I'm not a terribly good blogger, of this there can be little doubt. I may however be among the laziest (though whether a couple blog posts makes one a 'blogger' is arguable).
Anyway, does anyone else use the rating feature on their iTunes/computer music player? Most people I've asked apparently don't... many are however obsessive over having all the album covers. I like to rate the songs (1 through 5 stars - happily I'm using MusicBee which permits half-star increments, unlike iTunes). What bothers me about my ratings is that the cumulative ratings of the songs often does not match what I would subjectively rate the album they are on. Well it doesn't really bother me per se, but I wonder what it means for how an album should be rated. Critical reviews often seem to convey a degree of specifity: Pitchfork has a 10-point scale but uses tenths of a point (e.g., 6.2). One website, I'm too lazy to check (AllMusic?), uses a 1-100 scale.
What does this represent? How good the songs are? Is there an originality multiplier? With art there is always a degree of subjectivity, but that doesn't stop critics from rating movies, TV, plays, and so forth. Even if the individual rating is largely subjective, it seems pointless unless there is some method behind it. While critical reception may be less important with music than other avenues, I'm sure artists prefer good reviews to bad ones. Taking into account the wide variance in preferences among music listeners, prominent reviewers probably tend to err on the side of caution. Still, I haven't seen any that use a truly simplified approach (e.g., 'highly recommended,' 'recommended,' 'not recommended').
