I’m going to have my hands full with your list for awhile, I appreciate the patience and thanks for putting those together. 
I’m going to have my hands full with your list for awhile, I appreciate the patience and thanks for putting those together.
Awesome, but what you do mean by having your hands full? Do you mean it’s gonna take a lot of time to check the sources?
Yeah, just going through and vetting the sources. Unfortunately we can’t add them all, but I’ll do my best to get the best sources on the site.
“Unfortunately we can’t add them all.” Is it because of limited website data?
More sources to consider:
MelodicRock: melodicrock .com/categories/reviews
Dead Rhetoric: deadrhetoric .com/reviews/
Loud: loudmag .com.au/c/album-reviews/
Broken Arrow: brokenarrowmagazine .com/category/reviews/album-reviews/
Cross Fire: crossfire-metal .de/3-0-CD-Reviews.html?p=d&list=32
Music and Riots: issuu.com/music_and_riots_mag/docs/press_print_3
Cult MTL: cultmtl .com/tag/album-reviews/ and there’s a fair amount more than just from this page, for instance, cultmtl .com/2020/05/album-review-tops-i-feel-alive-jane-penny-direct-sunlight/
Soundblab: soundblab .com/reviews/albums/
antiMusic: antimusic .com/reviews/
ScenePointBlack: scenepointblank .com/reviews/
Fort Worth Star-Telegram: google .com/search?q=site%3Astar-telegram.com+%22CD+review%22&oq=site%3Astar-telegram.com+%22CD+review%22&aqs=chrome…69i57j69i58.3474j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Creative Loafing Tampa: google .com/search?q=site%3Acltampa.com+%22album+review%22&oq=site%3Acltampa.com+%22album+review%22&aqs=chrome…69i57j69i58.5863j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Morning Star: google .com/search?sxsrf=ALeKk03ZriMQkX0Ku1daDsPN9ooPZ9b3tg%3A1587056858381&ei=2pCYXpHtFuyyytMPleqPmAM&q=site%3Amorningstaronline.co.uk+%22album+reviews%22&oq=site%3Amorningstaronline.co.uk+%22album+reviews%22&gs_lcp=CgZwc3ktYWIQA0oJCBcSBTEyLTc5SggIGBIEMTItN1CfDVjIFGCVFmgAcAB4AIABVIgBogSSAQE3mAEAoAEBqgEHZ3dzLXdpeg&sclient=psy-ab&ved=0ahUKEwiRwqDCt-3oAhVsmXIEHRX1AzMQ4dUDCAw&uact=5
South China Morning Post: google .com/search?sxsrf=ALeKk02WstH978kPbuVq5zXeRPR6O8w7Tg%3A1587242254607&ei=DmWbXuy_JPClytMPkYGo6AM&q=site%3Ascmp.com+%22album+reviews%22&oq=site%3Ascmp.com+%22album+reviews%22&gs_lcp=CgZwc3ktYWIQA1DGEVjgU2CbVWgBcAB4AIABX4gBuwqSAQIyMpgBAKABAqABAaoBB2d3cy13aXo&sclient=psy-ab&ved=0ahUKEwjs_oeW6vLoAhXwknIEHZEACj0Q4dUDCAw&uact=5
Vancouver Sun: google .com/search?q=site%3Avancouversun.com+%22album+review%22&oq=site%3Avancouversun.com+%22album+review%22&aqs=chrome…69i57j69i58.4777j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
DMC World: dmcworld .net/category/reviews/albums/
So after submitting some reviews on the AOTY site from All About Jazz, I’m starting to notice various issues that are leading me to believe that the All About Jazz publication may be unreliable.
I will be using the artist Miles Davis for these examples, since he is known to be one of Jazz’s most important musicians in history, so you’d think the site would pay special attention to his page in particular.
To start, some albums on this site seem to have more than one review by its editors. In one example, for Miles Davis’ album “Cookin’,” if you scroll down to the bottom of this page to where it shows the “Reviews” section right under “Tags,” there are two reviews listed for this one album, each by a different author, and with different scores.
Obviously this presents a big issue to the AOTY site because it makes it hard to know which review/score to submit for an album. The site seems to give different “Positions” to each author/editor, which you can see to the right of the screen after clicking the name of their profile. Some positions I’ve seen inlcude: contributer, senior contributor, reviewer. The problem is knowing which position is more prestigious. I’m not sure which of these editors to trust more when submitting a review to AOTY (or which review is more “official,” for lack of a better term).
The editors of the site also seem to review re-releases of albums as well, like anniversary editions, collector’s editions, legacy editions, etc. So I figured that maybe they are reviewing separate editions of the “Cookin’” album. But after reading both reviews, neither of them seem to point to a different release.
Even looking at the site’s discography list for Miles can be confusing. Upon first glance it may not seem so bad, but if you look far enough through the pages, it becomes an absolute mess. Many releases repeat themselves, some releases are for special editions but aren’t mentioned in the title, and there’s just a lack of information for most of these releases overall to understand what they are (singles, albums, compilations, live albums, re-releases, etc).
The more I look into this site, the more hesitant I become to submit reviews from this publication to the AOTY site. I just find this site to be too confusing to use (especially with the confusing page design), and I’m never sure which reviews to submit, especially when there is more than one review for the same album. I’m not saying that you should remove the publication. I could just be missing something… However, I did want to make mention of this in case you weren’t already aware. And hopefully I can make other users aware of this before they decide to submit a review from them to the AOTY site, and hopefully they can make a more careful decision (that is, if this publication stays on the site).
Appreciate you looking into this, and it’s something that I should have caught. The big issue is that they have multiple reviews for the same album so I’ll remove them from the list.
Thanks for hearing me out. I was excited to see a Jazz publication on AOTY, but it seems this might not be the right publication for the site. Maybe we can find a more fitting jazz publication in the future. Thanks for all of your hard work, Rob!
If you have any in mind, let me know and I’ll check them out.
Um, you are aware there’s other more professional review sites that also have reviews of the same album by multiple authors (Pitchfork and PopMatters for example, sputnikmusic especially with staff reviews). AllMusic also has incomplete discographies where some albums aren’t listed. Just because a site’s discography page is imperfect doesn’t mean its an unreliable, uncredible source with professional staff working for the site. These are lousy reasons to remove a publication.
As far as I’m aware, Pitchfork does have multiple authors, but when they write multiple reviews for one album, they decide on only one of those reviews to be released as the official review, and all of the other reviews are stowed away.
I don’t know if you heard about an issue Pitchfork had with Mark Kozelek of Sun Kil Moon, but Mark Kozelek said some pretty nasty things about Pitchfork. At the time, Pitchfork was ready to release a very positive review of Sun Kil Moon’s album “Universal Themes,” and they had even linked to the review on their Twitter (they gave the album a 9.1/10). However, after Mark made all those negative comments, they pulled the review, and in retaliation, released a more negative review from a different author, giving the album the “official” score of a 6/10.
I can understand your argument about incomplete discographies. Maybe that was beside the point. But you must understand that the site can’t have multiple reviews for a single album, hence why Rob felt it necessary to pull the All About Jazz publication from AOTY.
I don’t use Sputnikmusic often, but I do know that they have a mix of Staff reviews and User reviews. Only the Staff reviews are used on AOTY, and I’ve personally never seen more than one Staff review of the same album, but maybe I’m missing something, so if you can link me an example, that would be helpful.
Allmusic also changes their review scores from time to time, but there’s always only one official staff given score for a release.
You could be misconstruing contemporary reviews and retrospective reviews. Some publications write reviews for different versions of the same album. You can find plenty of examples on AOTY where there is a publication that gave a score for an album, but gave a different score for a reissue - anniversary, or collectors edition. Those scores are specific to those releases, and they are technically not for the same exact release. An example I can use would be Rolling Stones’ reviews of “The Bends” by Radiohead. They gave the original release 3.5/5 stars, and the collector’s edition 4.5/5 stars. Or in the case of publications like AllMusic, they just change their score to reflect new opinions about an album or other release.
Look… at the end of the day, the golden rule here is this: there can’t be more than one staff review of the same release for a publication to be valid on AOTY. Rob has already made mention of this rule before on previous posts. I mean, just think about how that would work logically on AOTY. How would you know which review to credit on the site? I understand that my other argument may have had some holes, but All About Jazz is just not fit for AOTY because it breaks that one rule. If what you say is true for Pitchfork, PopMatters, and SputnikMusic, then I guess those publications may not be fit for AOTY either. Provide me and Rob with some sources please… help us out a bit.
Popmatters: https://web.archive.org/web/20121101222557/http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/128022-thieves-like-us-again-and-again/, https://web.archive.org/web/20120608065736/http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/140067-thieves-like-us-again-again/
“I mean, just think about how that would work logically on AOTY. How would you know which review to credit on the site?” What review is “official” of the site or review is an extremely abstract argument. You are aware each review from any publication, including those that only have one review of each record, is written by one person? We compile reviews of individuals that rate and write reviews professionally, not publications. If there are two reviews by two completely differently people published on the same credible publication, there’s two separate, different and credible opinions with ratings to include in the critic score. This concept of “official” reviews is nonsensical and needlessly trivializes the discussion of what sources can be added.
Also, I’ve been adding reviews to Albumoftheyear.org for a long time, including those from Sputnikmusic, and I DO remember instances where there were up to four staff reviews of one record, although these instances were very few. I can’t link them off the top of my head, but I don’t know those situations are out there.
Erik, have you ever seen AOTY or even Metacritic use more than one rating from a single publication for a single release? You’ve been putting reviews up long enough to know that once a review is submitted to the site from a single publication (for an album, single, compilation, etc.), you can’t put another review by that same publication for that same release, even if there is more than one review by different authors. In other words, it’s locked to that one review/score, unless you decide to submit a correction that gets approved by a moderator. Otherwise, you can’t just submit those two reviews from PopMatters. Only one can be chosen, and then it’s locked.
I understand what you are saying, but this goes against how the site works. We do add critic scores to the site, but you are completely avoiding the rule. Keep in mind, I don’t make the rule here, so there’s no point in arguing it with me. This is something that, if you have a problem with, I’m NOT the guy to complain to. Only being able to submit one review for a release by a single publication is just how the site works, and we can’t just add more than one review by the same publication. Maybe you can take this issue to Rob and see what he thinks, but currently, that’s how most (even the biggest) sites similar to AOTY works, including Metacritic.
So going back to this point. If what you are saying is that we should have the capability to include more than one critic score per publication, then I’m not going to say that this is right or wrong. This is your opinion, and it may even be one that a lot of people would accept. However, the site is just currently not fit for these kinds of publications. I’m enforcing the rule that the administrator makes because it’s how he wants the site to be. One rating per publication. There is no point in sitting here arguing this with me because, at the end of the day, more than one review per publication for a single release is just not supported on the site, so adding publications like this just isn’t the best move for right now. If the site were different, I’d totally be on your side, but right now, how you are saying the site should be vs. how it currently is just isn’t a good enough reason to fire away and add whatever publications you want, completely disregarding that rule.
If you want some kind of change, maybe talk with Rob about it?
As for the issue with PopMatters, Rob can probably assess what should be done about that. Without proper sources from the other publications, like Sputnik and Pitchfork, we can’t make any kind of assessment about them.
“Erik, have you ever seen AOTY or even Metacritic use more than one rating from a single publication for a single release?” Yes, I have. https://www.metacritic.com/music/again-again/thieves-like-us/critic-reviews Not the majority of the time, but I do see it on occasion, and even if this wasn’t true, just because that’s how its always been done doesn’t mean it’s proper to do it that way. This is the appeal to tradition fallacy
BTW, three Emeritus reviews for this album, and another staff one: https://www.sputnikmusic.com/review/39422/Sufjan-Stevens-The-Age-of-Adz/
Okay, thank you for posting about this. I now have a better understanding of how these sites work. Like I said, I didn’t come up with the rule, but if you want to take it up with Rob, then maybe it would be worth doing. I just don’t see how you would put one review from a publication, but leave out the others from that same publication.
I think back in the day there were a couple albums that had two PopMatters reviews on AOTY, but as of today only their first published review should be attributed to an album. If you see otherwise, let me know.
And for Sputnik, we use the review they link from the artist page if they have multiple Staff reviews for an album.
That’s understandable. I’ll be sure to keep that in mind when submitting reviews from Sputnik and PopMatters.
I don’t mean to come off as rude or nasty in any way, and I’m sorry if I do. I love the concept of the site and I think it’s a superior competitor to Metacritic for the ability to update the amount of reviews even several years later. I appreciate being informed about the multi-review rule too.
“As of today only their first published review should be attributed to an album. If you see otherwise, let me know.” “And for Sputnik, we use the review they link from the artist page if they have multiple Staff reviews for an album.” So wait, shouldn’t we do the same thing with All About Jazz?
I was thinking that too. Maybe that might be a solvable solution.