I remember having a friend who listened to Breakcore, I didn’t understand the appeal until they simply said “I don’t know, it just kinda sounds like the noise inside my head, as if my feelings were converted into a song” This has been my philosophy for music ever since
The typical draw of breakcore is the insanely guttural and panicky feeling of it, essentially, breakcore when put into certain contexts really starts that adrenaline flow, a good example is "The big black" and some of Ultrakill's soundtrack. (Then again, I'm not 100% sure of what makes breakcore other than the "amen break" pattern that is in it.) Edit: As it turns out, the quick brown fox makes speedcore, not breakcore, my mistake.
@@Z-mg6bwBreakcore specifically avoids looping drum patterns and actively cuts up drum breaks to create a more hectic, anxious or aggressive feel; there's also a distinct influence from hardcore techno and especially speedcore in the sound palette and musical tropes, which is where the "core" part in "breakcore" comes from. A lot of people tend to mislabel stuff like drum'n'bass and jungle which also use a lot of drum breaks as "breakcore," and while there is some overlap, they're fundamentally pretty different.
@@gekinatracksuit9710 It happens to the best of us. I once remember playing Kid A to one of my friends, and the way they responded was “you call this crap “music”????”.
@@gekinatracksuit9710happens to me a lot, people dont even like me putting music for project/misc things, and when I show them liszt or rachmaninoff or chopin theyre like "uh this doesnt have lyric so it dumb and it bad 🤓☝️ id rather prefer listen to lady gaga than this "pasionate list transgender study" or whatever its called" like, and also people can get too petty about things they dont even know what theyre talking about, some years ago I had a school Project thingie about puppets and there was this playful/joyous part and I got assigned to choose the music, and for the happy part I put Liszt Transcendental etude no.3, and that is in a mayor key and it aound nostalgic and relaxed, but then my classmate started telling at me how "THIS IS A FUCKING SAD *SONG* , THIS IS NOT HAPPY" "but its in a major key?-" "JUST BECAUSE ITS IN A KEY DOESNT MEAN ITS SAD OR HAPPY YOU F SLUR" "wtf it literally does??? What the fuck are you on about" "we cant pick you to do anything cant we" and also there was a scene in the Project where one the characters died and I wanted to choose shostakovich string quartet no8 for that scene.. "YOU FUCKING IDIOT THATS A CHASE *SONG* YOU HAVE NO MUSIC TASTE AT ALL YOU SHOULD DIE" "wtf" People dont even know what theyre talking about when they want to critique something. And also his favorite music is about a guy saying how much he loves to masturbate to tall skinny women, in reggaetón style, I dont think he has all of that much privilege to critique my musical style
As a frequent consultant of rym, this video really speaks to the part inside of me that cries when I see that my favorite album has a rating of less than 4 stars
@@lisandroarnesino1470By metalhead do you mean you listen to alt metal and metalcore lol because most of my favorite albums are reasonably rated (None so Vile, Akuma no Uta, RATM, I Don't Care Where I Go When I Die, Jesu, AtF), but a lot of modern stuff is rated really low and I don't like it either
@@Billiamwoods mostly death or black metal, some doom, some metalcore/deathcore, i really like metal in all shapes or form (great albums btw, none so vile is one if not the meanest album i've ever heard)
Actually true though, some of the best music I've listened to has some great covers. That's because the cover is reflective of the album itself, so if an album cover appeals to you the music is likely to appeal aswell.
Great points throughout this video. Very few people are able to admit this sort of bias or come to the same conclusion you did openly about this stuff. As someone who deals with this for a living, this was a nice vid to watch
i think people forget that RYM has nothing to do with critical acclaim, its literally just a pretty large community of somewhat like minded normal people who enjoy music enough to rate it, if you dont gel with the average taste of a RYM user theres literally nothing wrong with that!
Same, its definitely a semi-niche community that's pretty far apart from your typical say EDM playlist user on RUclipsr/Spotify, they just listen to whatever is in the playlist whilst RYM users guage on per album and/or artist basis which is a totally different approach.
@@eko9554 it really depends on your definition of "famous". In my humble opinion it's pretty natural that a community into "art works" isn't gonna like the new mainstream pop single (maybe cooked for beign viral on TikTok), we should always remember that famous is very different from good and/or bad too, and many shitty and/or forgettable records from the past are not in the collective memory as other ones. Also, there are some mainstream names that still have high scores. Beatles, Charli XCX, Radiohead, Pink Floyd, Kendrick Lamar (TPAB is still the #1 album on RYM charts) and Daft Punk are some of the names that came to my mind. Ther're not as famous as, for example, Drake (especially for younger generation) but they still have a very high number of listeners (for reference: The Beatles 35,5 mln, Charli XCX 17,2 mln, Radiohead 24,8 mln, Pink Floyd 18,5 mln, Kendrick Lamar 51,2 mln, Daft Punk 19 mln) now, as a RYM user i don't wanna sound picky but I feel like that pop music has been a very weird gimmicky phase lately. maybe i'm just getting old but my sensation is that tracks are not slapping as hard as they used to. I'm really into pop music, it's my favourite genre but usually listening to most of the "low scores famous artists from the modern age" my feeling is that some tracks are either overproduced or poorly produced, or they just sound too corny even for pop music, which has been into some really cheesy phases (like the 80s for example) but (to my ears) it's still tolerable and i can get away with it.
@@wankelftw I do really miss that pop sound in 2010-2017. I want to make an album dedicated to that era of music. I left the art community since they’re so picky. They nitpick aesthetics, dick ride studios and are blinded by nostalgia. Terrible during quarantine when I was pre teen and didn’t have enough critical thinking yet.
one thing about rym: PLEASE don't listen down the all-time rym charts. like, really, it's so much better to put in some thought into what you're gonna listen to, consoder your own preferences for the sonic palate, the genre, the aesthetics, don't just click them one by one, use genre filters, use descriptors, use lists by other users, browse the "obscure" releases pages (there's literally a whole section for that on rym!) this is the way you can get a full rym experience, i do it myself and I've found so many phenomenal albums and artists
@@liamanthonyfr and to tell the truth, yeah I'm really not a big fan of how the majority of rym users treat the platform and music itself, it's kinda lacking that love for music that rym is supposed to represent
I completely stopped reading other people's opinions about music, and I started really enjoying stuff again. Music is one of those things that (in 99% of the cases) can't be objectively classified as "good" or "bad". I couldn't care less if Fantano said my favorite album is trash, that's even more true for a random person on the internet. I also grew to hate "segregation" of genres, I just listen to what I enjoy and I couldn't care less if the song is part of a genre I typically dislike.
I have friends who genuinely get upset when fantano rates low an alnum they like and I'm like "why do you care about the opinion of someone with less hair than you"
@Northstar-x okay so while I absolutely agree with the fantano-directed vitriol, it is ironic that you say this under a video discussing music. 1. Failed to take your advice there 2. Music is meant to be discussed. Helps people to discover new music they otherwise wouldn't have heard of. It helps people LEARN about music. How do you become a musician without discussing music? How do you improve in your production skills? How do you exercise your creativity and bounce off ideas? It's art. Art is meant to be discussed by consumers and creators alike. So I disagree with you there.
It's very worrying whenever I like an album and it's rated very low and considered 'garbage'. It has kind of made me feel guilty for a lot of songs I like.
The biggest gut punch of reviews for me was lizard by king crimson, I really enjoyed it and Wondered what others thought before hearing that Robert fripp one of the main band members called it "unlistenable garbage"😂
When i went to RYM i got disappointed so many stuff I like isn't like there. And let's be honest, TPAB and good kid maad city are good but no way they should be rated so high
Exactly lol the like genre videos helped me find alot of new shit. rym is rather pretentious lmao which makes sense since it's people who go out of their way to critique music.
Yea. You have to find people that enjoy a lot of the same stuff you enjoy. Also once you follow some people you can make charts only including their ratings. I follow a solid 25 people and it’s way more hits than misses.
I think the thing is to listen to albums that are considered mediocre or bad too. Finding out what you don't like is equally as important as finding out what you do like, and if you only seek out the 'best albums' its all gonna become noise to you since you have no point of reference
Honestly, I had the reverse experience, I started with really obscure, extreme releases and slowly started to appreciate more mainstream stuff after checking out many albums I found on RYM.
i think there comes a point in every “music nerd”’s life where you realize it all just doesn’t matter as much as it used to and find yourself able to enjoy most music for the simple fact that it is music
I think it's a great idea to listen to the most acclaimed albums (as they are extremely influential) but just don't get mad when you don't like something. I hated to be kind, but liked soundtracks for the blind and vespertine, for example. Your opinion on an album does not change its worth to the music world, but you'll eventually like something anyways. I just had to accept that even if I hate an album-it's still basically good and there's nothing I can do to change that.
I don't say this to be mean, but people do need to get over themselves a little in terms of what art they enjoy. Like, if you don't like something, that's not a reflection on you or the people who do like it. If someone doesn't like something you like, same thing. Obviously it can get frustrating, especially if you like something that gets constantly clowned on, but just try to like stuff you like without caring too much about others. Their opinions should just be there to guide you to more stuff.
i think its more fun to just consult random people on what music they like. Sometimes I'll make a deal with a friend to listen to this one album if they listen to this album i enjoy. It's pretty nice to bond over music like that instead of just looking through reviews that all say that the thing you like sucks and just make you feel kinda shitty.
I was also thinking about doing that, but I'm too insecure right now, especially since I _really_ want to recommend my friends some Death Grips or Crystal Castles.
I love that Post Rock was your example for a genre you don't want to just jump into, I had GY!BE play on spotify randomly after finishing an album, and I instantly fell in love.
I think I've had the opposite experience to musical anesthesia. The more I listen to great albums from a variety of genres, the more appreciation I have for albums that I previously would've written off, and the better I'm able to articulate why I love the albums that I already do
Listening to foreign releases can be a great way to appreciate artists from different genres. Also, listening to the Top 100 is the worst way to get started in music. There's a big difference between listening to a folk album because you're really interested in the genre, than listening to it because it ranked 17th on the all-time charts.
Nah, in my opinion, song like "I Wonder" and "The Less I Know The Better" have gone from emotional masterpiece to background music from hearing more music.
Yeah, I feel like it can go both ways. I didn’t like Kid A as a teenager, but the more cultured I became, the more I fell in love with it and appreciated its unique innovations. Simultaneously I also used to like some terrible stuff that I find unlistenable now. I’ve gotten more selective about some stuff, and more open-minded about other stuff. I guess that’s evolution.
One of my favourite activies is to search up any artist I like on RYM and laugh about at all the people who spent way too much time writing an angry review about why the artist "isn't as good anymore" and "They're just imitating artist xy".
I'm a fan of Waking the Cadaver's first album (it's in the bottom 100 albums) and man, the amount of pure hatred, ridiculous overexaggerations, and weird overly sensitive political rants on that page are soooo fcking funny
Honestly I find it more fun to look up artists I dislike, And try to find positive reviews. Occasionally they might make me actually reconsider, But more often they're good to laugh at because they're talking about the phenomenal songwriting of the band when the songwriting is easily their worst aspect.
ILY for posting this - as someone that had a terrifying 'I'm not like the other girls' phase at age 14 with my incredibly tumblr-derived music tastes, this site humbled and scared me. At the same time, I will say that almost everybody on it is pretty critical and seeing my favourite albums that gave me goosebumps and made me feel things get three stars annoyed me to no end. But that's how you grow your taste in music. The only problem is that the pipeline from rateyourmusic visitor to independent music supremacist douchebag is kinda slippery.
Music tastes change and expand over time. Now that I'm 46 I listen to far more metal and heavy music than I used to, in fact of the 400 albums I listen to a year, 70% of it is metal, much of it extreme metal. I began to appreciate how adventurous the music is, how bold, brutal and dread-inducing. Stimulating in the way horror movies can be.
would you recommend me some of that music? i started to listen to cannibal corpse and dying fetus and im becoming a fan of that style of music that is a representation of horror b-movies
@@ZombieDeMierda Here are 15 albums or EP's worth checking out, different flavors: Death Portrait - Morbid Curiosity Horrendous - Ontological Mysterium Mithridatum - Harrowing Nightmarer - Deformity Adrift Obsidyen - Litany of Iah Bastard Grave - Vortex Of Disgust VOIDCEREMONY - Threads of Unknowing Conjureth - The Parasitic Chambers Anarkhon - Phantasmagorical Personification of the Death Temple Sepulcrum - Lamentation of Immolated Souls Aphotic - Abyssgazer Crypta - Shades of Sorrow Pestifer - Defeat of the Nemesis Lunar Chamber - Shambhallic Vibrations Blut aus Nord - Disharmonium: Nahab Astriferous - Pulsations from the Black Orb
I can't imagine being a music newbie and listening to "Soundtracks for the Blind" as their first post-rock album. Wait.... that's exactly my first post-rock album.
I believe that was my first post rock album too! I enjoy SFTB, but I like much more their other albums (To be kind is my favourite, a lot of bangers there!)
@@anony-moon Those are amazing choices too!. It depends on the mood tbh, to be kind is amazing whether you feel good, sad, mad or bad. SFTB is when you want to meditate or reflect on your life. The sound and Helpless child are powerful songs.
Swans - Soundtracks for the Blind is probably my all time favorite album, but it took knowing the band, hearing other stuff, and building a strong relationship with the album to come to that decision. These sites don’t encourage that. It’s all about “this is the best, and if you don’t like or understand the best then you aren’t worth listening to” when that couldn’t be further from the truth. The people I listen to the most are those who have listened to a bunch of music, including many albums on these lists, and they just may end up hating most of the stuff in the top, and they love some cheesy, obvious picks. These guys actually know what they like and enjoy music more than most “snobs” I know who know next to nothing, but love Radiohead because they found it on RYM
Trust me when I say I really want to like SFTB, but I just don't and can't figure out why. But I totally agree - the people whose opinion i am the most curious about are people who I know have listened to a lot of music and aren't out to hate a certain demographic (like you for example). Also thanks so much for the comment, I'm a big fan.
I kinda love and hate the fact that I relate heavily to this video. Sometimes I just cannot get the opinions others have on certain art/media out of my head, and damn do I wish that weren’t the case. (Great video btw)
I appreciate you a lot for making this video. While now I'm a big music nerd (mostly a metalhead) for a year now and the things you mention (such as no objectivity in music, trying to ignore negative reviews and not care about averages in music) are things I wish I knew a year ago before starting my musical journey. Nowadays I like to check out albums that are in the "average" range (3.00-3.40) that don't appear much in the charts, because they can either be overlooked, being biased because they were a trend at a certain time (deathcore, nu metal) or maybe they are a hidden gem waiting to be discovered, that variety really has made the site so much fun than just "go through the top 100".
for me rym is fantastic in finding an artists whole discography, (if stuff isn’t on streaming) an artists side projects/other bands/ collaborators, and finding other similar artists that you may like through genre tags and lists. reviews are… not always the best or most insightful but usually i can look past that because of the overall usefulness of the site
one thing i don’t really like is the user interface however, and how it separates releases in a genre into mixtape, album, and ep. that makes finding albums in very mixtape heavy genres pretty tough (does anyone know if there’s an easy way to get around this that i’m missing?)
honestly i wish there was a way to hide scores on rym because there have been moments where i read a bunch of reviews and spoiled/ruined an album listen for myself
IMO I don't get how relying on genres and tags is a great way to find similar artists; someone said the exact same thing on reddit; I just wish RYM can just show similar albums/artists under the artist and release pages for me to discover more; just like AOTY, AllMusic and Last FM; RYM needs to take some notes
I used RYM just to browse and expand my knowledge in genres and once i find one that is interesting i just grab a couple of albums without looking at the reviews and listen to them and if i didnt like the genre i just go for the next one (subgenres included) and if i liked the genre i continue with it until im bored and move to the next one This strategy made me accept more experimental music and more avant-garde stuff later that led to me liking so many new and obscure albums that arent even in the top 200 list of RYM and made me know my taste in music even better
It sucks that rym can be so taxing, but I like that it shows your age and location in your bio. If you really like Animal Collective and one reviewer says it sucks, just go to their profile and gain some insight. 9 times out of 10, you'll realize it's a 42 year old German man who really likes heavy metal. Of course they're not gonna like the same bands as you 90% of the time
@@pilkmaster you must really trust and understand yourself a lot if you're able to put a playlist of your own on shuffle after it grows past 500 songs i could never, just the same 6 tracks i discovered recently on rotation for a full month let's go babyyy
"I'll just get into painting" and then he discovers minimalist contemporary art and loses his mind over 40 different paintings of all red canvases (I love contemporary art)
personally I find it really useful for just finding music that I find interesting. number = big doesn't mean album = better, it just means that a lot of people on rym liked it, which if you find yourself aligning often with the general option, can be a good way to get a quick indication about how people are feeling about it. and yeah, at the end if the day, some people are gonna leave shitty or silly reviews on music you like, but you have to remember, it's just their opinion. just because its in text on a music website doesn't mean it's true. and if we stopped leaving any critical reviews whatsoever, I think the loss in terms of learning about what you like and why would be far greater than the benefit of not seeing people dislike things that you like. if seeing a bad review is enough to make you never want to listen to that album, then, idk, maybe avoid the reviews? but also I don't think deciding not to listen to an album is really the end of the world, if you decide never to listen to an album that rym doesn't like then yeah that's kinda lame but in that case I feel like you're taking them a little more seriously than they deserve. anyway, I have found a lot of my favourite music on there, and yeah there's an issue around western-centric music but I think that is just from having a mostly western user base. plus it's actually a pretty good way to break out of only listening to us/uk/english language music if you make the decision to instead of taking whatever is put in front of you, what with the lists and top albums from countries and stuff
Not sure to what degree having a less Western userbase will change things radically soon enough, considering that most countries don't have music industries that persuade even their local audiences, let alone on a global scale. On RYM we're starting to have certain national bases such as Argentinians who seem to have success in pushing local albums they consider significant onto the charts, however users from other countries just seem to be rating the same Western albums as their Western counterparts on RYM do... It's probably going to take a change in the site architecture to reduce some of this bias... Also, the site doesn't have an app, nor is it entirely optimized for mobile browsing, so they've got along way ahead.
this is the craziest video because several years ago I did the same thing and listened to the rolling stone top 100 albums in order trying to "learn about music" and ran into the exact same problems, especially the "I need to figure out why an album is good if it's top rated and I don't see it". I'm still not exactly a music expert or anything, but I think I have learned that my approach should be more oriented around trying to independently figure out why I like or dislike an album rather than trying to figure out what other people think I should like and dislike and trying to figure out what Music Critic Ears are doing differently than me. I started treating album reviews like movie spoilers, basically. Anyway, thanks for putting some of my music novice thoughts into words so nicely
I think these days, the best way to find new music is by looking at the related artists under other ones you like. And if you don't have many to start with, just listen to playlists, and if you like someone's sound then listen to more of their discography
You have such a great energy I really hope you make it big! I got into music through RYM as well and it was such an interesting experience. There are a ton of albums I thought were meh at first like the Velvet Underground and Nico, and then one day on relisten they just click and go from a 6 to a 9/10 or something.
honestly, one of the most relatable videos I have ever seen on RUclips. really loved ur honesty throughout this whole video and the whole not getting why these albums are so great but don't like them (I still feel this way about Bjork's Vespertine). I also think it was great to see you talk about the advent and effect that these reviews can give you and alter one's perception. also loved that you kinda talked about the whole pretentiousness of the site itself and how it seems they incredibly favor a certain kind of music. makes it very annoying when trying to find new stuff. one of the most enjoyable videos I've seen about music. this was honestly great, keep up the content.
I have been a fan of Vespertine for the longest time. If you want to get into it, think of it as an album for sleeping. "An Echo, a Stain" is one of my favorites. I would begin to listen to it before sleeping, preferably if you're a passenger on an overnight road trip. It's also good for just listening to it while you're doing homework, if you're still in school, or if you need to unwind.
@@cheapphilosophy9371 If you get 2 minutes into a 3 minute song and decide you don’t like it and the sound isn’t for you, there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s not enough time in the day to finish every song you don’t like just for the sake of having an “informed opinion” especially if you’re someone who frequently delves into new artists and genres
@@polarboi9703 respect for the artist and the art, even if it is a artist i despice if I chose to listen to a song, I finish it, you May always change opinión, perhaps theres a little thing in the 2:30 Mark that makes everything make sense
@@cheapphilosophy9371 thats not true across the board. Why would i listen to a song just to enjoy the last 30 seconds of it, and it being 2 minutes long? Ice spice is trash 2 seconds in. And if it the core of the song isnt for me, then their is no need to finished the song. Other than artists that glorify things I don't approve of, I will check Out a few of their songs even if i dont like the first one i heard by them, unless they make crap music in general. Because despite popular belief, there is a point when someone is bad art. Just like you can play out of key, or out of rhythm-there are some wild genre's that shouldn't exist😅.
This might be the most relatable video I've ever watched lmao especially the music anesthesia bit, all of this had been in my mind for a while but you just put it in the right words
I feel like the general rule of thumb for RYM is a high score means a good album, a low score means a bad album, but a mediocre score doesn't nessesarily mean a mediocre album.
Another thing I dislike about RYM is that it's userbase led to every album in the top 100 getting a negative stigma from the general public where people will just never give these artists a chance regardless if their other material is way more accessible, just because of those specific albums. For example one of the albums on there is The Downward Spiral by Nine Inch Nails, I adoree the band and the album but many including my friends just see it as artsy fartsy noisy broken garbage. It took so much convincing for them to listen to a more poppy song like The Hand That Feeds and they ended up loving it and appreciating the band. We should stop making people feel bad about liking albums on the list or not liking them, both the nerds and regular people need to stop harassing eachother. I think this was an important video to make and I thank you for doing so.
this video is so real i literally switched from rym to aoty for this reason 😭 people are less elitist there. i’m grateful for it because it put me onto my favourite album of all time (atrocity exhibition) but i disagree with so many takes people have on that website. additionally i’ve seen reviews from there calling certain albums i really liked as ‘albums you’ll eventually grow out of” and that also made me really sad tbh.
Aoty is good but the genre tags are HORRIBLE. Why is you will never know why by sweet trip shoegaze??? At least rym does that well, the community and interface on the other hand....... Aoty winds by a landslide. But I do prefer comments in rym because they are more funny(?)
i think rym has gotten better since like 2018, its user based pretty much sucked from 2003 to 2015, and the charts and reviews are getting better every year, and less elitist, you just have to ignore some old bullshit, or even the new trolls, but I really love the community on Rym now imo
Criticism is dialogue. You disagree? Critique back. Critique differently. Critique better. Critique along the lines of your understanding. Saying something is subjective amounts to nothing
I'm in my "music anesthesia" phase, nothing resonates with me deeply as before...it kinda creeps me out thinking that I won't be able to enjoy music as much as before
Another important thing I think is that sorting everything into rating numbers is probably a bad tendency (as you also allude to at the beginning of the video), be it rating numbers, rankings or anything else. Like I understand that it makes sense for a big online music forum, or for someone like Anthony Fantano who has to put out a rating for 2-3 albums a week, but in general I don't buy that an album is "a 7/10" as if there is some kind of hidden scoring system, as if there's a dart board for an album to hit and evaluate its precision. My favorite kinds of music criticism situate these albums not just in a context of other music, but also in the writer's own life. Because that's what music is also about. I don't just like underscores' Wallsocket because it is "good" (though it is) or because it is "well-produced" (though it is), I especially like it because it came out at the right time in my life, an album about the emotional complexity of becoming self-reliant in suburban capitalist hell, right when I'm at the age where I have to become self-reliant in a suburban capitalist hell? Hell yeah. And if I were to write a full review of it, I believe that context would be important. Where the album works, and where it falls flat, relies a lot on how it fits in my life, how it interacts with my thoughts right now. Wow, I feel like a gushed a lot here. Anyways, point is, don't give the music in your life numbers, give it a place in your personal biography.
rating movies and music and such has really fucked a lot of how people think about these art forms. giving them a score is essentially a manifestation of consumer culture, the very thing a lot of artists try to resist. alternatively it is influenced by school grading systems that have set criteria for how to get your points, therefore rating movies and music causes people to apply a set of criteria (often reductive) where it may ought not to be applied. thirdly, in the terminally online internet age, it's sort of an image thing, though I know this is not unique to our terminally online internet age.
When I try to communicate why I think a piece of music is good, I mostly try to ignore this personal context because it doesn't apply to the person I'm talking to. I would focus less on what feeling it's trying to convey and focus more on how it's trying to do it, which is a more general/universal criterium. While there is definitely objectivity in art, I do agree that review scores do blur the line and make people forget that there's also a lot of subjectivity involved.
It implies that if two albums are rated the same then they are approximately as good which is a strange measure because really we can only fairly compare two works in the same style
OMMMMMMG!!! The Psychadelic Prn Crumpets album is sooo instrumentally vibrant and the soundscapes throught all the songs is so evocative. I would have never thought I would see a random youtuber mention them, High Visceral Pt.1 is worth checking out. So many great songs like Found God, which got me into them, Surfs Up, and Cornflake. Truly one of my favorite psych rock experience that I discovered during the pandemic.
music anesthesia as you described is definitely a thing, after scouring for music for a few years listening to a bunch of stuff it really takes a special album to have a "wow" effect on me anymore. Meanwhile a normal person that only listens to some radio hits gets so easily impressed about new stuff.
Most musicians, myself included, listen to a lot less music the more they play/write. I still listen to music of course, but focusing on what you hear in your head begins to overshadow your desire to want to hear new music. Sounds like its your time to pick up an instrument. 80% of what i listen to now is jazz in the background during chores/work.
Maybe you are burned out by music. You should try to get into other artforms, like dance or theatre. I've been on RYM since 2017, and I still get excited for most new releases. Sometimes I wish I could travel back in time to 2090 to see what genres and releases have been created 70 years from now. The same goes for movies, I'm really looking forward to seeing what filmmaking and storytelling will be like in 100 years, sadly I'll already be dead by now.
I remember seing an album i liked have very low rankings, and i felt so guilty i gaslighted myself for not liking it. The album was The Resistance by Muse, and it was my first time tipping my toes in that sort of muisc. It really opened my mind when i first listened to it.
its impossible to define which are the best albums in history. i started using rym as a reference for discovering music, not as the "ultimate truth about music". I love the site but seeing that in the top 100 albums, there were fewer than 10 by female artists, and only three or four albums not in English made it clear to me that in a way the site is still conservative towards certain kind of artists and music.
I agree with this. RYM should be used as tool for finding new music, not as an "ultimate truth about music". Just because your favourite album or artist doesn't appear on Top 100, it doesn't mean that RYM is a useless website. People should focus more in the customization aspect of the charts (genres, descriptors, location, language, year, release type, etc.), rather than the idea of seeing the charts as some sort of "ultimate truth about music".
Even those numbers are better than how the charts used to look like back in the 2000s. There is more non-Western music getting attention on the site, however most countries other than Japan and Brazil do not have much "hip appeal" yet. It doesn't help that there are still very few users from outside the Anglophone (partly because of the lack of translations, partly because the site doesn't have a mobile app or complete mobile browser optimization). As for there not being more acclaim for female artist, I doubt things will change pretty soon, because women rarely get socialized as "music nerds" in most societies to this point, except maybe Japan seems to be doing it better (I mean, there are more than a few Japanese women who would listen to or make just about any kind of music you can imagine).
ehh, i think RYM's mid anyway. Some rap album at #1, while actual bangers like Sonic Mania and Touhou OST which are way lower than they should be makes no sense
the beautiful thing about rym is that you can follow people and filter the charts so they only include the ratings of the people you follow and don't show the albums you've already rated yourself. that way you have a chart that is constantly filled with music you haven't heard that you are probably going to like. have done that the past few years, and i have over a thousand positive ratings and still loads of music i still want to check out.
You somehow managed to capture so much of how I feel about exploring new music. The pessimistic section is also so accurate for me. I stumbled on an old playlist of mine from a few years ago, songs that got me through so much and all I could think was how basic my taste was and I hate that I felt that way. Its a complicated thing balancing enjoyment and the human urge to fit in as having "good taste"
I use RYM strictly for genre discovery and love reading the descriptions of some obscure subgenre. As for reviews I rarely pay attention to them. Now I don't think ratings or reviews are unnecessary cause it's nice to read somebody describing exactly how you feel about a particular song or album but I don't think you should undervalue/dismiss your opinion just because some guy who has written 3 paragraphs describing how they hate a particular album you love. Or just because Fantano has made 5 videos about his hate on Wonderful Christmastime. I still like the song.
I love the “what is your favorite song of all time” question because I always have and will always have a straight answer. Telegraph Road by Dire Straits
i have go-to answers depending on who’s asking or how i feel when asked. “bloodhail” by have a nice life is my main one. not too mainstream but not too underground. a pleasing answer most people can understand. “god bless our dead marines” by silver mt zion if i want to show a more outside of the box adventurous (or depressing) side. something that will offend the average listener and provide a great experience for more open-minded individuals and if i’m REALLY into a certain thing when i’m asked, i’ll just say “rn i’m really into [song] by [artist]”. it may not be that exact song that encompasses what i want to share, but it’ll be a highlight or good gateway to what i’m interested in at the moment. like rn, my answer would be “el cantante” by héctor lavoe because i’ve been really loving some fania records classics recently
for me i'd probably pick Clair de Lune because i feel it can represent the entirety of existence in this universe although it's not actually my all time favourite song (i mean, my favourite artist isn't even Claude Debussy), because that's impossible for me to decide on.
I had to pause the video when you said you don’t like In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. I respect you for saying it and I actually saw it coming but that shit hit like a truck, but I guess that kinda shows what I’ve become.
I feel like you're forgetting that your tastes can change over time. It's fine if a song you really liked at one point just doesn't hit the same anymore. Also, I used to get weird feeling from seeing album reviews that didn't think the same things I did, but I frickin grew out of that lol
The thing you said about musical anaesthesia is so true. I found out about RYM through this video so I can’t really blame it for this. But I’ve listened to so many different genres in a short amount of time that it’s almost become arbitrary to me. Literally can listen to anything now. I’d recommend taking a long break from music.
I don't really care about RYM's ratings, they don't influence me at all, but I do understand why at first they might influence someone, I think everoyne starts otu like that but eventually the more music they exlpore the more confident they become in their own tastes. As for not liking popular albums, I think that's completely okay, but I also think it is important to give albums more than once chance, sometimes something might grow on you after ages too, I've seen it a lot in listeners where they turn around, when it comes to music nothing is really ingrained into stone when it comes to our taste, sometimes it takes a while before we get the appeal, sometimes that might also never happen, I think we all have bands like that which we couldn't wrap our hands around. For me that band is Sonic Youth, I love Noise Rock, but their brand of it never appealed to me no matter how much I tried. Maybe like 10 years from now I'll be obsessed with'em though, you never know. My favorite albums and songs of all time change pretty much every month, currently as I write this I'm deeply obsessed with Jimmy Eat World. I think, that once you've explore these highly regarded albums long enough, it'll kind of circle around, where you grow to appreaciate records like Deathconsciousness, Soundtrack For The Blind etc but then also rock out to butt-rock like Three Days Grace's One-X roflmao, so I kind of would like to put your faers to the rest, I've not fallen in love with anything ever since I've buried my head into music more, nothing in the past was soured for me no matter how critically panned it got, well, for a while, maybe it did, but that is just a phase you might feel, but I do promise that it's just a phase.
"Can you blame me?" Yes, skill issue. But on a more serious note, I've honestly never experienced this as a longtime avid user of RYM. For me the site has always been a place for musical exploration and joining the conversation around music. Of course, it's not like reading reviews hasn't ever impacted my perspective on albums...but 9 times out of 10 it's a glowing a review for an album that I disliked that got me to see it in a new light and understand it better, even though I may still not like it. It's interesting to see how opposite our experiences with the site has been. I will fully admit that RYM can be pretty toxic at times though, especially when they're collectively bashing something in the comment box. Nice video!
I didn't expect this to be a good video, but surprisingly it is. Nicely done. The biggest thing is that the journey of music is entirely individualistic and everyone else are optional guides. I'm listening to things now I wouldn't considered trash about 1-2 years ago which is a surprise to me. Sites and spheres like RYM can lead to some unhealthy and downright stupid habits. Also, writing music and seeing music live can really change your world.
Good vid! I’ve always known that RYM is a shitshow of a website but I mainly just use it to organise and catalogue my collection and the music I listen to. Honestly, if I didn’t like an extremely popular album I wouldn’t care. For example, OK Computer is deemed by people “a 10/10 masterpiece” but to me it’s only a 6 and what sucks is that I like the album and understand everything about it but people will just see the score and think I hate it. Anyway uh, Cries From A Computer is the best album ever, objectively 10/10 album totally. Also Ariana Grande will be always be one of my favourite artists lol. Pop is way too overhated sometimes.
yeah i totally agree! i try not to interact with anything on the site other than my personal ratings, and that's just to note what i've listened to. ok computer was also not that enjoyable for me. much preferred in rainbows and the bends lol
Same lmao, the toxicity of the website really makes me just use it to catalog music and keep track of the albums I listen to, I don't interact with the community at all, just go to any comment box of a popular album this year and it reeks of negativity. But it's great for personal use like you said. Just cataloguing music, like I have a 3000 albums list that I plan to listen to.
@@meatgrinder9506 Go to any comment box of any album released this year, please don't try to tell me that rym is such a happy and respectful site where everyone holds hands and respect opinions.
This was a good breakdown of the site. I definitely think that hopping onto rym or /mu/ or aoty can be incredibly daunting, and as you said the accessibility of a lot of top rated records can be very low. Not everyone can throw on Trout Mask Replica or In the Court of the Crimson King and just "get" it. Similarly, realizing your favorite music isn't nearly as critically acclaimed as you had hoped can be a bit crushing. Overall a lot of this is why I enjoy sharing music with friends as opposed to just looking at lists. While the rym lists are definitely useful, there's just something so much more organic about exchanging albums with friends and then discussing them. It helps you better articulate what you like, it helps you get to know them better, and overall it's a lot less daunting than the cruel, uncaring nature of the internet. Not everyone has the time, care, or energy to sift through rym lists for hours and listen to 7-10 new albums every week, and to act like that's the best way to find music for everyone would be ignorant at best and detrimental to people's love of music at worst. I'm grateful the sites are there, but they are not the end all be all of music discovery.
one of my least favourite trends atm is on tiktok when someone posts their like top 10 albums and the comments are just full of either people saying w opinion or L opinion. noones even talking about the albums they either just agree or disagree.
Post-rock is actually pretty easy to get into, its often very mellow and easy on your ears. Albums like Lift your skinny fists like antennas to heaven, Hole of Burning Alms, Mogwai Young Team, maybe even Spiderland, are what i would recommend which are the staples of the genre. Swans are probably not the best pick lol, that's for sure, and they're not really post-rock defining to my opinion
I think that Swans falls into another category called "Experimental Post-Rock" represented by artists like Cul de Sac, Tortoise, Moonshake and Body Meπa.
8:35 thats me with anything. Something could have 99% great reviews but that one negative holds so much more weight for some reason. Kind of how you could get many compliments throughout your life but that one negative one sticks to you the most.
is it supposed to be bad or good tho. Cause i would say it's on point. There are a lot of those meeting in 2.7, 2.8, and the great ones are usually 3.5, 3.6
Because the average album would be a 2.5 by the definition of average, but people usually mostly rate albums they like which skews the distribution higher.
@joeb.4204 There are plenty of albums under a score of 3.00 but most of the have less than few ratings. If you live in Latin America, you will notice that a lot of the popular artists from those countries don't have albums under 3.00.
Gosh I relate to this so much I've had the same experience of loving an album or song, and then seeing people shit on it makes me question if it's even good, so I force myself to listen to "objectively good music" but sometimes it just doesn't impact me the same. I enjoy listening to a variety of music, but I always come back to pop because it's what I grew up on. It's a fun, easy listening music genre that spawns a lot of songs everyone knows. It gets frustrating at times in certain "real" music listener spaces, because if you like these pop artists, and albums, your music taste is trash lol, sometimes simplistic, and generic is a nice change.
To me i find it weird to see many popular songs to have low ratings. Maybe I was only a kid listening to it and I didnt care what the criticism was. However, some of the reviews feel like they unfairly hated it or wasn't constructive.
great video dude! I remember being caught in the same flip flop state you were in and just recently learned to just like what I like. You really spoke my mind with this one
Dude this perfectly articulated the exact same shit I was feeling when my friend showed me RYM. The "objectively good" mindset broke my brain for far too long so it's cool to see that I'm not the only one
1. Devil in a new dress 2. Father strech my hands pt. 1 3. Diamonds from Sierre Leone Original 4. Touch the sky 5. Saint Pablo 6. Through the wire 7. All falls down 8. No Mistake 9. Reborn 10. Dark Fantasy
Really enjoyed this video! For me personally it was really difficult to find albums and artists that I liked and even when you do find the artist that you like you won't always enjoy their music.
One thing I've noticed about RYM as someone who's very into some more extreme or niche genres of experimental music is how the userbase of RYM will often heap praise on albums which, while fairly difficult or intimidating to most people, are only as out there as big music outlets or reviewers are consistently willing to cover and praise, occasionally resulting in some weird chart placements where comparatively accessible but non-indicative records which got a lot of buzz or the pet records of certain big reviewers will wind up higher than certain highly influential and respected records in the genre. Much as I love Soundtracks for the Blind and have myself argued its influence and significance for years, I don't think it would be nearly so high in the site's rankings without Anthony Fantano's praise for Swans and the surprise hype surrounding their return in the early 2010s. Likewise, great as Lingua Ignota's work is, it's bizarre to see her top the power electronics charts with Caligula, a record which is definitely inspired by the genre in places but feels pretty out of place next to the likes of Controlled Bleeding and Navicon Torture Technologies.
@@eterty8335 I think the first half of this is fairly easy to parse even if you don't have the necessary frame of reference for the specific examples I'm giving here.
@@eterty8335 basically theyre talking about how rym users overrate hard-to-get-into albums because more experienced music critics, like fantano or pitchfork, praise them a lot. this leads to the top albums of a certain genre being composed of those hard-to-get-into albums which ruins genre discovery
@@hemalathapajaniraja1990 Actually, my argument was it's kind of the opposite in a lot of cases: They overrate decent but non-indicative albums which are *just* accessible enough to cross over because a lot of the stuff which actually defines those niche genres is, by definition, not going to appeal to a lot of people. So the tops of some of these charts are going to be a couple of solid entry-level Internet Reviewer Approved records which don't really give you a great idea of what the genre is actually like followed by a handful of much freakier or more obscure records which are big with the kind of people who actually listen to those genres regularly.
Lmao I used to watch fantano reviews all the time just for the sake of it (I had no interest in the album 90% of the time.) To the point where I can predict what his opinions are on an album before watching the video if ive listened to it before
having none of the same preferences as you and still understanding and agreeing with all the points you made is awesome, i love being a rational levelheaded internet user
I'd like to take the opportunity to shoutout Mic the Snare for this exact reason. There's a ton of artists that I wanted to get into but didn't know which albums to start with, and his Deep Discog Dive series goes over the discography of many artists and gives insightful commentary on each album. From the Beatles to Björk to Ariana Grande, there's definitely something for everyone :)
While i love most of albums rated as "best" on the website, I agree with every point you make here. I find that a lot of those albums need time and effort to fully appreciate, and even then you just might not like it, find it tedious, which is totally fine and what makes music fun in the first place. Also, glad to find another Fleece enjoyer, they're amazing.
I think it's really amazing that you voice a countering opinion to the idea that there is a correct taste in music. It really spoke to me too. I have always been easily persuaded by reviewers and I have been very insecure about my music taste and wanted to "like and dislike what you are supposed to" I feel like I've gotten ~better~ at just liking the music I like. And not feel wrong when I don't vibe with something. It's a process. A personal example would be with Imagine Dragons. I adored them from when I was 13 to 15-16ish. My exposure to different music was limited but I still thought they were the absolute best. But when I discovered that there are many that find them bad I almost completely boycotted them from my music listening. Even though they were deeply special to me. Nowadays I am more relaxed about it. I definitely see the criticism and my opinion has changed for the worse on a part of their material but there are still songs of theirs, new and old, I really enjoy in spite of a less than favourable public opinion. Imagine Dragons is my most extreme example but the thought of "the right taste in music" has long been a part of my journey with music. So this was cool to see. And it's to see so many others that feel the exact same way. Like what you like peeps^^
despite what you may think you are not nearly alone. i’m pretty sure there’s an entire generation of people roaming the earth who secretly love (or loved) imagine dragons. me being one of them. and i had the same experience, down to the age in which i listened to them. nostalgia is powerful to say the least.
@@liamanthonyfr I find that comforting in a way to know I'm alone in that. That's really nice you wanted to share that. I'm sure many of their fans are like us. If you want to share I'm curious about what song or album were your favorite then and now? For me Polaroid was the dearest one to me. I would still say Smoke and Mirrors is my favorite album of theirs with Pantomime being my favorite song if I had to name one
It’s so hard to find music that connects with you online. I think a better strategy seems to be to find shows in your area and just go see a bunch of bands live. You won’t always love everything but when you do find something you also have the connection to the experience you had. This makes music so much more enjoyable to me. Some of my favorite albums are probably rated “mid” on RYM but I don’t care! The point is to enjoy what you enjoy!
I only visit RYM for their genre classification system and occasionally some user lists. I don't trust those people when it comes to what music is _good,_ but I'm much more able to trust them when it comes to what kind of music music is.
i went through the same thing that liam talked about in the video, and soon i realised that i had to figure out my own taste. you’re right, bc now when i want to find something new in a specific style, i just look up the genre on RYM. ive found some personal favourites this way!
the way i was agreeing with everything you said but then said u didnt like itaots..... thats the beauty of subjectivity. i love it so much, but i HATED it on my first couple listens. this isnt me saying "just listen to it more and then youll like it!", bc the sound is... weird lets be real and it isnt going to appeal to everyone. i think the messages you put across when trying to listen to new music are rlly important and every new music listener should take them on board. i contstantly have to remind myself just because something is critically acclaimed, doesnt mean im gonna like it, let alone HAVE to like it. amazing video :)
When I look at online music reviewers and even when I took many of my musicianship and theory courses in college, the demographic looks a particular way. And not to invalidate their opinions - I look the same way - but “music community” is very insular and biased. It should be a red flag when so many people - most of which educated on music to some degree - are in agreement of the same top ten albums. I know personally, my education (even though it wasn’t my major) spent a lot of time introducing me to various genres, styles, cultures, and approaches to music, and saying a piece of music was bad and entirely without merit was something incredibly difficult. The online space for music reviewing has definitely become toxic. I wouldn’t follow these “reviewers” for their reviews, and I would never prime my own listening experience with the arbitrary rating.
I can't make a list of my favorite music, but I can say that I liked this video. RYM has allowed me to discover artists that I would not have found otherwise. It is okay to admit that the "consensus" about an album can have an impact on the way we listen to some records, and can further have an impact on our general perception. It a matter of learning how to navigate through it. At the end of the day, I'm not a music expert, I just know what I like.
Oh my god, that "Music Credibility" section was SO DAMN RELATABLE. Like, i don't know why, but every time i hear an opinion on an album, my brain subconsciously takes it as law and puts it in place of the previous opinion there, which causes me to look at that album in a completely different way, most of the time more cynical and judgemental. I hate this so much cause it really makes me feel like I'm not determined enough to even know what I like 💀
This was a really interesting video, and I've been on RYM a number of times but less so over the years. On a personal note, I've been playing guitar and writing music for 14 years and to me the greatest music is music that makes me want to play and understand what I'm listening to. So when it comes to music that people love more for the poetry I've always had trouble enjoying it because what I care about what's going on behind the vocals. Even then that can be real particular to the person listening to music, and the thing you mentioned about having less of a reaction is something I know all too well. Something that used to excite me before doesn't do as much now because of all the myriad of things I've listened to that did what I like better or differently or tackled it in what I thought was a fascinating way. All that to say, this video was dope as hell and you've given me some stuff to think about.
that's why I only listen to whatever music andrew tate say it's good
lucas so real for this 💯
Bro is 12 💯💯
tate w 💯💯
respect💯💯👊👊👊🔥🔥🔥
Bro is misogynistic 💯
I remember having a friend who listened to Breakcore, I didn’t understand the appeal until they simply said “I don’t know, it just kinda sounds like the noise inside my head, as if my feelings were converted into a song”
This has been my philosophy for music ever since
wow, those are some words of wisdom for us all
The typical draw of breakcore is the insanely guttural and panicky feeling of it, essentially, breakcore when put into certain contexts really starts that adrenaline flow, a good example is "The big black" and some of Ultrakill's soundtrack. (Then again, I'm not 100% sure of what makes breakcore other than the "amen break" pattern that is in it.)
Edit:
As it turns out, the quick brown fox makes speedcore, not breakcore, my mistake.
feelings converted into noise is the entire point behind music
breakcore is basically ADHD in music form lol it's great
@@Z-mg6bwBreakcore specifically avoids looping drum patterns and actively cuts up drum breaks to create a more hectic, anxious or aggressive feel; there's also a distinct influence from hardcore techno and especially speedcore in the sound palette and musical tropes, which is where the "core" part in "breakcore" comes from. A lot of people tend to mislabel stuff like drum'n'bass and jungle which also use a lot of drum breaks as "breakcore," and while there is some overlap, they're fundamentally pretty different.
“Real music” is one of the most infuriating terms you can use for any kind of music.
this is also true for art in general
as a bull of heaven fan i agree with this a lot
I think we've all had that moment where you're showing someone a song, and then they hit you with the iconic "This isn't music."
@@gekinatracksuit9710 It happens to the best of us.
I once remember playing Kid A to one of my friends, and the way they responded was “you call this crap “music”????”.
@@gekinatracksuit9710happens to me a lot, people dont even like me putting music for project/misc things, and when I show them liszt or rachmaninoff or chopin theyre like "uh this doesnt have lyric so it dumb and it bad 🤓☝️ id rather prefer listen to lady gaga than this "pasionate list transgender study" or whatever its called" like, and also people can get too petty about things they dont even know what theyre talking about, some years ago I had a school Project thingie about puppets and there was this playful/joyous part and I got assigned to choose the music, and for the happy part I put Liszt Transcendental etude no.3, and that is in a mayor key and it aound nostalgic and relaxed, but then my classmate started telling at me how "THIS IS A FUCKING SAD *SONG* , THIS IS NOT HAPPY" "but its in a major key?-" "JUST BECAUSE ITS IN A KEY DOESNT MEAN ITS SAD OR HAPPY YOU F SLUR" "wtf it literally does??? What the fuck are you on about" "we cant pick you to do anything cant we" and also there was a scene in the Project where one the characters died and I wanted to choose shostakovich string quartet no8 for that scene.. "YOU FUCKING IDIOT THATS A CHASE *SONG* YOU HAVE NO MUSIC TASTE AT ALL YOU SHOULD DIE" "wtf"
People dont even know what theyre talking about when they want to critique something.
And also his favorite music is about a guy saying how much he loves to masturbate to tall skinny women, in reggaetón style, I dont think he has all of that much privilege to critique my musical style
As a frequent consultant of rym, this video really speaks to the part inside of me that cries when I see that my favorite album has a rating of less than 4 stars
real.
try being a metalhead, majority of my fav albums are below 3.5
Ive come to see that any album on rym which has a rating higher than 3.60 is a good album
@@lisandroarnesino1470By metalhead do you mean you listen to alt metal and metalcore lol because most of my favorite albums are reasonably rated (None so Vile, Akuma no Uta, RATM, I Don't Care Where I Go When I Die, Jesu, AtF), but a lot of modern stuff is rated really low and I don't like it either
@@Billiamwoods mostly death or black metal, some doom, some metalcore/deathcore, i really like metal in all shapes or form (great albums btw, none so vile is one if not the meanest album i've ever heard)
i choose albums based on their covers, usually works
based as hell
No love deep web and Windswept Adan are my fav ones
This is the way
Actually true though, some of the best music I've listened to has some great covers. That's because the cover is reflective of the album itself, so if an album cover appeals to you the music is likely to appeal aswell.
Got a point.
Great points throughout this video. Very few people are able to admit this sort of bias or come to the same conclusion you did openly about this stuff. As someone who deals with this for a living, this was a nice vid to watch
You live with your parents
Brad i love you
Yooo brad
not gonna lie your takes (and many people on the internets takes) on some of my favs contributed to me being insecure about liking it 😂
shut up
This is why I stick to the very simple music philosophy my father passed down onto me "If you like the music then to you it's good music"
THIS
How it should be
That's exactly right. People that play music think this way. You can't be "good" at listening to music.
@@ColoradoBirdsActually true xd. Listening to music ain't a skill, you can't get good at it.
@@maricvicfreyg.argonza1302 I can already tell that you have never listened to classical music.
i think people forget that RYM has nothing to do with critical acclaim, its literally just a pretty large community of somewhat like minded normal people who enjoy music enough to rate it, if you dont gel with the average taste of a RYM user theres literally nothing wrong with that!
this is kind of what i’ve learned since this whole thing went down. RYM is just one group of people, that’s it!
Same, its definitely a semi-niche community that's pretty far apart from your typical say EDM playlist user on RUclipsr/Spotify, they just listen to whatever is in the playlist whilst RYM users guage on per album and/or artist basis which is a totally different approach.
Its weird to see many famous artists with their singles and albums having low scores.
@@eko9554 it really depends on your definition of "famous".
In my humble opinion it's pretty natural that a community into "art works" isn't gonna like the new mainstream pop single (maybe cooked for beign viral on TikTok), we should always remember that famous is very different from good and/or bad too, and many shitty and/or forgettable records from the past are not in the collective memory as other ones.
Also, there are some mainstream names that still have high scores. Beatles, Charli XCX, Radiohead, Pink Floyd, Kendrick Lamar (TPAB is still the #1 album on RYM charts) and Daft Punk are some of the names that came to my mind. Ther're not as famous as, for example, Drake (especially for younger generation) but they still have a very high number of listeners (for reference: The Beatles 35,5 mln, Charli XCX 17,2 mln, Radiohead 24,8 mln, Pink Floyd 18,5 mln, Kendrick Lamar 51,2 mln, Daft Punk 19 mln)
now, as a RYM user i don't wanna sound picky but I feel like that pop music has been a very weird gimmicky phase lately. maybe i'm just getting old but my sensation is that tracks are not slapping as hard as they used to. I'm really into pop music, it's my favourite genre but usually listening to most of the "low scores famous artists from the modern age" my feeling is that some tracks are either overproduced or poorly produced, or they just sound too corny even for pop music, which has been into some really cheesy phases (like the 80s for example) but (to my ears) it's still tolerable and i can get away with it.
@@wankelftw I do really miss that pop sound in 2010-2017. I want to make an album dedicated to that era of music. I left the art community since they’re so picky. They nitpick aesthetics, dick ride studios and are blinded by nostalgia. Terrible during quarantine when I was pre teen and didn’t have enough critical thinking yet.
one thing about rym: PLEASE don't listen down the all-time rym charts. like, really, it's so much better to put in some thought into what you're gonna listen to, consoder your own preferences for the sonic palate, the genre, the aesthetics, don't just click them one by one, use genre filters, use descriptors, use lists by other users, browse the "obscure" releases pages (there's literally a whole section for that on rym!)
this is the way you can get a full rym experience, i do it myself and I've found so many phenomenal albums and artists
preach
@@liamanthonyfr welp, that's just a way to use the platform a tad bit more extensively and get more out of it
sorry if that sounded preachy, my bad
@@liamanthonyfr and to tell the truth, yeah I'm really not a big fan of how the majority of rym users treat the platform and music itself, it's kinda lacking that love for music that rym is supposed to represent
Its half and half, some legendary albums that deserve it whilst the other half are like just good to great, but definitely not top 100 imo.
I think the top 100 is a great place to start for new users, but definitely look for other stuff outside of it.
I completely stopped reading other people's opinions about music, and I started really enjoying stuff again. Music is one of those things that (in 99% of the cases) can't be objectively classified as "good" or "bad". I couldn't care less if Fantano said my favorite album is trash, that's even more true for a random person on the internet. I also grew to hate "segregation" of genres, I just listen to what I enjoy and I couldn't care less if the song is part of a genre I typically dislike.
This is refreshing to see
fantano rated my favourite album an 8 or so. I still fucking hate him and what he stands for in music
Edit: typo. "by" to "my"
I have friends who genuinely get upset when fantano rates low an alnum they like and I'm like "why do you care about the opinion of someone with less hair than you"
@Northstar-x okay so while I absolutely agree with the fantano-directed vitriol, it is ironic that you say this under a video discussing music.
1. Failed to take your advice there
2. Music is meant to be discussed. Helps people to discover new music they otherwise wouldn't have heard of. It helps people LEARN about music. How do you become a musician without discussing music? How do you improve in your production skills? How do you exercise your creativity and bounce off ideas? It's art. Art is meant to be discussed by consumers and creators alike.
So I disagree with you there.
@@sleekismI think fantano just doesn’t have grounds to review some genres like it’s obvious he won’t like it
It's very worrying whenever I like an album and it's rated very low and considered 'garbage'. It has kind of made me feel guilty for a lot of songs I like.
i support you liking the music you like regardless of whether other people enjoy it or not
The biggest gut punch of reviews for me was lizard by king crimson, I really enjoyed it and Wondered what others thought before hearing that Robert fripp one of the main band members called it "unlistenable garbage"😂
@@DOOM_glazeri listened to it myself and idk thought it was fine
@@DOOM_glazerthe song lizard is rated pretty high though
@@snide0 I'm talking about the album not the song😂
I enjoyed this yap session a lot. Keep it up
yap yap yap yap yap yap
love the vince staples pfp
please keep yapping
@@liamanthonyfr bro fr said yappity yippity yap
hello big fish theory by vince staples
I always thought my musical taste is unique and anti-mainstream
Then i look into RYM page and think, "Crap, i'm not special"
Nah, you're not mainstream. Now you're a snob like the rest of us. *Evil laugh*.
That's why I prefer Album of the Year, the comments there are mostly a breath of fresh air compared to RYM
When i went to RYM i got disappointed so many stuff I like isn't like there. And let's be honest, TPAB and good kid maad city are good but no way they should be rated so high
L take shoulda said somthing like "In the Court of the Crimson King"
@@losfogo7149
@losfogo7149 TPAB is the most critically acclaimed (and in my humble opinion, the best) hip-hop album of all time, which is the most popular genre.
The best thing about RYM is lists, they are useful for finding good albums that often are a little overlooked.
Exactly lol the like genre videos helped me find alot of new shit. rym is rather pretentious lmao which makes sense since it's people who go out of their way to critique music.
Finally a half brain-ed comment.
But then people act like their lists are 100% objective
Yea. You have to find people that enjoy a lot of the same stuff you enjoy. Also once you follow some people you can make charts only including their ratings. I follow a solid 25 people and it’s way more hits than misses.
I think the thing is to listen to albums that are considered mediocre or bad too. Finding out what you don't like is equally as important as finding out what you do like, and if you only seek out the 'best albums' its all gonna become noise to you since you have no point of reference
Honestly, I had the reverse experience, I started with really obscure, extreme releases and slowly started to appreciate more mainstream stuff after checking out many albums I found on RYM.
Same
i think there comes a point in every “music nerd”’s life where you realize it all just doesn’t matter as much as it used to and find yourself able to enjoy most music for the simple fact that it is music
this is happening to me right now
I've been appreciating pretty much everything cause of RYM tbh
Same
I think it's a great idea to listen to the most acclaimed albums (as they are extremely influential) but just don't get mad when you don't like something. I hated to be kind, but liked soundtracks for the blind and vespertine, for example. Your opinion on an album does not change its worth to the music world, but you'll eventually like something anyways. I just had to accept that even if I hate an album-it's still basically good and there's nothing I can do to change that.
agreed. I like AJR.
@@DoMorrMusic its joever for you
Agree, rym was a tool to explore more music for me! :)
I don't say this to be mean, but people do need to get over themselves a little in terms of what art they enjoy. Like, if you don't like something, that's not a reflection on you or the people who do like it. If someone doesn't like something you like, same thing.
Obviously it can get frustrating, especially if you like something that gets constantly clowned on, but just try to like stuff you like without caring too much about others. Their opinions should just be there to guide you to more stuff.
Stick to the real world problems you have cringeboy
i think its more fun to just consult random people on what music they like. Sometimes I'll make a deal with a friend to listen to this one album if they listen to this album i enjoy. It's pretty nice to bond over music like that instead of just looking through reviews that all say that the thing you like sucks and just make you feel kinda shitty.
That reminded me of one of my friends whom we used to share music we liked with eachother mostly vocaloid songs we shared
once a month or so, i do that with my sibling
I was also thinking about doing that, but I'm too insecure right now, especially since I _really_ want to recommend my friends some Death Grips or Crystal Castles.
@@kasane1337 its not like ur friends are gonna abandon you if they think you have trash taste. no harm in trying it :P
I would love to do this but I have like 1 or 2 friends who like music as much as I do
"Do you know what your 10 favorite songs of all time are?"
My ADHD ass consistently maintaining a list of my 100 favorite songs of all time:
I love that Post Rock was your example for a genre you don't want to just jump into, I had GY!BE play on spotify randomly after finishing an album, and I instantly fell in love.
I think I've had the opposite experience to musical anesthesia. The more I listen to great albums from a variety of genres, the more appreciation I have for albums that I previously would've written off, and the better I'm able to articulate why I love the albums that I already do
Listening to foreign releases can be a great way to appreciate artists from different genres. Also, listening to the Top 100 is the worst way to get started in music. There's a big difference between listening to a folk album because you're really interested in the genre, than listening to it because it ranked 17th on the all-time charts.
Same
Nah, in my opinion, song like "I Wonder" and "The Less I Know The Better" have gone from emotional masterpiece to background music from hearing more music.
Same
Yeah, I feel like it can go both ways. I didn’t like Kid A as a teenager, but the more cultured I became, the more I fell in love with it and appreciated its unique innovations. Simultaneously I also used to like some terrible stuff that I find unlistenable now. I’ve gotten more selective about some stuff, and more open-minded about other stuff. I guess that’s evolution.
One of my favourite activies is to search up any artist I like on RYM and laugh about at all the people who spent way too much time writing an angry review about why the artist "isn't as good anymore" and "They're just imitating artist xy".
fr, I'm glad i'm that type of person. Salty reviews just make me laugh.
I'm a fan of Waking the Cadaver's first album (it's in the bottom 100 albums) and man, the amount of pure hatred, ridiculous overexaggerations, and weird overly sensitive political rants on that page are soooo fcking funny
Honestly I find it more fun to look up artists I dislike, And try to find positive reviews. Occasionally they might make me actually reconsider, But more often they're good to laugh at because they're talking about the phenomenal songwriting of the band when the songwriting is easily their worst aspect.
The real "real" music was the friends we made along the way
ILY for posting this - as someone that had a terrifying 'I'm not like the other girls' phase at age 14 with my incredibly tumblr-derived music tastes, this site humbled and scared me. At the same time, I will say that almost everybody on it is pretty critical and seeing my favourite albums that gave me goosebumps and made me feel things get three stars annoyed me to no end. But that's how you grow your taste in music. The only problem is that the pipeline from rateyourmusic visitor to independent music supremacist douchebag is kinda slippery.
Music tastes change and expand over time. Now that I'm 46 I listen to far more metal and heavy music than I used to, in fact of the 400 albums I listen to a year, 70% of it is metal, much of it extreme metal. I began to appreciate how adventurous the music is, how bold, brutal and dread-inducing. Stimulating in the way horror movies can be.
Xtreme metal is the best metal😤😤
yo check out System of Systems
would you recommend me some of that music? i started to listen to cannibal corpse and dying fetus and im becoming a fan of that style of music that is a representation of horror b-movies
@@ZombieDeMierda Here are 15 albums or EP's worth checking out, different flavors:
Death Portrait - Morbid Curiosity
Horrendous - Ontological Mysterium
Mithridatum - Harrowing
Nightmarer - Deformity Adrift
Obsidyen - Litany of Iah
Bastard Grave - Vortex Of Disgust
VOIDCEREMONY - Threads of Unknowing
Conjureth - The Parasitic Chambers
Anarkhon - Phantasmagorical Personification of the Death Temple
Sepulcrum - Lamentation of Immolated Souls
Aphotic - Abyssgazer
Crypta - Shades of Sorrow
Pestifer - Defeat of the Nemesis
Lunar Chamber - Shambhallic Vibrations
Blut aus Nord - Disharmonium: Nahab
Astriferous - Pulsations from the Black Orb
@@ZombieDeMierda Check out System of Systems by Haberdashers’ Adams. It’ll change your life.
You are never the same when you find rate your music
Tell me about it. I felt really depressed for awhile after see RYM, until I realized their opinions don't matter, no. Cause I got my own, babe
@@danielpatternson6149 yeah babe your opinions matter
@@ps2progamer814 I was referencing AKon's Don't Matter, in case you didn't understand
That’s embarrassing that you’re basing the value of your favorite music based on what other people have to say
@@dunceandcoit's a lot easier to say you like something to other people when they like it as well
I really like your microphone quality it's very crisp and nice on the ears I love it very much !
I can't imagine being a music newbie and listening to "Soundtracks for the Blind" as their first post-rock album. Wait.... that's exactly my first post-rock album.
I believe that was my first post rock album too! I enjoy SFTB, but I like much more their other albums (To be kind is my favourite, a lot of bangers there!)
@@dieterbohm9700 The Seer and The Glowing Man are interchangeable as my favorites
@@anony-moon Those are amazing choices too!. It depends on the mood tbh, to be kind is amazing whether you feel good, sad, mad or bad. SFTB is when you want to meditate or reflect on your life. The sound and Helpless child are powerful songs.
Swans - Soundtracks for the Blind is probably my all time favorite album, but it took knowing the band, hearing other stuff, and building a strong relationship with the album to come to that decision. These sites don’t encourage that. It’s all about “this is the best, and if you don’t like or understand the best then you aren’t worth listening to” when that couldn’t be further from the truth. The people I listen to the most are those who have listened to a bunch of music, including many albums on these lists, and they just may end up hating most of the stuff in the top, and they love some cheesy, obvious picks. These guys actually know what they like and enjoy music more than most “snobs” I know who know next to nothing, but love Radiohead because they found it on RYM
Moral of the story: Dont trust the ratings on rym too much
Trust me when I say I really want to like SFTB, but I just don't and can't figure out why. But I totally agree - the people whose opinion i am the most curious about are people who I know have listened to a lot of music and aren't out to hate a certain demographic (like you for example). Also thanks so much for the comment, I'm a big fan.
I kinda love and hate the fact that I relate heavily to this video. Sometimes I just cannot get the opinions others have on certain art/media out of my head, and damn do I wish that weren’t the case. (Great video btw)
I only listen to fake music :)
*starts headbanging to yoinky spoinky riddim nonsense and unlistenable robot noises*
I appreciate you a lot for making this video. While now I'm a big music nerd (mostly a metalhead) for a year now and the things you mention (such as no objectivity in music, trying to ignore negative reviews and not care about averages in music) are things I wish I knew a year ago before starting my musical journey.
Nowadays I like to check out albums that are in the "average" range (3.00-3.40) that don't appear much in the charts, because they can either be overlooked, being biased because they were a trend at a certain time (deathcore, nu metal) or maybe they are a hidden gem waiting to be discovered, that variety really has made the site so much fun than just "go through the top 100".
RYM mid anyway. Some rap album at #1, while actual bangers like Sonic Mania and Touhou OST which are way lower than they should be makes no sense
the undertale music playing on the beginning of a music talk video is just perfection
Thanks Dream, this really helped form my opinion of RYM!
for me rym is fantastic in finding an artists whole discography, (if stuff isn’t on streaming) an artists side projects/other bands/ collaborators, and finding other similar artists that you may like through genre tags and lists. reviews are… not always the best or most insightful but usually i can look past that because of the overall usefulness of the site
one thing i don’t really like is the user interface however, and how it separates releases in a genre into mixtape, album, and ep. that makes finding albums in very mixtape heavy genres pretty tough (does anyone know if there’s an easy way to get around this that i’m missing?)
honestly i wish there was a way to hide scores on rym because there have been moments where i read a bunch of reviews and spoiled/ruined an album listen for myself
IMO I don't get how relying on genres and tags is a great way to find similar artists; someone said the exact same thing on reddit; I just wish RYM can just show similar albums/artists under the artist and release pages for me to discover more; just like AOTY, AllMusic and Last FM; RYM needs to take some notes
Most people tend to focus too much on the all-time charts rather than the database itself.
I used RYM just to browse and expand my knowledge in genres and once i find one that is interesting i just grab a couple of albums without looking at the reviews and listen to them and if i didnt like the genre i just go for the next one (subgenres included) and if i liked the genre i continue with it until im bored and move to the next one
This strategy made me accept more experimental music and more avant-garde stuff later that led to me liking so many new and obscure albums that arent even in the top 200 list of RYM and made me know my taste in music even better
trippin off the beat kinda, drippin off the meat grinder
@@foundrimcHeat niner, pimping, stripping, soft sweet minor
People keep hating on rym, yet honestly ive found soo much incredible music through it - im really happy ive got into it in the first place
real. people care too much about ratings or scores. i love digging through rym for cool music and lists tho
I don't care about ratings, I only care about the customization aspect of the charts.
@@banaqos I think spotify just made me change my music taste. There are a lot of overhated or underrated albums I've listened to.
Yeah, and finding individual reviewers who you respect can be rewarding and help curate / sift through albums you are considering checking out
The ratings aren't really the problem, it's when you lookup an album and people's first reactions are to use the scores as validity.
It sucks that rym can be so taxing, but I like that it shows your age and location in your bio. If you really like Animal Collective and one reviewer says it sucks, just go to their profile and gain some insight. 9 times out of 10, you'll realize it's a 42 year old German man who really likes heavy metal. Of course they're not gonna like the same bands as you 90% of the time
Hear a song i vibe to, add it to a massive playlist, perfection
me getting pissed off after clicking on my giant 2000 song playlist and finding out the first song on shuffle does not fit my exact current mood
@@pilkmaster skip, to be fair most my songs fall into the same mood
@@pilkmaster you must really trust and understand yourself a lot if you're able to put a playlist of your own on shuffle after it grows past 500 songs
i could never, just the same 6 tracks i discovered recently on rotation for a full month let's go babyyy
"I'll just get into painting" and then he discovers minimalist contemporary art and loses his mind over 40 different paintings of all red canvases (I love contemporary art)
Difference is it doesn't take the length of an LP to process a room of paintings.
@@ionescuflorin7307it can very well take much longer
What a fantastic video, you’re clearly very passionate about the topic and kept me invested the whole time!
personally I find it really useful for just finding music that I find interesting. number = big doesn't mean album = better, it just means that a lot of people on rym liked it, which if you find yourself aligning often with the general option, can be a good way to get a quick indication about how people are feeling about it. and yeah, at the end if the day, some people are gonna leave shitty or silly reviews on music you like, but you have to remember, it's just their opinion. just because its in text on a music website doesn't mean it's true. and if we stopped leaving any critical reviews whatsoever, I think the loss in terms of learning about what you like and why would be far greater than the benefit of not seeing people dislike things that you like. if seeing a bad review is enough to make you never want to listen to that album, then, idk, maybe avoid the reviews? but also I don't think deciding not to listen to an album is really the end of the world, if you decide never to listen to an album that rym doesn't like then yeah that's kinda lame but in that case I feel like you're taking them a little more seriously than they deserve. anyway, I have found a lot of my favourite music on there, and yeah there's an issue around western-centric music but I think that is just from having a mostly western user base. plus it's actually a pretty good way to break out of only listening to us/uk/english language music if you make the decision to instead of taking whatever is put in front of you, what with the lists and top albums from countries and stuff
Not sure to what degree having a less Western userbase will change things radically soon enough, considering that most countries don't have music industries that persuade even their local audiences, let alone on a global scale. On RYM we're starting to have certain national bases such as Argentinians who seem to have success in pushing local albums they consider significant onto the charts, however users from other countries just seem to be rating the same Western albums as their Western counterparts on RYM do... It's probably going to take a change in the site architecture to reduce some of this bias... Also, the site doesn't have an app, nor is it entirely optimized for mobile browsing, so they've got along way ahead.
this is the craziest video because several years ago I did the same thing and listened to the rolling stone top 100 albums in order trying to "learn about music" and ran into the exact same problems, especially the "I need to figure out why an album is good if it's top rated and I don't see it". I'm still not exactly a music expert or anything, but I think I have learned that my approach should be more oriented around trying to independently figure out why I like or dislike an album rather than trying to figure out what other people think I should like and dislike and trying to figure out what Music Critic Ears are doing differently than me. I started treating album reviews like movie spoilers, basically. Anyway, thanks for putting some of my music novice thoughts into words so nicely
I think these days, the best way to find new music is by looking at the related artists under other ones you like. And if you don't have many to start with, just listen to playlists, and if you like someone's sound then listen to more of their discography
Also, being overly critical is the loss of musical enjoyment; I experienced the same, but started caring less and the fun came back
Though Swans is not for everyone I’m glad you gave them a chance. This band changed my life
You have such a great energy I really hope you make it big! I got into music through RYM as well and it was such an interesting experience. There are a ton of albums I thought were meh at first like the Velvet Underground and Nico, and then one day on relisten they just click and go from a 6 to a 9/10 or something.
honestly, one of the most relatable videos I have ever seen on RUclips.
really loved ur honesty throughout this whole video and the whole not getting why these albums are so great but don't like them (I still feel this way about Bjork's Vespertine). I also think it was great to see you talk about the advent and effect that these reviews can give you and alter one's perception. also loved that you kinda talked about the whole pretentiousness of the site itself and how it seems they incredibly favor a certain kind of music. makes it very annoying when trying to find new stuff. one of the most enjoyable videos I've seen about music. this was honestly great, keep up the content.
I have been a fan of Vespertine for the longest time. If you want to get into it, think of it as an album for sleeping. "An Echo, a Stain" is one of my favorites. I would begin to listen to it before sleeping, preferably if you're a passenger on an overnight road trip. It's also good for just listening to it while you're doing homework, if you're still in school, or if you need to unwind.
I got bullied out of a rymer discord once because they found out that I don’t finish a song when i’m not enjoying it.
Deserved, at least finish it, how are you judging something you haven't finished?, tiktok brain
@@cheapphilosophy9371 If you get 2 minutes into a 3 minute song and decide you don’t like it and the sound isn’t for you, there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s not enough time in the day to finish every song you don’t like just for the sake of having an “informed opinion” especially if you’re someone who frequently delves into new artists and genres
@@polarboi9703 respect for the artist and the art, even if it is a artist i despice if I chose to listen to a song, I finish it, you May always change opinión, perhaps theres a little thing in the 2:30 Mark that makes everything make sense
@@cheapphilosophy9371 that may be your MO that’s fair, but it’s silly to expect everyone else to follow that
@@cheapphilosophy9371 thats not true across the board. Why would i listen to a song just to enjoy the last 30 seconds of it, and it being 2 minutes long?
Ice spice is trash 2 seconds in.
And if it the core of the song isnt for me, then their is no need to finished the song.
Other than artists that glorify things I don't approve of, I will check Out a few of their songs even if i dont like the first one i heard by them, unless they make crap music in general.
Because despite popular belief, there is a point when someone is bad art.
Just like you can play out of key, or out of rhythm-there are some wild genre's that shouldn't exist😅.
This might be the most relatable video I've ever watched lmao especially the music anesthesia bit, all of this had been in my mind for a while but you just put it in the right words
I feel like the general rule of thumb for RYM is a high score means a good album, a low score means a bad album, but a mediocre score doesn't nessesarily mean a mediocre album.
i'd say the rule of thumb is if its rated 3.00 or above it's probably a decent album
@@seb1703 but most albums are rated around 3.00 and then some are unfairly hated
no lol the rule of thumb is to not listen to these reviews
the rule of thumb is listen to the albums to find your own opinion on it
@@peanutgallery4 There are plenty of albums under 3.00, but most of them have less than 1000 ratings.
Another thing I dislike about RYM is that it's userbase led to every album in the top 100 getting a negative stigma from the general public where people will just never give these artists a chance regardless if their other material is way more accessible, just because of those specific albums. For example one of the albums on there is The Downward Spiral by Nine Inch Nails, I adoree the band and the album but many including my friends just see it as artsy fartsy noisy broken garbage. It took so much convincing for them to listen to a more poppy song like The Hand That Feeds and they ended up loving it and appreciating the band. We should stop making people feel bad about liking albums on the list or not liking them, both the nerds and regular people need to stop harassing eachother. I think this was an important video to make and I thank you for doing so.
this video is so real i literally switched from rym to aoty for this reason 😭 people are less elitist there. i’m grateful for it because it put me onto my favourite album of all time (atrocity exhibition) but i disagree with so many takes people have on that website. additionally i’ve seen reviews from there calling certain albums i really liked as ‘albums you’ll eventually grow out of” and that also made me really sad tbh.
Aoty is good but the genre tags are HORRIBLE. Why is you will never know why by sweet trip shoegaze??? At least rym does that well, the community and interface on the other hand....... Aoty winds by a landslide. But I do prefer comments in rym because they are more funny(?)
Atrocity exhibition🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
true but i find more music on rym
i think rym has gotten better since like 2018, its user based pretty much sucked from 2003 to 2015, and the charts and reviews are getting better every year, and less elitist, you just have to ignore some old bullshit, or even the new trolls, but I really love the community on Rym now imo
i remember when I kept seeing "you'll eventually grow out of yeezus" I haven't yet
Criticism is dialogue. You disagree? Critique back. Critique differently. Critique better. Critique along the lines of your understanding. Saying something is subjective amounts to nothing
real
Well said.
I'm in my "music anesthesia" phase, nothing resonates with me deeply as before...it kinda creeps me out thinking that I won't be able to enjoy music as much as before
Another important thing I think is that sorting everything into rating numbers is probably a bad tendency (as you also allude to at the beginning of the video), be it rating numbers, rankings or anything else. Like I understand that it makes sense for a big online music forum, or for someone like Anthony Fantano who has to put out a rating for 2-3 albums a week, but in general I don't buy that an album is "a 7/10" as if there is some kind of hidden scoring system, as if there's a dart board for an album to hit and evaluate its precision. My favorite kinds of music criticism situate these albums not just in a context of other music, but also in the writer's own life. Because that's what music is also about. I don't just like underscores' Wallsocket because it is "good" (though it is) or because it is "well-produced" (though it is), I especially like it because it came out at the right time in my life, an album about the emotional complexity of becoming self-reliant in suburban capitalist hell, right when I'm at the age where I have to become self-reliant in a suburban capitalist hell? Hell yeah. And if I were to write a full review of it, I believe that context would be important. Where the album works, and where it falls flat, relies a lot on how it fits in my life, how it interacts with my thoughts right now.
Wow, I feel like a gushed a lot here. Anyways, point is, don't give the music in your life numbers, give it a place in your personal biography.
rating movies and music and such has really fucked a lot of how people think about these art forms. giving them a score is essentially a manifestation of consumer culture, the very thing a lot of artists try to resist. alternatively it is influenced by school grading systems that have set criteria for how to get your points, therefore rating movies and music causes people to apply a set of criteria (often reductive) where it may ought not to be applied. thirdly, in the terminally online internet age, it's sort of an image thing, though I know this is not unique to our terminally online internet age.
When I try to communicate why I think a piece of music is good, I mostly try to ignore this personal context because it doesn't apply to the person I'm talking to. I would focus less on what feeling it's trying to convey and focus more on how it's trying to do it, which is a more general/universal criterium. While there is definitely objectivity in art, I do agree that review scores do blur the line and make people forget that there's also a lot of subjectivity involved.
I rate using only emojis. Much more meaningful tbh
It implies that if two albums are rated the same then they are approximately as good which is a strange measure because really we can only fairly compare two works in the same style
wow thats basically my opinion but 10x more articulated
OMMMMMMG!!! The Psychadelic Prn Crumpets album is sooo instrumentally vibrant and the soundscapes throught all the songs is so evocative. I would have never thought I would see a random youtuber mention them, High Visceral Pt.1 is worth checking out. So many great songs like Found God, which got me into them, Surfs Up, and Cornflake. Truly one of my favorite psych rock experience that I discovered during the pandemic.
i was literally SO SURPRISED! I also saw him mention another album i really enjoy that i wasn't expecting and now i want to see all of his playlists.
Thanks for the recs! I remember hearing a lil about them on my radio on spotify and i ended up liking it, I'll check that out :D
fr
music anesthesia as you described is definitely a thing, after scouring for music for a few years listening to a bunch of stuff it really takes a special album to have a "wow" effect on me anymore. Meanwhile a normal person that only listens to some radio hits gets so easily impressed about new stuff.
I think both ectremes are bad.
@@gsly6081I mean, don’t think there was necessarily a connotation on it, and it doesn’t sound like the anesthesia is a willing factor.
it’s just oversaturation. it goes away with a tolerance break just like any drug.
Most musicians, myself included, listen to a lot less music the more they play/write. I still listen to music of course, but focusing on what you hear in your head begins to overshadow your desire to want to hear new music. Sounds like its your time to pick up an instrument. 80% of what i listen to now is jazz in the background during chores/work.
Maybe you are burned out by music. You should try to get into other artforms, like dance or theatre. I've been on RYM since 2017, and I still get excited for most new releases. Sometimes I wish I could travel back in time to 2090 to see what genres and releases have been created 70 years from now. The same goes for movies, I'm really looking forward to seeing what filmmaking and storytelling will be like in 100 years, sadly I'll already be dead by now.
I remember seing an album i liked have very low rankings, and i felt so guilty i gaslighted myself for not liking it. The album was The Resistance by Muse, and it was my first time tipping my toes in that sort of muisc. It really opened my mind when i first listened to it.
Glad RUclips recommended me this channel. Greetings from Colombia 🇨🇴
its impossible to define which are the best albums in history. i started using rym as a reference for discovering music, not as the "ultimate truth about music". I love the site but seeing that in the top 100 albums, there were fewer than 10 by female artists, and only three or four albums not in English made it clear to me that in a way the site is still conservative towards certain kind of artists and music.
I agree with this. RYM should be used as tool for finding new music, not as an "ultimate truth about music". Just because your favourite album or artist doesn't appear on Top 100, it doesn't mean that RYM is a useless website. People should focus more in the customization aspect of the charts (genres, descriptors, location, language, year, release type, etc.), rather than the idea of seeing the charts as some sort of "ultimate truth about music".
Even those numbers are better than how the charts used to look like back in the 2000s. There is more non-Western music getting attention on the site, however most countries other than Japan and Brazil do not have much "hip appeal" yet. It doesn't help that there are still very few users from outside the Anglophone (partly because of the lack of translations, partly because the site doesn't have a mobile app or complete mobile browser optimization). As for there not being more acclaim for female artist, I doubt things will change pretty soon, because women rarely get socialized as "music nerds" in most societies to this point, except maybe Japan seems to be doing it better (I mean, there are more than a few Japanese women who would listen to or make just about any kind of music you can imagine).
ehh, i think RYM's mid anyway. Some rap album at #1, while actual bangers like Sonic Mania and Touhou OST which are way lower than they should be makes no sense
@@ionescuflorin7307yeah the site needs a phone app so brown people can use it too
@@LavaCreeperPeople basically you have to take anything RYM says with a grain of salt
the beautiful thing about rym is that you can follow people and filter the charts so they only include the ratings of the people you follow and don't show the albums you've already rated yourself. that way you have a chart that is constantly filled with music you haven't heard that you are probably going to like. have done that the past few years, and i have over a thousand positive ratings and still loads of music i still want to check out.
You somehow managed to capture so much of how I feel about exploring new music. The pessimistic section is also so accurate for me. I stumbled on an old playlist of mine from a few years ago, songs that got me through so much and all I could think was how basic my taste was and I hate that I felt that way. Its a complicated thing balancing enjoyment and the human urge to fit in as having "good taste"
I use RYM strictly for genre discovery and love reading the descriptions of some obscure subgenre. As for reviews I rarely pay attention to them. Now I don't think ratings or reviews are unnecessary cause it's nice to read somebody describing exactly how you feel about a particular song or album but I don't think you should undervalue/dismiss your opinion just because some guy who has written 3 paragraphs describing how they hate a particular album you love. Or just because Fantano has made 5 videos about his hate on Wonderful Christmastime. I still like the song.
rym works a lot better when you use it to find the entire discography of your fave artists rather than a tastemaker for music
yeah if RYM was your tastemaker you are prolly an insufferable asshole.
I love the “what is your favorite song of all time” question because I always have and will always have a straight answer. Telegraph Road by Dire Straits
i have go-to answers depending on who’s asking or how i feel when asked.
“bloodhail” by have a nice life is my main one. not too mainstream but not too underground. a pleasing answer most people can understand.
“god bless our dead marines” by silver mt zion if i want to show a more outside of the box adventurous (or depressing) side. something that will offend the average listener and provide a great experience for more open-minded individuals
and if i’m REALLY into a certain thing when i’m asked, i’ll just say “rn i’m really into [song] by [artist]”. it may not be that exact song that encompasses what i want to share, but it’ll be a highlight or good gateway to what i’m interested in at the moment. like rn, my answer would be “el cantante” by héctor lavoe because i’ve been really loving some fania records classics recently
for me i'd probably pick Clair de Lune because i feel it can represent the entirety of existence in this universe
although it's not actually my all time favourite song (i mean, my favourite artist isn't even Claude Debussy), because that's impossible for me to decide on.
I had to pause the video when you said you don’t like In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. I respect you for saying it and I actually saw it coming but that shit hit like a truck, but I guess that kinda shows what I’ve become.
Forgot to mention, great video! It was really well put together and was a fun watch.
I feel like you're forgetting that your tastes can change over time. It's fine if a song you really liked at one point just doesn't hit the same anymore. Also, I used to get weird feeling from seeing album reviews that didn't think the same things I did, but I frickin grew out of that lol
The thing you said about musical anaesthesia is so true. I found out about RYM through this video so I can’t really blame it for this. But I’ve listened to so many different genres in a short amount of time that it’s almost become arbitrary to me. Literally can listen to anything now. I’d recommend taking a long break from music.
Took too long to admit it on my end, but you sealed the deal with that grok impression, subscribed...
I don't really care about RYM's ratings, they don't influence me at all, but I do understand why at first they might influence someone, I think everoyne starts otu like that but eventually the more music they exlpore the more confident they become in their own tastes.
As for not liking popular albums, I think that's completely okay, but I also think it is important to give albums more than once chance, sometimes something might grow on you after ages too, I've seen it a lot in listeners where they turn around, when it comes to music nothing is really ingrained into stone when it comes to our taste, sometimes it takes a while before we get the appeal, sometimes that might also never happen, I think we all have bands like that which we couldn't wrap our hands around.
For me that band is Sonic Youth, I love Noise Rock, but their brand of it never appealed to me no matter how much I tried. Maybe like 10 years from now I'll be obsessed with'em though, you never know.
My favorite albums and songs of all time change pretty much every month, currently as I write this I'm deeply obsessed with Jimmy Eat World.
I think, that once you've explore these highly regarded albums long enough, it'll kind of circle around, where you grow to appreaciate records like Deathconsciousness, Soundtrack For The Blind etc but then also rock out to butt-rock like Three Days Grace's One-X roflmao, so I kind of would like to put your faers to the rest, I've not fallen in love with anything ever since I've buried my head into music more, nothing in the past was soured for me no matter how critically panned it got, well, for a while, maybe it did, but that is just a phase you might feel, but I do promise that it's just a phase.
this
"Can you blame me?" Yes, skill issue. But on a more serious note, I've honestly never experienced this as a longtime avid user of RYM. For me the site has always been a place for musical exploration and joining the conversation around music. Of course, it's not like reading reviews hasn't ever impacted my perspective on albums...but 9 times out of 10 it's a glowing a review for an album that I disliked that got me to see it in a new light and understand it better, even though I may still not like it. It's interesting to see how opposite our experiences with the site has been. I will fully admit that RYM can be pretty toxic at times though, especially when they're collectively bashing something in the comment box. Nice video!
I didn't expect this to be a good video, but surprisingly it is. Nicely done.
The biggest thing is that the journey of music is entirely individualistic and everyone else are optional guides. I'm listening to things now I wouldn't considered trash about 1-2 years ago which is a surprise to me. Sites and spheres like RYM can lead to some unhealthy and downright stupid habits.
Also, writing music and seeing music live can really change your world.
This is why I use BestEverAlbums instead of RateYourMusic
Good vid! I’ve always known that RYM is a shitshow of a website but I mainly just use it to organise and catalogue my collection and the music I listen to.
Honestly, if I didn’t like an extremely popular album I wouldn’t care. For example, OK Computer is deemed by people “a 10/10 masterpiece” but to me it’s only a 6 and what sucks is that I like the album and understand everything about it but people will just see the score and think I hate it.
Anyway uh, Cries From A Computer is the best album ever, objectively 10/10 album totally.
Also Ariana Grande will be always be one of my favourite artists lol. Pop is way too overhated sometimes.
Ironic that Cries from a Computer is your favorite album but you don't love ok computer haha
yeah i totally agree! i try not to interact with anything on the site other than my personal ratings, and that's just to note what i've listened to. ok computer was also not that enjoyable for me. much preferred in rainbows and the bends lol
Same lmao, the toxicity of the website really makes me just use it to catalog music and keep track of the albums I listen to, I don't interact with the community at all, just go to any comment box of a popular album this year and it reeks of negativity.
But it's great for personal use like you said. Just cataloguing music, like I have a 3000 albums list that I plan to listen to.
@@rixbyte7438where is the toxicity lil bro?
@@meatgrinder9506 Go to any comment box of any album released this year, please don't try to tell me that rym is such a happy and respectful site where everyone holds hands and respect opinions.
This was a good breakdown of the site. I definitely think that hopping onto rym or /mu/ or aoty can be incredibly daunting, and as you said the accessibility of a lot of top rated records can be very low. Not everyone can throw on Trout Mask Replica or In the Court of the Crimson King and just "get" it. Similarly, realizing your favorite music isn't nearly as critically acclaimed as you had hoped can be a bit crushing.
Overall a lot of this is why I enjoy sharing music with friends as opposed to just looking at lists. While the rym lists are definitely useful, there's just something so much more organic about exchanging albums with friends and then discussing them. It helps you better articulate what you like, it helps you get to know them better, and overall it's a lot less daunting than the cruel, uncaring nature of the internet. Not everyone has the time, care, or energy to sift through rym lists for hours and listen to 7-10 new albums every week, and to act like that's the best way to find music for everyone would be ignorant at best and detrimental to people's love of music at worst. I'm grateful the sites are there, but they are not the end all be all of music discovery.
Trout mask isnt even the top 2000
@@BumbaClo-bh8xp it's pretty commonly towards the top of /mu/ essentials lists
Trout mask got 69 on aoty bro what are you talking about
@@nickg2211 it's really popular on /mu/ (the third site I listed)
@@nickg2211 it's really popular on /mu/, which is the third site I was referring to.
one of my least favourite trends atm is on tiktok when someone posts their like top 10 albums and the comments are just full of either people saying w opinion or L opinion. noones even talking about the albums they either just agree or disagree.
oh gosh yep that happens. i made a tier list of some music and basically every comment was just "you're wrong" with no nuance or explanation lol
Post-rock is actually pretty easy to get into, its often very mellow and easy on your ears. Albums like Lift your skinny fists like antennas to heaven, Hole of Burning Alms, Mogwai Young Team, maybe even Spiderland, are what i would recommend which are the staples of the genre. Swans are probably not the best pick lol, that's for sure, and they're not really post-rock defining to my opinion
I think that Swans falls into another category called "Experimental Post-Rock" represented by artists like Cul de Sac, Tortoise, Moonshake and Body Meπa.
8:35 thats me with anything. Something could have 99% great reviews but that one negative holds so much more weight for some reason. Kind of how you could get many compliments throughout your life but that one negative one sticks to you the most.
it feels like 95% of the albums on rym has a score of 3.50
I mean you do the math it kind of makes sense
is it supposed to be bad or good tho. Cause i would say it's on point. There are a lot of those meeting in 2.7, 2.8, and the great ones are usually 3.5, 3.6
the power of normal distribution
Because the average album would be a 2.5 by the definition of average, but people usually mostly rate albums they like which skews the distribution higher.
@joeb.4204 There are plenty of albums under a score of 3.00 but most of the have less than few ratings. If you live in Latin America, you will notice that a lot of the popular artists from those countries don't have albums under 3.00.
Gosh I relate to this so much
I've had the same experience of loving an album or song, and then seeing people shit on it makes me question if it's even good, so I force myself to listen to "objectively good music" but sometimes it just doesn't impact me the same.
I enjoy listening to a variety of music, but I always come back to pop because it's what I grew up on.
It's a fun, easy listening music genre that spawns a lot of songs everyone knows. It gets frustrating at times in certain
"real" music listener spaces, because if you like these pop artists, and albums, your music taste is trash lol, sometimes simplistic, and generic is a nice change.
It can also go the other way, where alt bands, or rap artists are deemed bad music, so it's like what music space do I try and fit into 🙁
To me i find it weird to see many popular songs to have low ratings. Maybe I was only a kid listening to it and I didnt care what the criticism was. However, some of the reviews feel like they unfairly hated it or wasn't constructive.
great video dude! I remember being caught in the same flip flop state you were in and just recently learned to just like what I like. You really spoke my mind with this one
Dude this perfectly articulated the exact same shit I was feeling when my friend showed me RYM. The "objectively good" mindset broke my brain for far too long so it's cool to see that I'm not the only one
1. Devil in a new dress
2. Father strech my hands pt. 1
3. Diamonds from Sierre Leone Original
4. Touch the sky
5. Saint Pablo
6. Through the wire
7. All falls down
8. No Mistake
9. Reborn
10. Dark Fantasy
Not a real Kanye fan unless you have scrapped songs in your top 10
@@wanderingwobb6300 bruh shut up
@@wanderingwobb6300chackras
Really enjoyed this video! For me personally it was really difficult to find albums and artists that I liked and even when you do find the artist that you like you won't always enjoy their music.
One thing I've noticed about RYM as someone who's very into some more extreme or niche genres of experimental music is how the userbase of RYM will often heap praise on albums which, while fairly difficult or intimidating to most people, are only as out there as big music outlets or reviewers are consistently willing to cover and praise, occasionally resulting in some weird chart placements where comparatively accessible but non-indicative records which got a lot of buzz or the pet records of certain big reviewers will wind up higher than certain highly influential and respected records in the genre. Much as I love Soundtracks for the Blind and have myself argued its influence and significance for years, I don't think it would be nearly so high in the site's rankings without Anthony Fantano's praise for Swans and the surprise hype surrounding their return in the early 2010s. Likewise, great as Lingua Ignota's work is, it's bizarre to see her top the power electronics charts with Caligula, a record which is definitely inspired by the genre in places but feels pretty out of place next to the likes of Controlled Bleeding and Navicon Torture Technologies.
I can't understand a single word in this lol
@@eterty8335 I think the first half of this is fairly easy to parse even if you don't have the necessary frame of reference for the specific examples I'm giving here.
@@eterty8335how can you not? English is not my mother tongue but its very clear how it was written
@@eterty8335 basically theyre talking about how rym users overrate hard-to-get-into albums because more experienced music critics, like fantano or pitchfork, praise them a lot. this leads to the top albums of a certain genre being composed of those hard-to-get-into albums which ruins genre discovery
@@hemalathapajaniraja1990 Actually, my argument was it's kind of the opposite in a lot of cases: They overrate decent but non-indicative albums which are *just* accessible enough to cross over because a lot of the stuff which actually defines those niche genres is, by definition, not going to appeal to a lot of people. So the tops of some of these charts are going to be a couple of solid entry-level Internet Reviewer Approved records which don't really give you a great idea of what the genre is actually like followed by a handful of much freakier or more obscure records which are big with the kind of people who actually listen to those genres regularly.
Lmao I used to watch fantano reviews all the time just for the sake of it (I had no interest in the album 90% of the time.) To the point where I can predict what his opinions are on an album before watching the video if ive listened to it before
Popular singers: 😐
Some unpopular producer casually dropping the best music you've ever heard: 🗿
having none of the same preferences as you and still understanding and agreeing with all the points you made is awesome, i love being a rational levelheaded internet user
I'd like to take the opportunity to shoutout Mic the Snare for this exact reason. There's a ton of artists that I wanted to get into but didn't know which albums to start with, and his Deep Discog Dive series goes over the discography of many artists and gives insightful commentary on each album. From the Beatles to Björk to Ariana Grande, there's definitely something for everyone :)
While i love most of albums rated as "best" on the website, I agree with every point you make here.
I find that a lot of those albums need time and effort to fully appreciate, and even then you just might not like it, find it tedious, which is totally fine and what makes music fun in the first place.
Also, glad to find another Fleece enjoyer, they're amazing.
I think it's really amazing that you voice a countering opinion to the idea that there is a correct taste in music. It really spoke to me too. I have always been easily persuaded by reviewers and I have been very insecure about my music taste and wanted to "like and dislike what you are supposed to"
I feel like I've gotten ~better~ at just liking the music I like. And not feel wrong when I don't vibe with something. It's a process.
A personal example would be with Imagine Dragons. I adored them from when I was 13 to 15-16ish. My exposure to different music was limited but I still thought they were the absolute best. But when I discovered that there are many that find them bad I almost completely boycotted them from my music listening. Even though they were deeply special to me. Nowadays I am more relaxed about it. I definitely see the criticism and my opinion has changed for the worse on a part of their material but there are still songs of theirs, new and old, I really enjoy in spite of a less than favourable public opinion.
Imagine Dragons is my most extreme example but the thought of "the right taste in music" has long been a part of my journey with music. So this was cool to see. And it's to see so many others that feel the exact same way.
Like what you like peeps^^
despite what you may think you are not nearly alone. i’m pretty sure there’s an entire generation of people roaming the earth who secretly love (or loved) imagine dragons. me being one of them. and i had the same experience, down to the age in which i listened to them. nostalgia is powerful to say the least.
@@liamanthonyfr I find that comforting in a way to know I'm alone in that. That's really nice you wanted to share that. I'm sure many of their fans are like us. If you want to share I'm curious about what song or album were your favorite then and now?
For me Polaroid was the dearest one to me. I would still say Smoke and Mirrors is my favorite album of theirs with Pantomime being my favorite song if I had to name one
i genuinely love all music. i hate that can't listen to all of it
It’s so hard to find music that connects with you online. I think a better strategy seems to be to find shows in your area and just go see a bunch of bands live. You won’t always love everything but when you do find something you also have the connection to the experience you had. This makes music so much more enjoyable to me. Some of my favorite albums are probably rated “mid” on RYM but I don’t care! The point is to enjoy what you enjoy!
I only visit RYM for their genre classification system and occasionally some user lists. I don't trust those people when it comes to what music is _good,_ but I'm much more able to trust them when it comes to what kind of music music is.
i went through the same thing that liam talked about in the video, and soon i realised that i had to figure out my own taste. you’re right, bc now when i want to find something new in a specific style, i just look up the genre on RYM. ive found some personal favourites this way!
the way i was agreeing with everything you said but then said u didnt like itaots..... thats the beauty of subjectivity. i love it so much, but i HATED it on my first couple listens. this isnt me saying "just listen to it more and then youll like it!", bc the sound is... weird lets be real and it isnt going to appeal to everyone. i think the messages you put across when trying to listen to new music are rlly important and every new music listener should take them on board. i contstantly have to remind myself just because something is critically acclaimed, doesnt mean im gonna like it, let alone HAVE to like it. amazing video :)
When I look at online music reviewers and even when I took many of my musicianship and theory courses in college, the demographic looks a particular way. And not to invalidate their opinions - I look the same way - but “music community” is very insular and biased. It should be a red flag when so many people - most of which educated on music to some degree - are in agreement of the same top ten albums. I know personally, my education (even though it wasn’t my major) spent a lot of time introducing me to various genres, styles, cultures, and approaches to music, and saying a piece of music was bad and entirely without merit was something incredibly difficult.
The online space for music reviewing has definitely become toxic. I wouldn’t follow these “reviewers” for their reviews, and I would never prime my own listening experience with the arbitrary rating.
I can't make a list of my favorite music, but I can say that I liked this video. RYM has allowed me to discover artists that I would not have found otherwise.
It is okay to admit that the "consensus" about an album can have an impact on the way we listen to some records, and can further have an impact on our general perception. It a matter of learning how to navigate through it. At the end of the day, I'm not a music expert, I just know what I like.
Oh my god, that "Music Credibility" section was SO DAMN RELATABLE. Like, i don't know why, but every time i hear an opinion on an album, my brain subconsciously takes it as law and puts it in place of the previous opinion there, which causes me to look at that album in a completely different way, most of the time more cynical and judgemental. I hate this so much cause it really makes me feel like I'm not determined enough to even know what I like 💀
you have summed up the collective issue for rym users quite well and entertaining, great job
This was a really interesting video, and I've been on RYM a number of times but less so over the years. On a personal note, I've been playing guitar and writing music for 14 years and to me the greatest music is music that makes me want to play and understand what I'm listening to. So when it comes to music that people love more for the poetry I've always had trouble enjoying it because what I care about what's going on behind the vocals. Even then that can be real particular to the person listening to music, and the thing you mentioned about having less of a reaction is something I know all too well. Something that used to excite me before doesn't do as much now because of all the myriad of things I've listened to that did what I like better or differently or tackled it in what I thought was a fascinating way.
All that to say, this video was dope as hell and you've given me some stuff to think about.