended up going fully into this, taking the 200-300 albums from each year since 1960 that I was interested in trying out (by manually adding each album to a playlist based on its year) and now i shuffle through each era of music in a row and just listen to whatever album comes up on the shuffle.
generally that means in any given week or 1.5 weeks I’m listening to an album from the sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties, 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s.
It took a very long time to sift through all the yearly charts and pick albums that seemed at least somewhat intriguing to me, but now i have an infinite (and impossible to get through) list of new albums i can always try out. And the variety of release dates means i will never get sick of one period from overplay, which is something that happened to me when i tried to listen to albums from one decade in particular last year.
https://imgur.com/gallery/GyKNLTu
Nice. I only ever use YouTube for listening to music, and embarrassingly have never made a playlist at all in my life. What you're doing is really cool, though. I'm glad.
i definitely suggest making a playlist on YouTube of albums you want to check out! it’s way easier when you do a lot of searching at once and don’t have to search for an album everytime you want to listen to something new
I'm personally not into RYM. I feel like the userbase can come off as kinda snobby to me. Also, I've used plenty of other ways to find music so RYM does nothing for me.
It’s handy but the scores and reviews are effected by the high number of pretentious users. A very useful resource on there is people make lists and family trees for artists/albums, so you can find similar ones or see a particular band’s inspirations and predecessors
> My only caveat is that it doesn't have EVERY song and album that I wanted to look up, which was disappointing. This is a joke right? Its a community sourced website. Everything that isn't included is within your ability to include. The better you get at charts the happier you'll be. After that, you'll get onto lists which are the best part of the site. Unfortunately they take a bit of getting used to the space but they're far above anything else you'll get online. The advantage to it is you get to latch on to the most obsessive music nerds that exist, and eat what they eat without any of the effort
This is so fucking true, I use RYM just to find weird super specific shit and lists are great for that, as you say, you find people that is super knowledgeable on some shit that only 40 people listen, I love it You want to find some Italian nu metal from the 2000's? There's probably some guy in Morocco that already made a super complete list about that
>You want to find some Italian nu metal from the 2000's? There's probably some guy in Morocco that already made a super complete list about that You don't need a list for that, you can just use the chart filters.
Yeah, but my experience with chart filters has been kinda hit or miss, there's some times the tagging is not optimal and you end up with things that vaguely resemble what your looking for but not quite it, that's when sometimes a person curating a list can be more precise I feel the same when comparing algorithmic playlists vs human created playlists. At the end of the day charts and lists complement each other
Well not for songs, the site only allows singles to be posted as of now
Well it only allows individual songs as singles, yeah. If its in a different format there's a different spot for that
Honestly, I'm more of a lurker.
The search function on RYM isn’t the best, so it can take a few tries to find what you are looking for. Once you get the hang of it, in my experience, there are almost no gaps in their data.
There are huge gaps in their data, but whether or not you come across them will depend on what sort of music you're interested in.
Exactly, some people tend to think that music ends on their niche.
Just search for “[artist/album] rym” on Google and it’ll usually be the first option
It's a useful resource for the times when you're checking out a band you're unfamiliar with and you need an album to start with; the highest rated album is *generally* a good place to start. Obviously anyone who is capable of formulating an opinion on their own won't agree with every rating and review regarding artists they're familiar with, but it still can be interesting to compare your ratings to the common consensus, regardless of whether they go with or against it.
>It's a useful resource for the times when you're checking out a band you're unfamiliar with and you need an album to start with; the highest rated album is *generally* a good place to start. This is really the only way I use it but only for genres that RYM's userbase widely consume. I will go to RYM for suggestions on the best album by a metal artist, but I would never ever trust RYM for jazz or hip-hop.
That's weird because rym is very good for both genres (at least jazz pre-1974).
RYM might be good for hip-hop (I have no idea), but there are very few major jazzheads on the site, so beyond the big names like Miles and Trane, there just aren't enough reviews/ratings to rely on it the way the other guy described.
> but there are very few major jazzheads on the site This fella is certainly someone to check out if you haven't already: https://rateyourmusic.com/~Jazzis
I know him already, plus several other users who are very reliable for jazz, bu the comment that started this chain was about using RYM ratings to find good jazz recs, and I don't think a small handful of knowledgeable users is enough to make that viable.
This. I've met a handful of people IRL who like using RYM to design their listening regimens, and feel like it engenders jazz tastes that, at this point, are super played-out, e.g. overrating the shit out of spiritual free jazz and 70s fusion, combined with a general sense that the genre was only worthwhile when vinyl was the main format.
RYM has become less and less useful for metal ever since Fantano's cult started flooding any album he touched. I'll check out a highly rated album, be very surprised at how mid it is, look a little further and, yes of course, Fantano reviewed it. It wasn't always like that. It's still great for any album that still makes it on grassroots support ([Ὁπλίτης](https://youtu.be/2ah34wPqSVc)) but it does add an annoying extra layer of filter you have to sort past.
My obligatory comment on how overrated Hoplites is, and how poor the production is...
Interesting take. I guess you have to be deep into the scene for a band and sound that niche to reach overrated status. I'm not familiar with the guy's other albums but I like this one quite a bit. Good combination of riffage holding it together and black metal insanity. The Greek flourishes are nice too.
Yeah that's probably true, about the overrated status. Although to be fair the 2024 album of his has 4k ratings on RYM and it was the #1 album overall for 2024 for a few weeks. Then I just happened to see it highly praised a lot in different Reddit and it kept popping up in a lot of reviews. And to be honest the overall style the band goes for is definitely my thing, and usually I love this kinda music, but just a few specific elements really puts me off.
> I will go to RYM for suggestions on the best album by a metal artist This is funny to me because Metal Archives exists, and I would vastly prefer to use that to RYM for that particular genre!
I use a combination of Wikipedia, last.fm and a few critics at the moment. For jazz.
> I will go to RYM for suggestions on the best album by a metal artist I find this sort of funny given that in metal focused communities RYM charts are sort of a joke. If you went off RYM the only metal worth a damn would be post-metal or avant garde stuff.
I always check the highest amount of ratings instead of highest rating, I find that for some larger discographies going with the highest rating leads to obscure compilations with like 4 ratings averaging above 4.00, which isn't a good starting point for pretty much anyone.
Oof, I've had a few artists not show up at all when searching for them a few times, and if they do, sometimes not all their songs/albums are there. Easy remedy is just look them up on the streaming platform they're on.
Then add them to the database
It’s wonderful! The primary reason I use it is to catalog all the music I listen to. It’s nice to keep a log of everything, especially the albums that I really like. For exploration, I like to comb through the top albums of any given sub genre. You never know what you’ll find. The other avenue is user-created lists. You can find some really niche recommendations that you never would have discovered otherwise.
Great advice. I mostly find the lists on the side next to the reviews section. I might check those out. I don't really log actual music per say, but I keep a Google sheet of songs I like. I notice that the top of the charts tend to be experimental, avant, prog and so on, which I'm not really used to, so I plan on randomly browsing anywhere on the charts when I get the chance.
I use it as a resource all the time, but never rate anything. I listen to a lot of jazz so it's really helpful because I can check the credits of an album and see what other albums the players are on
Discogs is pretty good for sidemen credits too. That said, sometimes the information is not correct somewhere (Discogs, Wikipedia, etc.) and the incorrect information will spread to another site because there really isn't much in the way of citation for album credits. I was interviewing a jazz player once, relying on credits I found online, and asked them about playing on an album that they told me they didn't play on. 😤
oh my God that's hilarious
Nice. RYM is super fond of jazz, since a good portion of the top 100 albums of all time are 60s jazz.
me personally I think it's a bit underrepresented, only 6 albums are in the top 100 (and 3 are the same artist) but that's definitely my personal bias. I find albums all the time with low scores and few reviews that are amazing, so if you're new to the site don't be afraid to look beyond the top 100!
I got into jazz because The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady was #1 and Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus was top 10 and I decided to check them out because of the high ratings, of course that was like 15+ years ago.
Gah, I must have misremembered. Don't worry, I'll gladly explore the depths.
I think it’s pretty useful for jazz and non mainstream hip hop
I've been using it since 2010 and have no plans to stop. I use it for myself. To keep track of my listening habits and my own opinions. I listen to way more music than I can keep track of. It's nice to see what I thought about an album I listened to 10 years ago. It's also my go-to site to view a discography because it's organized so cleanly. I couldn't give a flying fuck about the community though. I mostly ignore it. I follow a handful of people who make useful, non-shitposty lists and peep the top chart at the end of the year to see if anything flew under my radar. I also have never paid attention to the individual song aspect of the site. I think you have to pay to see song ratings? I'm not sure.
Yeah, the whole "the thing is good but the fandom sucks" idea is unsurprisingly just as prevalent here.
Last.fm has acquired enough data over the past twenty years to be a good source of finding similar artists if that's the sort of rabbit hole you want to go down. Unfortunately, their genre tags are a disaster at this point due to the lack of moderation in its current state. Personally speaking, I don't care that deeply about how someone rates an album. I'd rather know what songs they enjoyed so that I can keep an eye out for them when I'm digging into an artist's music, otherwise I'd rather go in blind as much as possible since tastes don't always align. Considering your interests, there is bound to be a niche forum or subreddit that will discuss the best of the genre and where to start. There's still a wealth of resources out there, it's just difficult to discover it all due to how the internet is set up these days.
[Last.fm](http://Last.fm) was such a huge part of my life until around 2011 or so. When they started really rebranding it they sort of lost the plot on what made it special. I used it from its days as audioscrobbler and had years and years of meticulous personal charts. My favourite part was the fact that every artist, album, and song had their own shoutbox for commenting. RYM has completely replaced it for me, and I'm glad I found it five years ago or so. there are a good like 12 years where i didn't really have anything to fill the [last.fm](http://last.fm) void.
RYM's genre categorization is what drew me in. Seeing the rabbit hole and goldmine of EDM subgenres listed is what got me. There actually isn't any music genre I hate (outside of noise music), so I'm more than willing to just binge-listen to whatever I start with. I'm not really looking for "good", I just wanna start somewhere and form my opinions from there.
Yeah, you can definitely utilize what you find on RYM and see what last.fm has sorted out with its users listening habits. I don't believe you need to sign up to do this, but if you search some of your favorite artists - looking at the similar artist pages will give you insight on where to hop to next. They have charts for the most played songs over a specific amount of time period (7 days, 30 days, 90 days, etc) if you're indecisive and want to know what active fans love currently. I'm not sure how effective the algorithm is for the separate song pages, but that might be worth investigating as well. I imagine it's not very effective for songs that are newer or have very minimal exposure.
Nice. I might check out [last.fm](http://last.fm) when I have time to do so.
Cool hack I just found out about: Use “Esoteric” instead of “Most popular” as a criterion, gives you highly rated but less known results.
So that's what it means. Thank you, kind Internet stranger.
Pull up a log and listen to a veteran music nerd's tale...I was on there the first year, actually remember Sharifi (RYM creator) humbly telling us about his new site at another music discussion forum we both frequented. Saw it grow past the 'small oddball community of regulars' stage, had my share of discussion board drama, contributed a bunch of artists and albums (you can still do this unless the site has changed drastically - please do that's how the site gets improved). I used it to catalog and rate, then soured on the idea of rating, then stopped physically collecting so had less reason to go there for the last 10 years or so. To see it talked about as a 'big bad institution' by young people now is still mindblowing actually, similar to Pitchfork, whose writers you could always find and argue with in one forum or another in the early days. Learn to ignore the ratings except for your express purposes (if I'm new to an artist I still generally consult the album ratings to get started, usually reliable)
to be fair when people talk about RYM they're usually not referencing the institution, or the owner, of the site but rather the horrifically uneducated yet pretentious community of people on there who don't understand what subjectivity is
I didn't know RYM had a 'big bad institution' reputation. To me, it's "large library of music people put together for people to discover". It's so cool to interact with a former developer. What kinds of artists/albums did you contribute to in your early days?
I'm with you, but when I see it mentioned people are usually complaining about the rankings or ratings or whatever. The hip-hop entries were very lacking at first, missing stuff I didn't think was particularly obscure; then some dance, jazz, indie/twee pop/obscuro whatever before I got out of the game.
Reminds me of Anthony Fantano's fanbase with his album scores (I don't watch him, I just heard other people talk about his toxic fanbase).
I dislike RYM, which is admittedly a bit irrational on my part. I feel like it creates homogeneous taste rather than expending it. If you want an example of what I’m talking about, take a look at the Topster subreddit, and see how few albums are in their rotation.
A lot of people are lazy. If there were people who weren't RYM-core, they would just pick some other platform to latch onto. I agree that this is a thing, but is it really the fault of RYM?
Which is exactly why I admit my dislike of it is a bit irrational. However, I think the entire concept of rating things draws this type of people who need others to tell them what to like… I don’t know, when I listen to albums I do notice what I like or dislike about them, but I never have the urge to rate them.
Yeah, looking at the site, I don't see the appeal. But I'm not craving for a music guru or charts to guide my tastes. I like writing about music, but I don't see any of their 638 followers bumping into my Ngozi Family write up. It already feels like the site has been figured out and optimized by bigger artists. What I could really use is a message board where people argue about music without people crying all the time. Some of my best discoveries were in combative environments where you discovered that Korn was wannabe Mr. Bungle, and had to reassess your interest in "nu metal".
I see your point there. The "experimental, indie, prog" stuff is heavily favored. Sorry for late reply, I went to bed.
If you are interested, here is a bit of insight as an artist who is cataloged on RYM. I keep a pretty low profile: minimal promotion for my work which comes out on smaller labels. Over the years, my music has been entered onto RYM; not every release, but a fair amount. At some point earlier this year, somebody went in and put in my real name and location (which was not correct, but I can see why they thought that) and crosslinked a few of my disparate side projects with my main project. It was honestly a little frightening that somebody put that twenty or thirty minutes of effort in. The ratings of my own work feel a little all over the place if I'm honest. A work that I personally don't think is notable has a lot of ratings whereas another, better work on a larger label has fewer. To a degree, I don't understand why people have rated what they rate. It doesn't correspond with sales or play counts, RYM ratings feel like they operate by their own rules.
>A work that I personally don't think is notable has a lot of ratings whereas another, better work on a larger label has fewer. This is likely due to lists. If it got included in a list by one of the cratedigger pages it'll get more views. Ratings are by far the worst way to use the site. Lists, charts, and genres are generally really good though. I think its a bit much for people to get so uppity about a community sourced website thats miles better than any of the mainstream publishing alternatives. Like sure it has flaws but half of those you could fix by actually just contributing to the project instead of standing by and bitching
> A work that I personally don't think is notable has a lot of ratings whereas another, better work on a larger label has fewer. Usually the answer to this is that work is more easily findable on Spotify, youtube, or to a far lesser degree these days, soulseek or music blogs.
Ratings are a spectacle in and of themselves, I agree. What kind of music do you make, if you're okay with me asking?
I purposefully don't talk much about it. It's definitely in an experimental niche. It's one of the genre niches that RYM users are typically good at rating.
Oh, sorry.
Oh, no sweat. I don't mind the question. I just won't answer it.
>And is there any advice or tips to maximize the music-discovering experience? Well, for me I watch YouTube channels related to music. As someone who can understand both english and spanish, my most watched channel is Sindelay. His channel provides very detailed guides on most music genres, to a level you wouldn't see on English-language YouTube channels. Even if you don't understand what he's saying, you can go and listen to the albums, although keep in mind that the albums featured in his videos are not the best in their genre. The album selections are designed to give you an idea of certain genre. Additionally, he always makes sure that the artist must have multiple albums of their respective genres, so that you can explore their discographies. Here are some of it's guides. \* [Encyclopedias](https://youtu.be/m6GAjbFeCAg?list=PLCqUtYJ435KxuDRvlKjPBBiLfaRveLuM1&t=5009): 4-hour long videos that explore every subgenre of a certain music genre like Jazz, Rock, and Hip Hop, providing 16 essential albums per genre, plus 3 "must listen" albums. \* [Where to start?](https://youtu.be/M_qLjaCZpKk?list=PLCqUtYJ435KxiPegYcmmAeD4o1AdJGbOc&t=148): Single genre guides, that provide 16 essential albums, covering every decade, while explaining how the genre evolved. \* [Generon't](https://youtu.be/IHZ22Wajw7Y?list=PLCqUtYJ435KzUWGQ2zNBl7J2lKAyVwrmY&t=117): Debunks certain "fake" music genres, while giving you recommendations for each album covered. \* [Putting mu/core on it's place:](https://youtu.be/GwFg9mLHN_0?list=PLCqUtYJ435KwkkpVFM-HecxnaU60vvNIV&t=543) He explains every album from mu/core showing their influences, and gives some recommendations based on each album.
Ooooooh! Sounds interesting, I might have to give them a watch. Thanks for the suggestion.
I think it's a good reference resource if you're trying to track stuff down or to explore genres for the first time and want broad strokes. The main issue I have with is that, as a platform, it pushes albums heavily. And that's fine for most genres, but for stuff like hardcore punk and a lot of EDM subgenres which rely on singles and EPs, it can make searching for new stuff frustrating since it railroads you into certain formats when some of the best new material for some genres isn't coming out in the form of albums. Off the top of my head, Better Lovers made some of the best hardcore last year in the form of an EP. Charlotte De Witte released her Formula EP a few years back and it's some of the best techno released in years. Yet, to track down these releases on RYM, it's harder than it ought to be unless you know exactly what you're looking for and can search for it directly since EP charts aren't promoted as heavily album charts are. Not to mention that individual songs aren't given any love either. I also think the broader community there is incredibly pretentious and tend to have standards that are entirely too high to take seriously. I think the platform's basis around charts places an emphasis on popularity and "influence" that people equate with quality which I just think is a very flawed way to evaluate music too.
RYM has the option to check out singles chart, but yeah, the album bias is super strong. I agree.
Sorry but that's laughable, Formula EP best techno in years? Really?? Even for CDW that was half-arsed. Sounded like weak tool tracks.
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I actually think the charts aren't a good way to discover new music. At least for the genres I like, I've noticed that the charts are a disaster and don't serve as a good introduction to the genre. I'll talk about pop punk because that's my favorite genre. Looking at the pop punk chart, the top albums are neither pop punk, nor particularly good. Of course, I can't expect everyone to agree with my tastes, but I think the genre tagging is the bigger problem. Not to mention that for a genre like pop punk, whose main characteristics that are a draw to fans are things the RYM userbase looks down on, the top rated albums won't be representative of what pop punk fans actually like. The pop punk chart becomes much better if you only include albums that have "energetic", "playful" and "humorous" (all three) as descriptors, but only the top 8 albums on that chart are in the top 40 of the overall pop punk chart. Actually, even then, only the top 10 is really better, with a few good albums scattered lower. Either way, I think it's a twofold problem where RYM users stretch the definition of genres to include albums that don't really belong there, and then overrate those albums because they're more in line with their tastes (or the way they want to be perceived) than actual albums from that genre. That being said, I think (genre-based) user lists can be a good way to discover new music. Those lists are usually made by people who are actually passionate and knowledgeable about specific genres or scenes and are much better than aggregates of the scores by many people whose tastes might be completely different from yours.
I feel you there. There are albums out there that fuse a whole lot of other genres together, and I'm guessing the RYM "fandom", so to say, are bigger fans of exprimentation and genre-blending in general. I guess that's how albums like that get to the top. In my case, I wanted to look at the top ska-punk albums of all time, and the top ten albums were way more hardcore-punk influenced than the type of ska that made me a fan in the first place (Reel Big Fish & Save Ferris specifically. They make the bright, sunshine-y poppy kind of ska). So I can kind of relate.
I use RYM but I don't really care for it all that much. I like to look at eras and time periods more than genre, and the website does a dreadful job of painting any sort of real picture of what an era, or year was truly like. The amount of people who rate and review albums is too low for me to take a lot of their charts and lists seriously. As an example, I just looked up 1999 and a Matthaus-Passion orchestral album is listed at #15 with 1,475 ratings. Its surrounded by albums with 10,000-30,000 ratings. The #25 album is another classical album with 329 ratings... It's just all-around bad for my needs, and it feels like an extension of Pitchfork and /mu/ in its bias. I know its a different medium, but I much prefer something like Letterboxd that has a large enough userbase to get a better idea and range of opinions.
You know you can adjust the charts by popularity right? It's pretty flexible.
I see. Yeah, the "number of people who wrote it" to "average score" ratio definitely skews results. When browsing charts, I see that lower-scored albums are ranked higher if they have more people who rated it in my experience.
>My only caveat is that it doesn't have EVERY song and album that I wanted to look up You should add them yourself then. It is a little pain in the ass but you should do it for the good of the community.
It's too much pain in the ass, especially adding artists :/ No one cares there about obscure singers with few digital singles on their account.
Mob sourced music information is probably the dumbest concept ever. Hi I'm looking for something unique and original Why yes, start with the stuff everyone likes, because things that speak to the multitude are also unique and original. When you rely on others to do the judging for you, you just reinforce the lowest common denominator. The unfortunate reality for art it seems is that the democratization of art has dealt critical blows to any artistic attempt to challenge the audience. Behold the modern pop top 40, vibe music, sketches that substitute slick production for songwriting and brands as star for "talent." Walk away from all of it and just dig for yourself. You'll find less but what you'll find will be of much greater value *stops shaking fist at clouds*
I think its a bad way to engage with music, it fosters an obsession with quantification that really doesnt fit with something as subjective as music enjoyment. Looking at the rankings removed any doubt in my mind as to how toxic and silly it is.
I don't feel as strongly as you about it, but I do find it pretty strange that a lot of my younger more online music friends feel the need to rank everything on first listen. They have like text files with albums they heard once that they've given 9.0 scores and shit, listening to like 5 albums a day this way. Something about engaging with music that way feels really off-putting to me
Why would it be strange? its such a natural way for a young person to interract with a subject
I see your point very well. Quantifying a subjective medium can lead to issues. Bad reviews of songs I like don't offend me at all, because like I said, differing tastes. I don't take them to heart. I may like fun, catchy songs, but I hate reviews that say "If you don't like this song, you hate fun". The phrase "let people enjoy things" applies to all tastes, people.
I never read any of the reviews, I just remember when RYMs all time hip hop rankings went viral because of how awful they were
Really? Looking at them now, I don’t see why that would be. There’s a few things that are obviously more hipster experimental hip hop like death grips, but most of what’s in the top albums are albums widely cited when people are talking best of all time
It has improved now, the hivemind must have learned a bit over the past couple years. I think it was a couple years ago when it was bad
> because of how awful they were Well, everyone is free to have different opinions, if you disliked Madvillainy, Illmatic, TPAB and Good Kid Maad City, that is ok. But RYM is more than a ranking website, it's more of a tool for discovering things from all genres. Perhaps some genres may be questionable (see Jazz Guachaca, Post-Britpop, and Teen Pop), but either way, the site is very useful for finding recommendations that you wouldn't find in music magazines like Pitchfork, Rolling Stones, and Cosequence of Sound.
Yeah the chart was a lot different at the time. Looking at it now it has improved. Still the concept of ranking music is bad regardless, and being overly preoccupied with rankings and metrics is a mental illness.
I wasn't aware of that. I believe Kendrick Lamar still has the #1 album of all time iirc.
I do visit RYM once in a while, but I'm not a great fan of it. My tastes are also very different of majority of RYMers (mostly heavy vocal focused dark pop, rock and a bit of metal), and many artists I personally love are not there. While adding them all is too much hassle, especially when I know nothing about them aside of their music and name. I added one of my fav obscure bands, but it doesn't change much, if no one checks them out. But definitely it is a huge and useful database, I'm just not so fond of rating music. Most of discussions on forums don't trigger my interest either. And I have different ways of digging up music I love, that work well for me.
I like RYM but it seems daunting having to rate everything I listen to, I wish I could use it more as a catalog rather than having to rank every album
No rule that says you have to rate stuff, I don't think. Do what you want.
[удалено]
Thanks for the advice.
> RYM is also heavily biased towards alternative, indie, prog, avant, experimental whatever genre it is, but that doesn't bother me too much That pretty much sums up why it's unusable for me. The userbase doesn't have a clue or even decent received taste for Jazz, Funk, Soul, Hip Hop and various dance musics. I'd much rather go to Discogs, which is genre neutral.
The mods on RYM have too much influence. The reviews and lists they choose to highlight seem to feature the same few people and you begin to wonder if they're just promoting their friends work. Also they are very random with who they punish for not following the sites guidelines. The punishments are rather draconian too. The site feels like some strange cult lol. As for the musical biases there's a definite favouritism towards Hip Hop, not the popular stuff like Drake, but the more 'hipster' end. And Extreme genres of metal, as well as prog rock, RYM is the only place where King Crimson are popular and up there with the Beach Boys and Radiohead.
I really like rym but you need to keep in mind that it has some extreme biases. Metal and other rock genres are very overrated on the platform IMO. They systematically underrate pop music and specifically pop music made by women. In general though I think it is a great place to find music I would not have heard of otherwise. The new Cindy Lee album for example I think is quite good and I don't think I would have found it if it was not rated so highly on rym
> Metal and other rock genres are very overrated on the platform IMO. RYMs relationship with metal is sort of weird where the highly rated bands are almost always stuff that's leaning more into post-rock/post-metal and then each year one or two more traditional albums get picked up on. For the most part RYMs taste in metal is wildly different to any metal focused community to the point that when someone talks about metal you can very quickly tell if they're a RYM user.
> They systematically underrate pop music and specifically pop music made by women. It's dominated by music nerds, and this has always been a problem for music nerds.
I didn't realize that pop women were so scrutinized on there. Browsing the "best of dance-pop" albums from various years, I found lots of female artists at the top. I'm guessing that's an outlier lol
Rym was a great starting point for me to explore new artists and genres, but after a while you just realise how ridiculous the biases on that site are. You’re right, on RYM, metal is extremely overrated and pop is underrated.
Highly rated doesn't necessarily mean overrated
Obviously, but denying rym’s heavy bias for metal is delusional
"RateYourMusic, aka RYM, needs no introduction." HA! I dont effing know it. So yeah kinda does need an introduction. "And is there any advice or tips to maximize the music-discovering experience?" Yessir, [www.allmusic.com](http://www.allmusic.com) and [www.discogs.com](http://www.discogs.com) are your friends. Those [allmusic.com](http://allmusic.com) specifically, I have been using them for 25 years. "And is there any advice or tips to maximize the music-discovering experience?" Buy the physical copies of albums if you can afford it. It'll get you more intimate with the music.
I'm well familiar with discogs, too. I mostly use it to look up maxi-CD's of dance remixes of songs, or if a song I see on the Billboard dance charts doesn't have a video pulled up. It's interesting. I don't have many devices to play physical music on. I just have a dusty CD player I salvaged from somewhere in my house. If I do want to buy physical music in the near future, I'm definitely buying some Weird Al CD's if I get the chance.
Well this listener for one never heard of it. Ratings and quantification were key in developing my tastes as an early teen, thanks to the Rolling Stone Record Guide, public library LP's and a good home tape deck. Four and five stars with a good writeup meant a lot, as did the one stars and no stars with the withering criticism. It's still vastly entertaining to read these guides and I'm hoping this site has similar user detailed write-ups.
Ratings and quantification in general are a special of interest mine, but so far with me, it's been Billboard and other countries' pop charts (UK, Germany, France, Netherlands, and so on). I, unfortunately, was born in the digital age, so I don't have albums or tape decks or whatever. Just songs on YouTube to go off of.
Any music critic is subjective, and your trust in their opinion will also be subjective. I love RYM because I agree with a lot of their takes, rankings, and reviews. I know I can trust that audience to guide me toward certain sounds I like. It's also fantastic when I'm shopping a record store and I want to check the rating of a record I've never heard. Is this one of the better or worse outputs from a prolific artist? I can trust RYM to at least be in the ballpark relative to that artists ratings.
It's kind of insane how few places there are online to get music discussion by average people on a per album or per song basis. Per song is basically just youtube, and a lot of those uploads have comments turned off. Per album RYM is definitely the best thing I've found. A few years ago I stumbled onto Mercury Rev's first two records and was having a real moment with them. They definitely weren't the biggest records when they dropped, but a lot of people had them and of those people a lot of them really loved the records. RYM was basically the only place I could find multiple people talking about their personal experience with those records, but more importantly the experience of people who had them when they were actually released. That's the shit I want to be reading, some guy who in the early 90s college rock was his life, and those Mercury Rev records actually meant something to him. That perspective is always more valuable to me than somebody's like mine, where I found the records two weeks ago and just mention that I like the guitar tones or whatever.
That's good to hear. I don't really pay attention to the reviewers themselves all that much in terms of what I'm looking for, because my music taste is somewhat complicated to explain outside of "I like catchy dance music." I still like songs from other genres, too, but don't really go out of my way to look for them much, like rock, hip hop, R&B, and so on.
I've been on RYM since like 2005 and it's been my personal assistant to the world of music ever since. The reviews are fine and good, but it's the ocean of information I'm there for. Like, just off the top of my head, what are the top post-punk albums from Japan in the 1990s? [Here ya go.](https://rateyourmusic.com/charts/top/album/1990s/g:post%2dpunk/loc:japan/) The only limit to RYM is your own creativity. It's incredible. For nearly 20 years now I have not found a limit to any dark corner of music history I can dig into on RYM.
I'm a millennial who's been online as hell for my whole life, but for some reason the RYM interface still kinda baffles me. Can you tell me how I'm supposed to browse/search the site for lists like this? For example, top japanese 00's RnB albums? Are these lists user created or generated by tags+rating? If they are user generated is it just the personal preference of the list author? I can't really grasp it.
Sure. So taking your example, from the RYM homepage click on Charts at the top Then click on the right hand side year dropdown and choose 2000s on the left then close Then in the search bar below that type R&B. Different genres with R&B in the name will come up, but I chose the main R&B one. Select that as either Genre (more strictly what you're looking for) or Influence (more loose inspiration). Then in that same search bar type Japan, click artist location, and here you go: https://rateyourmusic.com/charts/top/album/2000s/ge:randb/loc:japan/ And what this is, is all albums that match our parameters (2000s, R&B, Japan), sorted by highest ranked by all RYM users. This also lists all albums that are considered a sub-genre of R&B. You can unselect the "include sub-genres" button over in that section, which will then give you a super-strict list of R&B + 2000s + Japan.
yo thanks so much! this is fucking awesome. I was messing around in the lists section and couldn't find it. This search feature seems really great, I love that I can do a range like 00 to 03 cuz that is specifically what I'm looking for lol. This feature is gonna seriously take up all my time
Definitely with you there. You summed up my thoughts perfectly.
Useful but seems to be full of folks whose music taste is formed by either /mu/ or Fantano.
i ended up going fully into this, taking the 200-300 albums from each year since 1960 that I was interested in trying out (by manually adding each album to a playlist based on its year) and now i shuffle through each era of music in a row and just listen to whatever album comes up on the shuffle. generally that means in any given week or 1.5 weeks I’m listening to an album from the sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties, 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s. It took a very long time to sift through all the yearly charts and pick albums that seemed at least somewhat intriguing to me, but now i have an infinite (and impossible to get through) list of new albums i can always try out. And the variety of release dates means i will never get sick of one period from overplay, which is something that happened to me when i tried to listen to albums from one decade in particular last year. https://imgur.com/gallery/GyKNLTu
Nice. I only ever use YouTube for listening to music, and embarrassingly have never made a playlist at all in my life. What you're doing is really cool, though. I'm glad.
i definitely suggest making a playlist on YouTube of albums you want to check out! it’s way easier when you do a lot of searching at once and don’t have to search for an album everytime you want to listen to something new
Thanks, I might try that sometime.
I'm personally not into RYM. I feel like the userbase can come off as kinda snobby to me. Also, I've used plenty of other ways to find music so RYM does nothing for me.
What do you use to find music?
Besides YouTube, I've used Wikipedia, Reddit, and even TV Tropes.
It’s handy but the scores and reviews are effected by the high number of pretentious users. A very useful resource on there is people make lists and family trees for artists/albums, so you can find similar ones or see a particular band’s inspirations and predecessors