Pros and Cons of Music Reviewing Websites

CONVERSE. Online music discussion is a great way for people all over the world to connect over things they are passionate about. Finding communities meant for that exact purpose can be a rewarding experience. Image courtesy of Google Images.

With music being so incredibly accessible because of our ability to stream it digitally, it is now easier than ever to explore what kind of music you enjoy. Whether it’s on social media apps like TikTok or Instagram, or on dedicated music boards such as Rate Your Music or Album of the Year (often abbreviated as RYM and AOTY respectively), online music communities are always bustling with discussion over favorite albums, new releases, and reviews.

There are clear differences between the sites where music discussion happens most often. All options are great for those looking to discover new music or further explore what they enjoy, but boards will offer more options overall, as in more music on it in general to look through. They also have genre and subgenre specific pages if you are looking to explore an unfamiliar genre or are searching for albums that are similar to some you already enjoy. Additionally, they allow users to make their own lists of releases or songs to save for later. When using social media as a source for new music, you can have similarly great results too, but it of course lacks some of the same features.

The biggest difference other than formatting is that when you use dedicated music discussion sites, you get recommendations from the userbase’s tastes all blended together, but on social media your recommendations are dictated by only a few people at once. Personally, I like to diversify where I find new music as much as possible. So not only do I use the web, but I ask friends what they’ve been listening to or I look into music I hear in other places such as in a movie or even on the radio.

Another large difference between music boards and social media are the album reviews. While reviews do appear on social media, reviews are an integral part of the boards. They act as a fun outlet to express thoughts on a release, learn more about interesting albums and see what others have to say. Many reviews on RYM and AOTY often either fall into two boxes of being either very short and comedic, or personal, detailed and lengthy. I would advise against looking at reviews of an album before listening to one and first forming your own opinion, since looking at reviews beforehand can strongly influence how you’ll feel about it before you even give it a chance. It’s okay to get a description of the general sound of the whole project or even the type of aesthetics it could imbue, but I’d try to avoid anything too in-depth.

Another central feature of AOTY and RYM are their top albums charts. While I enjoy having a spot to like at highly acclaimed releases, I do feel like the charts function better as a reflection of their respective sites' user bases rather than an objective list of “good music”. Music is subjective and if you don’t find either of the top charts agreeable, there’s not any problem with that. I believe that modern music discussion is in a generally good place. Finding new music to listen to is one of my favorite activities and talking about something I'm passionate about with like-minded people is even better.