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#62

Electronic Sound magazine https://electronicsound.co.uk

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#63
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#64
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#65
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#66

Punknews.org’s staff reviews are usually pretty good, plus they’ve been around for quite awhile now. They use a 0-5 rating scale and generally cover a nice, wide range of music. Although, again, if they were to be added, it’d be best to ensure that only their staff reviews appear on AOTY, similar to how Sputnikmusic’s staff and emeritus reviews only appear on AOTY.

2 Likes
#67

Back with two more suggestions.

First off, the Austin Chronicle, a large, regional newspaper from Austin, Texas, has a pretty long history of reviewing albums and has reviews dating back to 1995 on their website (all of which have scores, mind you). Hell, there might even be more from further back in their old physical copies that’re up on Archive.org, but I haven’t checked. Regardless, they’re a pretty good source of reviews, ranging from obscure, small independent releases to mainstream albums and they use a 0-5 rating scale. Now, it seems like they haven’t really been reviewing much since February, but that seems to be more because of the current pandemic more than them deciding to close down their reviews, especially considering that they’ve reviewed both the Austin Music Awards and a virtual music fest past that. Either way, with their huge back catalog and wealth of professional reviews, I think they’d make a great addition to AOTY.

My other suggestion is All About Jazz, which I specifically think would be good considering the lack of jazz-specific critic sites available for reviews. All About Jazz has also been around since 1995, although I don’t think they’ve been using a rating scale since the beginning. Still, for years now they’ve been putting out plenty of quality reviews on all sorts of jazz albums that otherwise may only see a blip here or there on the other sites available for AOTY aggregation, and I think that’s important considering how influential and well-loved jazz is as a genre. They also use a 0-5 rating scale and have been doing so for at least a decade or so now.

EDIT: Reading up a bit, it seems that Rob doesn’t want to add All About Jazz, which is understandable. That being said, if there’s a good, easily accessible jazz publication that exists, uses a rating scale and, well, reviews jazz music, then I think it should definitely be considered for addition just based on the lack of jazz reviewers alone.

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#68

High Snobiety
Now Magazine
Resident Advisor
The Skinny
Time Out London
XLR8R

Have all stopped doing ratings for a long while now. Would be nice if we could get some replacements for them

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#69

I made this suggestion back in August, but I think Album Review TV (ARTV) should be included on this website. He reviews music on YouTube, and has been reviewing music just as long–if not longer–as Anthony Fantano. He should definitely get more recognition within the music community, even if his opinions are not as controversial as others.

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#70

Le Canal Auditif has a bunch of reviews of albums from Montreal + Quebec (like Klo Pelgag) that don’t get coverage elsewhere. Pitchfork style format with ratings & best new music, should be relatively easy to scrape: https://lecanalauditif.ca/critiques/

#71
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#72

I’ve made a list of publications, used on three other websites, that are not currently being used on AOTY.

The other websites are:

Publications used by all three websites:

  • BBC
  • Blender
  • Blurt
  • Punk News
  • The Quietus

Used by two:

AnyDecentMusic? & Metacritic:

  • The Independent on Sunday
  • Observer Music Monthly

AnyDecentMusic? & Wikipedia:

  • AltSounds
  • AU Review

Metacritic & Wikipedia:

  • Absolute Punk
  • Boston Globe
  • CMJ
  • Country Weekly
  • DJ Booth
  • Filter
  • Lost at Sea
  • Magnet
  • MTV
  • The New York Times
  • Playlouder
  • Rap Reviews
  • Revolver
  • Robert Christgau
  • Rock Sound
  • Select
  • The Source
  • Stylus Magazine
  • Urb
  • Vibe
  • The Wire

Note: Some of these publications may not:

  • Be active
  • Provide online reviews
  • Give albums a score
4 Likes
#73

I nominate MicTheSnare.
Sure, he doesn’t have a rating system but his reviews are really short and I just think it would be funny to just have one reviewer saying “it’s fine” for every review and that being it.
Petition to add Mic:

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#74

@Rob

Is there any chance you could add the Financial Times and The Times UK

They’re both very reputable, respected and have been reviewing albums for quite a long time.

I’ve linked their websites below:
https://www.ft.com/arts/music/albums
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/topic/music?page=1

Thanks!

#75

robert christgau has his consumer guide website. I am not a huge fan of his but he is arguably the most famous singular critic that writes traditional written reviews.
Just for an example here is a link to his We Got It From Here
 Thank You 4 Your Service review
https://www.robertchristgau.com/get_album.php?id=16922

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#76

GigSoup.com seem to have removed all their reviews from their site. It would be better to remove their reviews and replace them with some of these great suggestions of other functional review sites. There definitely needs to be more jazz reviewing sites.

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#77

RIOT (US) : https://riotmag.co/reviews (rating system now 1-10; old system - 0/5)

#78

I would like to suggest the “Dallamtapadás” music critic youtube channel from Dávid Simon. He’s from Hungary and also he’s creating reviews about some famous hungarian albums. And I would like to add it because I don’t think that for our country we have our own music critic guy. So I would to recommend to the one from the @moderators team of this site to change this for once and for all. Because I don’t think that from Hungary there is any other active music critic as him. I would be very thankful for having him on the site.

His profile picture to use it:

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unnamed900×900 38.1 KB

I have a link down there for his videos about his most famous critic videos:

#80

I’d like to suggest the biggest music site in Germany laut.de (running since the 90s, still going strong). Their reviews are in german which may be against the rules but I think they’d be a nice addition especially for german albums, which don’t get any reviews on here at all.
Their rating system goes from 1-5.

#81

@Rob

Hi Rob,

Im just wondering why Rolling Stone (UK) can’t be counted as a review from the Rolling Stone option on the website? If it’s a problem, could we add the U.K. magazine as an option seeing as the US on is present?

Also, could we add the Times (UK)? It’s a fairly reputable source and journalistic organisation - the Irish Times are already there too!

Hope to hear back from you soon!

Thanks!

#82

Hi @Rob is it possible to include more Country music to the site? I know it’s a small community but there are a few magazines out there that I think we can include

  1. TasteOfCountry
  2. SavingCountryMusic
  3. RoughStock
  4. GotCountryOnline
  5. CountryWeekly

The first 2 are the most popular btw