Anyone else notice how completely retarded and biased Metacritic is?
 

I used to use Metacritic as a resource to review new music for the past fourteen to eighteen months, but lately, I'm starting to wonder exactly how impartial these motherfuckers are. Here's just a taste of their bullshit:

One Day As A Lion: One Day As A Lion [EP] (2008): Reviews

The "average" score is 80, but there are two reviews that clock under that. Not only this, but it's the Metacritic staff that are the ones to assign reviews scores in the first fucking place. I've noticed that they don't report too many poor reviews on indie/electronica albums and the editors have seemed to develop their own tastes. The reviews are weighted to give higher precendence to sources which the editors find appealing. I thought the purpose of this site was to establish objective and encompassing reviews of albums, not to promote their own musical tastes. I guess there's politics there too.

I will never guage my taste in music based upon what these fuckers tell me ever again.

Fuck Metacritic.

That's an odd take on averages they've got there, unless they only go in 10's, and then thats a bit silly because it implies a percentage which it isn't at all.

Strikes me as a bit stripped down, if i was wondering whether to listen to an album i doubt this site would make me decide either way.

It's always entertaining to see one critic get outraged by another. How is it the you're being any less absolute and unyielding than the critical object of your disdain? If our musical passion & appreciation were a substance you could attempt to cut through with a knife, it would be made of concrete. We all (me included) choose to be the knife's will rather than accepting the solid fortress that is our personal resolve. Musical critique is all an expressive joke. At the end of the day all that we have is our own two ears accompanied by a single will that decides what we listen to.

Loyalty with respect to artistic favor is the opposite of critical integrity.

I don't get exactly what PMO was saying but having a look at the site myself the issue I'm seeing (if its based on a scale of 100) is that there isn't any sort of Z-score we can convert all the ratings to.

That being said it looks like the editors haphazardly convert other reviews to their number system with no actual math, just a sort of "eh this look like a 75 rating" attitude and if anything thats where the bias comes in (by proxy of laziness)

I'm not reviewing One Day As A Lion. I'm saying that Metacritic is a pile of garbage.

Fack off.

BUT, you are being critical and that is precisely my point. You merely find your opinion 180 degrees different from theirs. No escape.

I've always been in the habit of making my own opinions about music, film etc.

I generally don't pay attention to other critics.

Yes but it's not as fun to say that ;)

If you average the numbers together it comes to 75.751. If they round up to the nearest 10 it would be 80. This would be a fair way to do it if they did it for all their averages, but they don't. In fact I decided to click a random album to see what the average review is according to them and then figuring it up. I ended up with Alphabeat: This Is Alphabeat. Their average according to them is 76. The scores are 100, 80, 80, 60, 60, 60. The real average is 73.3 repeated. Round down to the nearest whole and we have 73. A whole 3 points off. Interesting. Alkaline Trio: Agony & Irony's scores average to 68.1, but the average they list is 71. Its 3.1 points off, 3 if you round. It seems like the average score on the site is always a bit high.

The averages are skewed deliberately to spread out scores. So high rating albums are rated higher and low rated ones are rated lower.

You from this site? 'Cause if you are, I gotta bone to pick with you.

And it doesn't appear that way. Most albums are clumped between 60-80, and a point difference here or there doesn't do much to differentiate between the quality of certain albums.

eh, I can't speak for how it works in reality, but that's the theory. I got that from the "how did we calculate this score" link they have underneath the album score.

God knows why I was reading that....

What's your bone to pick?

1) How they choose the albums to be featured. Too many obscure albums released by poor electronica artists.
2) How they decide how a review should be scored. If a reviewer doesn't provide his own score, it shouldn't be included at all. End of story.
3) How they decide which reviewers are given higher preecedence. It's complete bullcrap to give higher precedence to reviewers they find "a bigger influence on the genre" because that just normalizes the scores around what those people say. Pitchfork, Spin, Kerrang!, Rolling Stone, etc. have no more objective critics than anyone else.

All three concepts flawed and subjective. And no, their "how this works" section does nothing to adequately explain it.

Yup, the system does give too much power to their own preference.
I only really use it to find a bunch of different reviews in one place.

I can't stand critics.

I might check out albums based on how much praise and attention they're getting overall, but I don't look towards reviews for recommendations. It's all biased bullcrap and in absolutely no way determines weither you'll like it or not, everyone likes to do reviews for fun, but I don't think music criticism should even be taken seriously as a profession.

And it's a lame excuse for guys like Robert Christgau, Piero Scaruffi and Rob Sheffield to make a lot of money, basically for just having horrible taste in music.

Exactly what I've come to realize.

Not to mention there are hundreds of well-received albums out there which I absolutely abhor. The Streets are one of the biggest piles of crap I've yet heard, and they topped the critic's charts.

Well I do end up liking most albums I come across that are very critically aclaimed, but my tastes are just very un-discriminating.

However there are some critical darlings I just couldn't bare. Every hipster raves about how Psycho Candy is one of the best albums ever made, and I just didn't get it. Nor did I ever get what was so special about Nick Drake and Pink Moon.

But if theres ever a time I think me and critics aren't on the same plane, it's right now. Very rarely does checking out some new hyped up band actually pay off.

Pitchforks reviews are pretty helpful though, if they love it I'll probably hate it, if they hate it I'll most certainly love it.

yeah i used to think metacritic was pretty legit, but then i figured out there system a couple of months ago and realized the score i was looking at didn't even begin to approach any semblance of accuracy

i've yet to find a reliable online source, and while i'd never let a website craft my musical opinion it would be nice to have a place that would consistently tell me what might be worth listening to and what is utter crap

Okay, I'm gonna have to bump this thread again, because I am absolutely confused by this.

Luck In The Valley reviews at Metacritic.com

One critic (Pitchfork) gave this album an 82. The others reviews were six 80's and a 70. How does the metascore become 82?

I agree with the general assessment if not the conclusion here.

Reviews are definitely all biased in one way or another, but they can be helpful if you either find a critic/publication that you generally seem to agree with or get a feel for what a particular critic/publication looks for and how you feel about that sort of thing. It works if you only look at it as a rough guide, and in that, it's legitimate as a(n admittedly subjective/editorial) form of journalism as long as it's well written.

That metacritic fudges the math is silly and lame, but honestly, it's hard to take a number as meaning anything as far as reviews go anyway.

Music can't be rated fairly. It's all pure opinion. Why do you look at reviews, if you like it who gives a s*** who else likes it.

Lol, I only visit Metacritic for their video game scores.

Only the critic scores though, their user scores is f*cked beyond belief.

http://www.ripten.com/wp-content/upl...itic-score.jpg

The f*ck?

Okay, this is messed.

I See The Sign reviews at Metacritic.com

There is no logical explanation for this.

There's only partial truthfulness to this sentiment. Of course no person can tell another person whether or not they like a piece of music. HOWEVER, there is something to be said for differentiating between well-composed, authentic, and/or (insert other applicable adjective) music and the popular stuff.

IE, person A: "Britney Spears made the best music of the 90s!"

person B: "While I respect your opinion, Person A, it would be fair to argue that Britney Spears' music was not actually the most well-composed music of the decade. In fact, despite her popularity, her music was actually quite poor in comparison to the likes of Radiohead."

@thread: I use Metacritic as well. After reading this thread, I'd like to try a different site. Anyone know a good site that calculates metascore ratings for music?

Huh? Your example was based purely on opinion.

Face it, you are never going to able to frame it in a way that isn't purely subjective.

I don't think I've ever read a music review (outside of this site that is). I just listen to what I like. I'd be hard pressed to find all my genres in one place too so I wouldn't get much out of it at all really.

That, and out of curiosity I went to their site and none of the albums on the music page look familiar. Hey they rated that Tom Waits album a 92! How awesome. Never heard it but.. he's the only artist that looked familiar.

There is, I'm just having issues communicating it properly.

How about a really extreme example.

Person A wrote a song. It involves tapping your foot every half-second and simply singing whatever comes to mind.

Person B wrote a song. Person B happens to be Mozart and the song happens to be String Quintet in D Major.

Though some might "like" the simpler song more, I think we can all agree that Person B's song is "better".

I think what he tried to say is "a way that is purely objective"

Anyway.. I disagree. Just because of common belief that Mozart is a great composer the value of the song enhances.

As Einstein mathematically concluded, everything is relative. And of all people person A will never admit that Mozart's song is better than his song because he's ego can't take it. So not all of us will agree that person B's song is "better".

I think you can only talk about suitability when it comes to music. There isn't better and worse, just suitable for someone in some context and unsuitable in some other context.

Metacritic is basically just an other list and lists shouldn't be taken very seriously (even although I keep one myself).

What lists should be used for is simply to look over and see what groups and artists have released albums or to see if any of them interest you.

I some times look over Metacritic but I'm not remotely interested in the actual ratings. The reason I do so is because sometimes you will see a release you hadn't realised had been come out or a description of an album will make you curious to hear it.

The actual rating system is the least important aspect of the whole thing.

No, I'd say THAT particular rating is actually very accurate. Have you played Gears 2? The single player is pretty good, but the multiplayer is COMPLETE sh*te. It took upwards of 20 minutes to find a match when the game was released, and when you finally did, it'd either be really laggy or everyone would get booted because of some kind of error.

They did improve the MP, but that's not saying much. It's still unacceptably laggy. Epic Games really failed with Gears 2's MP, and that pissed off a LOT of the fans.