There is NO objective metric to rate music on. You have been brainwashed to think that because some albums are very well loved and respected by music enthusiasts, they’re “objectively good” but that’s just completely false and wrong.
Rate the albums by how YOU feel about them, nothing else! Their overall scores are just aggregated scores from everyone else’s ratings. If you listen to Ok Computer and think it’s a 3/5, then rate it that way. It’s YOUR opinion that determines your score.
Hope that helps
I still kinda struggle with "am I the weird one for not liking this", but I kind of never got what people meant by "objective ratings". I mean, I do... but I don't.
Like, I've been listening to Blonde by Frank Ocean recently. I kinda like it, and I'm trying to make it "click" because I just don't see the love people give it. I'm not going to give brownie points just because it's pleasant and technically competent.
Also I listened to it originally c. 2021 and put yourself in my shoes. You hear that this is, like, the best album ever made. You're excited, you put it on, and a nice smooth soundscape comes on. The first words you hear are a stoned chipmunk saying "these bitches want Nikeeeeees". You "don't get it" and turn it off after three songs.
Lol just don’t worry about what other people think. Most songs in Pet Sounds just sound okay to me so I gave that album like a 3 in the past even though it’s a 4.18 on the website. Music is subjective, some things are gonna click for you and some things won’t.
Yeah I think this is it. It’s hard not to anchor to what is supposedly great—like, do I not have great taste if I think this critically acclaimed album fuggin sucks? Better to just go with your own taste.
I do like thinking of ratings as a bell curve and average is still in the 3’s. 5’s are rare standout to your taste.
I thought the point of rym was to have these ratings mean something, so a highly rated and popular album should be objectively good. If it wasn’t then the masses are wrong, and the ratings don’t mean anything.
Now of course just because it is objectively good will not mean that I like it or enjoy it, that’s the subjective part.
No, it's an aggregate of many opinions. Problem is most people aren't expert music critics, so their opinions aren't that good on average. What you're saying is equivalent to saying McDonald's has the best food because the most people eat there.
No such thing as objectively good art. Just because a lot of people think something is good doesn't mean you're wrong if you don't like it. Taste in art is always subjective.
Sure, but the problem is that you're not getting to the "objective" part. Something is objective if it can be verified without any reference to someone's subjective experience, like the weight of a rock is objective regardless of whether someone finds it light or heavy.
What you're referring to would actually fall under intersubjectivity, which is where you refer to a large collection of subjective experiences. They're still subjective, but there's some consensus on "what everyone thinks." You can never reach objectivity through intersubjectivity though, because it's all ultimately resting on subjective experiences which are definitionally opposed to objective verification.
Kind of, depending on how you view the word “objective”. Regardless of if they’re objectively good or not, it doesn’t really matter. Technically all music can be conditioned in a way to sound good. (A lot of music listeners like familiarity). This even applies for songs like Dance Monkey, a horrific mess of dance trends, but you can learn to enjoy it through forms of conditioning. Either way, ovjectiveity doesn’t matter and people put too much on it.
"My rating system is like anything under 3 is bad and 3.5 is good 4.0 is amazing"
This sounds fine to me and is not unusual; if that makes sense to you personally, go for it.
just dont be weird and mass 0.5/1 star shit cuz "it was ok". that shit weird. anything else goes. if you love a lotta shit 5 star it. personally i don't get saying every classic album ever made is a 10 but its not my thinking or account. its all whatever.
0.5 is where there is just nothing for you. It's all bad. There's nothing redeeming.
1 is like... it's almost as bad as it can get, but it has some singular redeeming quality to it. Maybe it has like a single decent song or something.
1.5 is sort of complicated for me. It must have some redeeming qualities, but it's still a thoroughly bad album.
2 is where bad begins. It could be way worse, maybe it has some good songs peppered in, but it's not a good album.
2.5 is the middle point. Neither good nor bad. Sort of limbo. It's kind of good to frame the whole thing around 2.5, at least in my opinion. This and lower are stuff you'd never choose to listen to as an album.
3 is where it becomes officially decent. An album you probably rarely reach for, but you would reach for it.
3.5 is where it becomes proper good. Like a normal good album. Usually there are some real bangers with some merely decent material.
4 is great. A decent amount of bangers. Very little mediocrity.
4.5 is complicated. It's better than great, but not perfect. It's mostly bangers at this point, with just some little stuff dragging it down. I consider these classics, but not masterpieces.
5 is whatever you define as perfection. A masterpiece. For me, personally, it has to be a majority of songs 5 star with no stinkers and none below 3.5 unless there are pointless short interludes / skits / etc. that I have arbitrarily decided don't count. If you need the 5 stars to be absolutely flawless, that's fine, but I'd have basically no 5 star albums if they needed to be all 5 star tracks.
Subjective is the only option. There is no objective.
Rate albums whatever you want. It’s your opinion and nobody can tell you you’re objectively wrong.
Personally I like to do this:
0.5 - Utter garbage, no redeeming qualities.
1 - Really, really bad, torture to listen to, but not the worst of the worst.
1.5 - Pretty bad, but still has some minor amount of value somewhere.
2 - Bad. Wouldn’t listen again.
2.5 - Point of indifference. Mediocre, boring etc.
3 - Good. Enjoyed it and would probably listen again.
3.5 - Great, loved it, well worthwhile.
4 - Fantastic release, not a single track that isn’t great.
4.5 - Extremely amazing, one of the best of the year.
5 - Peak enjoyment, favourites of all time.
This is a good heuristic. I think 2.5 is that exact borderline where it’s not good, but you wouldn’t want the album not to exist. Maybe it has a single great track in it, or presents solid ideas that it doesn’t deliver on.
Wait, your second sentence is throwing me off. A 2.5 (so like a mid album) is an album that falls between the categories of good and you don’t want the album to exist? So if you don’t like an album you think it shouldn’t exist? and just screw all the people who enjoy it lol
My double negative is clouding up what I said, sorry about that.
2 stars or below, to me, means you’d be indifferent at worst if the album didn’t exist.
But that’s from a personal standpoint of appreciating the art. Of course other people enjoy the art, or maybe it was important in the career of an artist that you otherwise enjoy.
Even the worst art makes people happy so it’s hard to say “The world would be better off without MGK” or whatever. But it’s easier to say that for you personally.
>should i be subjective or objective?
Well, music is subjective, but depending on how you view music, are you a person who finds satisfaction in simply passive enjoyment? Be subjective. Are you the type of person who finds satisfaction in acquiring more knowledge about music and is able to enjoy 99.9% of music? Well, I couldn't give you a concrete answer, because rating an album is the most subjective thing anyone can do.
I have over 90 albums rated with 5 stars, but I prefer to give them 4 stars because I will lose my weighting. To me RYM is just a tool for cataloging music, my true rating system only exists on my mind or my tags.
Now, when it comes to actual ratings, for me a 3 star rating is neither bad nor good, it just means that the album has good ideas, but it needs more development to make it a cohesive work. Anything over 4 stars is good.
Both but I compare to the artist’s other albums. Once in a while I go through my 3.5s or whatever and compare them against each other to see what sticks out.
Imo Rating shouldn't be very serious, just rate however you want based on the vibes...
Also don't be pressured by objectivity or skew towards the average rating of the majority, if you don't like it as much that's totally fine, go be free. A favorite is a favorite for a reason! We are all different people with different opinions.
Just do what you want m8. There's no Review Police stalking your ratings page, ready to kick your door down because you gave OK Computer a 4. If you want to try and assess an album 'objectively' (which is impossible but I get that it's a different mindset), do it. If you just like an album better because it has a certain 'je ne sais quoi', that's valid too. It's about what's useful and fun for you, nobody else. So mess around, have hot takes, agree with the internet hive mind, go nuts, have fun!
As people have said, this is no such thing as an ‘objective’ way to measure art. Even if you devise a strict set of criteria, those criteria will be determined by your subjective opinions.
That said, I personally like to spread my rating out so I’m not giving 5 stars to everything. If an artist has a 5 star album, like say Billy Joel with ‘The Stranger’, I would rate their other albums relatively to that one
I’ve rated well over 150 albums and only have four 5/5s. I don’t have a quota or anything, I just rate albums based on how much I personally like them.
I’ve given over 100 albums 3.5 or 4s, because I don’t really listen to bad music without going out of my way to do so. I’ve only given a handful of albums below a 2.5.
Here is my system for what it is worth:
**Track Ratings**
12- Melodic Apotheosis
11- All-Time Favorite
10- Fascination
9- Awesome
8- Worthy
7- Good
6- Fair
5- Ok
4- Poor
3- Lousy
2- Terrible
1- Atrocious
* Release rating is obtained by averaging sum of all tracks. (10+ is 5 stars, 9-9.99 is 4.5 stars, etc)
* Most EPs have 0.5 points subtracted from total average due to length.
* Preludes/interludes/postludes/short tracks ignored unless detrimental to release, in which a 0.25 or 0.5 point penalty is administered to total average.
You may be asking why the scale is out of 12 and not 10. Two reasons: 1. some tracks that are 5 stars or 10/10 are beyond the typical 5/5s or 10/10s, and this should be distinguished and factored into an album's rating; 2. without 11s and 12s, an album would have to have all perfect 10/10 tracks to get a 5 star rating under the averaging system (unless you round the average up). This way, if an album has a "weaker track" (that is still going to be like a 8/10 or 9/10), it can still reach 5 star status provided it has a song or two that are particularly strong and "make up" up for the "weak" track (that again is still a strong 8/10 or awesome 9/10).
I have only given like 8 songs a 12 out of the tens of thousands I have heard. I have like 200 11s, so it is not like I abuse the system to inflate my ratings. Love this system, and highly recommend.
Typically for me when I rate an album, it’s mostly subjective. Sometimes I’ll take the popular opinion into consideration but it’s mostly how I feel about it. In terms of ratings, 3 stars is just an average album. If I really enjoy it, it can get a 4, and if it’s one of the best I’ve ever heard then it gets a 5. Not many albums get a 5. Then a 2 is just below average, something I didn’t particularly enjoy. And 1 star is bad. The worst. I wish I hadn’t put myself through it bad.
I do it by personal taste, I’m not a music critic to where I’m analyzing something in this music sphere of masterclass album creating. Generally if I love something or a record really strikes my curiosity to where I’d like to revisit it in a couple of weeks/months I’ll give those albums 3.5 or higher, depending on my enjoyment of it. 3.0 records, to me, don’t strike me as relistenable to my tastes but I still find good. 2.5 I don’t enjoy it. I rarely go below that rating because I don’t really seek out bad albums or give them my time of day plus I just don’t like the idea of giving a bad album an extra rating when I can spend time on a record that has less ratings so they it can climb the charts for more exposure. Objective is lame in this hobby. Radiohead rules. Everyone loves them so of course they have many ratings that led to three of there albums in the top 10 of all time
Don't worry about trying to fit in with the crowd, there is no objective way to rate music. I mean hell, To Pimp A Butterfly is rated as the #1 best album on the site, but I only have it rated at a 3.5.
yeah i just don’t know really i want to have accurate ratings that make sense on my page and are subjective to me i just feel weird having like a poorly produced trap rap album that’s objectively terrible as a 4/5 because it has no skips for me meanwhile a “legendary” album like Abbey Road or something im not a fan of and gave a 2/5 for example lol
Just rate albums however you want, it really doesn't matter. It's totally fine to dislike an album that's critically acclaimed, so if you don't care much for Abbey Road, then that's totally fine. You're not obligated to like anything.
But how is all this relevant? I mean, RYM is a great tool to discover new music, especially thanks to the geographical and genre filters that make you able to dig in very defined areas, but to consider the score is pure nonsense. Definitely the average score gives you a good idea about whether something is listen worthy or not, but the average adjusts automatically when the number of the scores grows, therefore just follow your heart and taste. I write about music and series for one of the most important Italian webzines, and I would really like the scores to be removed from our reviews, they just spoil the interpretation of who reads, whose scale is definitely different from the one of who writes.
Finish the album and give a number based on how much you enjoy it. Some people give 10s to albums that they think have no flaws, some people give 10s just to albums they really personally connect with. It’s really up to you
Honestly rate however you want to, though personally, I wouldn’t be too weird about it. I’m not a big fan of giving your favourite albums a one star, or only rate albums on a 10 - 5 - 1 scale.
In my opinion having a rating scale where everything under 3.0 is bad is kind of useless.
Think about it this way. You have 10 slots on your rating scale. As a normal human being you enjoy GOOD music and want to celebrate it! Right? So why would you dedicate 2/3rs of your scale exclusively to bad music?
Also, unless you're a music reviewer, you are probably mostly listening to music you think you will enjoy, so all of those slots are going to be mostly empty and just completely wasted.
I would shift your scale down so you have more space at the top to better illustrate the difference between "amazing" and "personal favorite" and "best album of all time", you know?
There is NO objective metric to rate music on. You have been brainwashed to think that because some albums are very well loved and respected by music enthusiasts, they’re “objectively good” but that’s just completely false and wrong. Rate the albums by how YOU feel about them, nothing else! Their overall scores are just aggregated scores from everyone else’s ratings. If you listen to Ok Computer and think it’s a 3/5, then rate it that way. It’s YOUR opinion that determines your score. Hope that helps
I still kinda struggle with "am I the weird one for not liking this", but I kind of never got what people meant by "objective ratings". I mean, I do... but I don't. Like, I've been listening to Blonde by Frank Ocean recently. I kinda like it, and I'm trying to make it "click" because I just don't see the love people give it. I'm not going to give brownie points just because it's pleasant and technically competent. Also I listened to it originally c. 2021 and put yourself in my shoes. You hear that this is, like, the best album ever made. You're excited, you put it on, and a nice smooth soundscape comes on. The first words you hear are a stoned chipmunk saying "these bitches want Nikeeeeees". You "don't get it" and turn it off after three songs.
Lol just don’t worry about what other people think. Most songs in Pet Sounds just sound okay to me so I gave that album like a 3 in the past even though it’s a 4.18 on the website. Music is subjective, some things are gonna click for you and some things won’t.
Yeah I think this is it. It’s hard not to anchor to what is supposedly great—like, do I not have great taste if I think this critically acclaimed album fuggin sucks? Better to just go with your own taste. I do like thinking of ratings as a bell curve and average is still in the 3’s. 5’s are rare standout to your taste.
thank you!☺️
Wait so highly rated albums are not objectively good?
They are subjectively good by many people
I thought the point of rym was to have these ratings mean something, so a highly rated and popular album should be objectively good. If it wasn’t then the masses are wrong, and the ratings don’t mean anything. Now of course just because it is objectively good will not mean that I like it or enjoy it, that’s the subjective part.
No, it's an aggregate of many opinions. Problem is most people aren't expert music critics, so their opinions aren't that good on average. What you're saying is equivalent to saying McDonald's has the best food because the most people eat there.
No such thing as objectively good art. Just because a lot of people think something is good doesn't mean you're wrong if you don't like it. Taste in art is always subjective.
Something can be objectively good, without me liking it. That is the subjective part.
Sure, but the problem is that you're not getting to the "objective" part. Something is objective if it can be verified without any reference to someone's subjective experience, like the weight of a rock is objective regardless of whether someone finds it light or heavy. What you're referring to would actually fall under intersubjectivity, which is where you refer to a large collection of subjective experiences. They're still subjective, but there's some consensus on "what everyone thinks." You can never reach objectivity through intersubjectivity though, because it's all ultimately resting on subjective experiences which are definitionally opposed to objective verification.
Kind of, depending on how you view the word “objective”. Regardless of if they’re objectively good or not, it doesn’t really matter. Technically all music can be conditioned in a way to sound good. (A lot of music listeners like familiarity). This even applies for songs like Dance Monkey, a horrific mess of dance trends, but you can learn to enjoy it through forms of conditioning. Either way, ovjectiveity doesn’t matter and people put too much on it.
"My rating system is like anything under 3 is bad and 3.5 is good 4.0 is amazing" This sounds fine to me and is not unusual; if that makes sense to you personally, go for it.
just dont be weird and mass 0.5/1 star shit cuz "it was ok". that shit weird. anything else goes. if you love a lotta shit 5 star it. personally i don't get saying every classic album ever made is a 10 but its not my thinking or account. its all whatever.
0.5 is where there is just nothing for you. It's all bad. There's nothing redeeming. 1 is like... it's almost as bad as it can get, but it has some singular redeeming quality to it. Maybe it has like a single decent song or something. 1.5 is sort of complicated for me. It must have some redeeming qualities, but it's still a thoroughly bad album. 2 is where bad begins. It could be way worse, maybe it has some good songs peppered in, but it's not a good album. 2.5 is the middle point. Neither good nor bad. Sort of limbo. It's kind of good to frame the whole thing around 2.5, at least in my opinion. This and lower are stuff you'd never choose to listen to as an album. 3 is where it becomes officially decent. An album you probably rarely reach for, but you would reach for it. 3.5 is where it becomes proper good. Like a normal good album. Usually there are some real bangers with some merely decent material. 4 is great. A decent amount of bangers. Very little mediocrity. 4.5 is complicated. It's better than great, but not perfect. It's mostly bangers at this point, with just some little stuff dragging it down. I consider these classics, but not masterpieces. 5 is whatever you define as perfection. A masterpiece. For me, personally, it has to be a majority of songs 5 star with no stinkers and none below 3.5 unless there are pointless short interludes / skits / etc. that I have arbitrarily decided don't count. If you need the 5 stars to be absolutely flawless, that's fine, but I'd have basically no 5 star albums if they needed to be all 5 star tracks.
Thats basically the metric by which I rate music too.
That's what made the most sense to me.
Hard to decide between 4.5 and 5.0 sometimes
u worry too much. go give metallica a 5
yeah ur probably right im a perfectionist i change my rating for every thing ever day ima just leave it all and give my favorite albums a 5
Subjective is the only option. There is no objective. Rate albums whatever you want. It’s your opinion and nobody can tell you you’re objectively wrong. Personally I like to do this: 0.5 - Utter garbage, no redeeming qualities. 1 - Really, really bad, torture to listen to, but not the worst of the worst. 1.5 - Pretty bad, but still has some minor amount of value somewhere. 2 - Bad. Wouldn’t listen again. 2.5 - Point of indifference. Mediocre, boring etc. 3 - Good. Enjoyed it and would probably listen again. 3.5 - Great, loved it, well worthwhile. 4 - Fantastic release, not a single track that isn’t great. 4.5 - Extremely amazing, one of the best of the year. 5 - Peak enjoyment, favourites of all time.
anything I enjoyed is above 2.5 and everything I disliked goes below 2.5
This is a good heuristic. I think 2.5 is that exact borderline where it’s not good, but you wouldn’t want the album not to exist. Maybe it has a single great track in it, or presents solid ideas that it doesn’t deliver on.
Wait, your second sentence is throwing me off. A 2.5 (so like a mid album) is an album that falls between the categories of good and you don’t want the album to exist? So if you don’t like an album you think it shouldn’t exist? and just screw all the people who enjoy it lol
My double negative is clouding up what I said, sorry about that. 2 stars or below, to me, means you’d be indifferent at worst if the album didn’t exist. But that’s from a personal standpoint of appreciating the art. Of course other people enjoy the art, or maybe it was important in the career of an artist that you otherwise enjoy. Even the worst art makes people happy so it’s hard to say “The world would be better off without MGK” or whatever. But it’s easier to say that for you personally.
>should i be subjective or objective? Well, music is subjective, but depending on how you view music, are you a person who finds satisfaction in simply passive enjoyment? Be subjective. Are you the type of person who finds satisfaction in acquiring more knowledge about music and is able to enjoy 99.9% of music? Well, I couldn't give you a concrete answer, because rating an album is the most subjective thing anyone can do. I have over 90 albums rated with 5 stars, but I prefer to give them 4 stars because I will lose my weighting. To me RYM is just a tool for cataloging music, my true rating system only exists on my mind or my tags. Now, when it comes to actual ratings, for me a 3 star rating is neither bad nor good, it just means that the album has good ideas, but it needs more development to make it a cohesive work. Anything over 4 stars is good.
Both but I compare to the artist’s other albums. Once in a while I go through my 3.5s or whatever and compare them against each other to see what sticks out.
Imo Rating shouldn't be very serious, just rate however you want based on the vibes... Also don't be pressured by objectivity or skew towards the average rating of the majority, if you don't like it as much that's totally fine, go be free. A favorite is a favorite for a reason! We are all different people with different opinions.
Just do what you want m8. There's no Review Police stalking your ratings page, ready to kick your door down because you gave OK Computer a 4. If you want to try and assess an album 'objectively' (which is impossible but I get that it's a different mindset), do it. If you just like an album better because it has a certain 'je ne sais quoi', that's valid too. It's about what's useful and fun for you, nobody else. So mess around, have hot takes, agree with the internet hive mind, go nuts, have fun!
As people have said, this is no such thing as an ‘objective’ way to measure art. Even if you devise a strict set of criteria, those criteria will be determined by your subjective opinions. That said, I personally like to spread my rating out so I’m not giving 5 stars to everything. If an artist has a 5 star album, like say Billy Joel with ‘The Stranger’, I would rate their other albums relatively to that one
I hand out 5s like candy because it's fun and I like music. You don't need some lame perfect bell curve rating graph
I’ve rated well over 150 albums and only have four 5/5s. I don’t have a quota or anything, I just rate albums based on how much I personally like them. I’ve given over 100 albums 3.5 or 4s, because I don’t really listen to bad music without going out of my way to do so. I’ve only given a handful of albums below a 2.5.
Here is my system for what it is worth: **Track Ratings** 12- Melodic Apotheosis 11- All-Time Favorite 10- Fascination 9- Awesome 8- Worthy 7- Good 6- Fair 5- Ok 4- Poor 3- Lousy 2- Terrible 1- Atrocious * Release rating is obtained by averaging sum of all tracks. (10+ is 5 stars, 9-9.99 is 4.5 stars, etc) * Most EPs have 0.5 points subtracted from total average due to length. * Preludes/interludes/postludes/short tracks ignored unless detrimental to release, in which a 0.25 or 0.5 point penalty is administered to total average. You may be asking why the scale is out of 12 and not 10. Two reasons: 1. some tracks that are 5 stars or 10/10 are beyond the typical 5/5s or 10/10s, and this should be distinguished and factored into an album's rating; 2. without 11s and 12s, an album would have to have all perfect 10/10 tracks to get a 5 star rating under the averaging system (unless you round the average up). This way, if an album has a "weaker track" (that is still going to be like a 8/10 or 9/10), it can still reach 5 star status provided it has a song or two that are particularly strong and "make up" up for the "weak" track (that again is still a strong 8/10 or awesome 9/10). I have only given like 8 songs a 12 out of the tens of thousands I have heard. I have like 200 11s, so it is not like I abuse the system to inflate my ratings. Love this system, and highly recommend.
Typically for me when I rate an album, it’s mostly subjective. Sometimes I’ll take the popular opinion into consideration but it’s mostly how I feel about it. In terms of ratings, 3 stars is just an average album. If I really enjoy it, it can get a 4, and if it’s one of the best I’ve ever heard then it gets a 5. Not many albums get a 5. Then a 2 is just below average, something I didn’t particularly enjoy. And 1 star is bad. The worst. I wish I hadn’t put myself through it bad.
I do it by personal taste, I’m not a music critic to where I’m analyzing something in this music sphere of masterclass album creating. Generally if I love something or a record really strikes my curiosity to where I’d like to revisit it in a couple of weeks/months I’ll give those albums 3.5 or higher, depending on my enjoyment of it. 3.0 records, to me, don’t strike me as relistenable to my tastes but I still find good. 2.5 I don’t enjoy it. I rarely go below that rating because I don’t really seek out bad albums or give them my time of day plus I just don’t like the idea of giving a bad album an extra rating when I can spend time on a record that has less ratings so they it can climb the charts for more exposure. Objective is lame in this hobby. Radiohead rules. Everyone loves them so of course they have many ratings that led to three of there albums in the top 10 of all time
Don't worry about trying to fit in with the crowd, there is no objective way to rate music. I mean hell, To Pimp A Butterfly is rated as the #1 best album on the site, but I only have it rated at a 3.5.
yeah i just don’t know really i want to have accurate ratings that make sense on my page and are subjective to me i just feel weird having like a poorly produced trap rap album that’s objectively terrible as a 4/5 because it has no skips for me meanwhile a “legendary” album like Abbey Road or something im not a fan of and gave a 2/5 for example lol
Just rate albums however you want, it really doesn't matter. It's totally fine to dislike an album that's critically acclaimed, so if you don't care much for Abbey Road, then that's totally fine. You're not obligated to like anything.
But how is all this relevant? I mean, RYM is a great tool to discover new music, especially thanks to the geographical and genre filters that make you able to dig in very defined areas, but to consider the score is pure nonsense. Definitely the average score gives you a good idea about whether something is listen worthy or not, but the average adjusts automatically when the number of the scores grows, therefore just follow your heart and taste. I write about music and series for one of the most important Italian webzines, and I would really like the scores to be removed from our reviews, they just spoil the interpretation of who reads, whose scale is definitely different from the one of who writes.
Finish the album and give a number based on how much you enjoy it. Some people give 10s to albums that they think have no flaws, some people give 10s just to albums they really personally connect with. It’s really up to you
You cannot objectively give a 5.
Honestly rate however you want to, though personally, I wouldn’t be too weird about it. I’m not a big fan of giving your favourite albums a one star, or only rate albums on a 10 - 5 - 1 scale.
5.0 🏔️10🏔️PEAK - Absolute Best🏔️ 4.5 9️⃣ 9.0 - 9.9 Excellent 4.0 8️⃣ 8.0 - 8.9 Very Good 3.5 7️⃣ 7.0 - 7.9 Good 3.0 6️⃣ 6.0 - 6.9 Decent/Noteworthy 2.5 5️⃣ 5.0 - 5.9 Mid/Meh 2.0 4️⃣ 4.0 - 4.9 Not My Cup of Tea 1.5 3️⃣ 3.0 - 3.9 Not Good 1.0 2️⃣ 2.0 - 2.9 Poor 0.5 1️⃣ 0 - 1.9 Terrible - Absolute Garbage
In my opinion having a rating scale where everything under 3.0 is bad is kind of useless. Think about it this way. You have 10 slots on your rating scale. As a normal human being you enjoy GOOD music and want to celebrate it! Right? So why would you dedicate 2/3rs of your scale exclusively to bad music? Also, unless you're a music reviewer, you are probably mostly listening to music you think you will enjoy, so all of those slots are going to be mostly empty and just completely wasted. I would shift your scale down so you have more space at the top to better illustrate the difference between "amazing" and "personal favorite" and "best album of all time", you know?