Type of site | Social cataloging and community |
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Available in | English (main site) Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish (forums) |
URL |
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Commercial | Yes |
Registration | Optional and free (required to view and post threads on forums) |
Current status | Active |
Rate Your Music (often abbreviated to RYM) is an online encyclopedia of music releases and films. Users can catalog items from their personal collection, review them, and assign ratings in a five-star rating system. The site also features community-based charts that track highest-rated releases.
The first version of the site, "RYM 1.0," allowed users to rate and catalog releases, as well as to write reviews, create lists [1] [2] and add artists and releases to the database.
In May 2009, Rate Your Music started to add films to its database. [3]
The main idea of the website is to allow the users to add music releases of many types including but not limited to albums, EPs, singles, mixtapes, and bootlegs to the database and to rate them. The rating system uses a scale of minimum a half-star (or 0.5 points) to maximum five stars (or 5 points). [4] Users can likewise leave reviews for RYM entries as well as create user profiles. [5] [6] Rate Your Music is generated jointly by the registered user community (artists, releases, biographies, etc.); however, the majority of new, edited content must be approved by a moderator to prevent virtual vandalism.
As of February 2023, RYM had over 729,000 user-created lists ranging from "popular lists" to "ultimate box sets," which cover various musical genres, including obscure micro-genres. [2] [7]
Rate Your Music has been credited with helping previously unknown artists and albums rise to popularity, most prominently Have a Nice Life's debut album Deathconsciousness and Sweet Trip's 2003 album Velocity : Design : Comfort . [8] Chat Pile guitarist Luther Manhole said, "Our popularity on RYM definitely contributed to us having this career-type-thing, 100%.", as the band's self-released debut EP topped the weekly charts due to fortunate timing. [9]
Rate Your Music has been received generally favorably. M.O.V.I.N [UP]'s Maurício Angelo praised RYM as "the best guide to discovering new music, in all styles, of any tempo". [10] Hypebot staff found Rate Your Music "snobby and multilingual and people come to show off their various incredible music collections. I’ve loved it for ages". [11] Wired 's Andy Baio deemed it "quirky". [12] Radio Wave's Karel Veselý praised Rate Your Music and Discogs as "[t]he cult music portals". [13]
Flashmode Arabia staff commended RYM as "a fantastic way to discover new music" but critiqued its user experience. [14] The Daily Star 's Deeparghya Dutta Barau called it "one of those hip sites that offer functionality over aesthetics". [15] Similarly, Newonce's staff was somewhat critical, stating the site was "Extremely ugly visually (its creators like the consistency: RYM has not changed the layout to this day), but quite useful". [16]
Centuries of Sound founder James Errington said "[he consulted] websites like Rate Your Music and Acclaimed Music to pick top hits" for his year-by-year mixtapes of the 20th century. [17] Pigeons and Planes 's Adrienne Black highlighted the forums, stating, "if you haven't already spent half your day exploring the above, there are the highly active, engaged threads to dive in to". [1] Evolver.fm's Eliot Van Buskirk advised readers to "Keep a wishlist on rateyourmusic.com". [18]
In an interview with PopMatters , American electronic musician Skylar Spence noted that he would use Discogs and Rate Your Music to find "a lot of cool, old, hidden treasures that way". [19]
In an article previewing an upcoming Phish Halloween concert, in which the band traditionally covers an album in its entirety, JamBase 's Scott Bernstein noted that all but Waiting for Columbus "[were] in the top 700 on RateYourMusic, which compiles fan ratings". [20]
Selecting "Logan Rock Witch" from Richard D. James Album as their favorite Aphex Twin track, The Quietus 's John Doran remarked "this should result in something that sounds like a mad man’s breakfast of kooky cacophony. (And a quick look at Rate Your Music reveals that plenty of self-professed AFX fans actually do see it this way.)" [21]
Appraising Kairon; IRSE!'s album Ruination, Stereogum's Doug Moore saw that the band "built a big following on Rate Your Music by combining the slightly heftier variants of prog and pysch (sic) with shoegaze". [22]
In a piece concerning Mark E. Smith, Patrin noted that The Fall's This Nation's Saving Grace was "the album that Rate Your Music still ranks as their best by a sliver as of less than 24 hours after Smith’s death". [23]
Covering the Japanese band Fishmans album 98.12.28 Otokotachi no Wakare , The Michigan Daily 's Sayan Ghosh noted the "classic music lover’s past-time of perusing through internet boards such as Rate Your Music". [24]
In response to Swedish symphonic metal band Therion's album Beloved Antichrist , Stereogum 's Ian Chainey opined that "extremely fickle user bases of Rate Your Music, Encyclopaedia Metallum, and Prog Archives all rate Therion’s albums highly". [25]
Commenting on the release of Retribution Body's album Self Destruction, Tiny Mix Tapes 's Lijah Fosl offered "a reminder that 'dark ambient' is more than just a random rateyourmusic.com categorization". [26]
In a retrospective on the American rock band Duster, Noisey's Brian Coney described their discography as "a muted legacy of life-changingly Good Music that has rewarded bummed-out indieheads with a penchant for Soulseek and RateYourMusic genre lists in the intervening 17 years". [27]
In a review for American musician Yves Tumor's album Safe in the Hands of Love , The Brown Daily Herald 's Katherine Ok associated plunderphonics with "crate-digging, list-obsessed 'Rate Your Music' users". [28]
You're Living All Over Me is the second studio album by American alternative rock band Dinosaur Jr. It was released on December 14, 1987, through SST Records.
Secretly Canadian is an American independent record label based in Bloomington, Indiana, part of the Secretly Group. The Secretly Group includes record labels Dead Oceans and Jagjaguwar as well as a music publisher known as Secretly Publishing, representing artists, writers, film makers, producers, and comedians.
Wobbler is a Norwegian progressive rock band formed in 1999.
"Slack Motherfucker" is a song by American rock band Superchunk. It was the first single released from the band's debut, self-titled album (1990). The song was penned by vocalist and guitarist Mac McCaughan in reference to an indolent co-worker he had at the time. Credited to all four band members, it was the band's second single and first to be released under the name Superchunk.
98.12.28 Otokotachi no Wakare is the third and final live album by Japanese dub band Fishmans. It documents the band's final live performance with frontman Shinji Sato. The show was recorded and filmed at Akasaka Blitz on December 28, 1998, and was first released on September 29, 1999, by Polydor Records in Japan. The album title roughly translates to "A Farewell of Men: December 28th, 1998", a reference to the tour name, and to bassist Yuzuru Kashiwabara's departure from the band and the end of the band's three-piece era. The performance was released on DVD under the name Otokotachi no Wakare 98.12.28 @ Akasaka Blitz in 2005.
Tacocat is an American punk rock band from Seattle, founded in 2007 and consisting of Emily Nokes, Bree McKenna, Lelah Maupin, and Eric Randall. They gained popularity in 2014 following the release of their second album NVM, engineered by Conrad Uno. The album received positive reviews in the music press, including from Pitchfork, AllMusic, and PopMatters, and also reached the CMJ top 10 college radio albums.
Ghost Bath is an American post-metal band from Minot, North Dakota, formed in 2012 and fronted by Dennis Mikula. They have released four studio albums and one EP to date, melding black metal and post-rock music. They initially gained notoriety for marketing themselves as being from China.
U.S. Girls is a Toronto-based experimental pop project formed in 2007, consisting solely of American musician and record producer Meghan Remy. She had released music on a variety of independent record labels before signing to 4AD in 2015.
Bölzer is a Swiss extreme metal duo that formed in Zürich in 2008. They have said that the meaning behind the name is "a powerful force or blow or strike that has no regard for the consequences or the repercussions. And in that sense it's not directed either, it's just a chaotic strike of energy…. a force of chaos, and a force of life and death and anything." To date, they have released three EPs, and their debut studio full-length album Hero was released on 25 November 2016 on Iron Bonehead Productions.
After the Party is the fifth studio album by American punk rock band The Menzingers, released on February 3, 2017, through Epitaph Records. Despite the album's limited commercial success, peaking at No. 67 on the Billboard 200, it received a positive critical reception and is considered by many publications and music critics to be one of 2017's best punk rock and overall albums.
Breadcrumb Trail is a 2014 documentary film directed by Lance Bangs about the Louisville, Kentucky band Slint.
"LMK" is a song by American singer and songwriter Kelela. It was released on August 1, 2017 through Warp Records as the lead single from her debut studio album, Take Me Apart (2017).
American singer and record producer Kitty has released two studio albums, one mixtape, two compilation albums, ten extended plays, and twenty-eight singles. Kitty began rapping in 2010, and shared her music online under the stage name Kitty Pryde. In 2011, she served as a member of hip-hop group Jokers in Trousers. The group released a self-titled EP, which would be their only release before disbanding. In July 2011, Kitty released a solo mixtape titled The Lizzie McGuire Experience.
Working Class Woman is the fourth solo studio album by French-Canadian musician Marie Davidson. It was released on Ninja Tune on 5 October 2018.
Crumbling is the second studio album by South Korean folktronica artist Mid-Air Thief. The album features vocals by South Korean indie singer-songwriter Summer Soul. It was released on July 31, 2018. It was nominated at the Korean Music Awards in 2019 in the categories "Album of the Year" and "Best Dance & Electronic Album" and won the latter.
Sam Griffin Owens, known professionally as Sam Evian, is an American songwriter, instrumentalist and producer based in New York. He has released four full-length albums and one 7" single.
Static Shock Records is an English independent record label, gig promoter, and distributor specialising in underground punk founded in London in 2008. Since 2012 the label has organised a 'Static Shock Weekend' festival most years at different venues in the city.
Black Dresses are a Canadian noise pop duo consisting of Ada Rook and Devi McCallion, formed in 2017. Their debut album, Wasteisolation, was released independently in 2018. The duo released three additional albums, Thank You (2019), Love and Affection for Stupid Little Bitches (2019), and Peaceful as Hell (2020), before breaking up in 2020 in response to harassment received by McCallion. Despite maintaining their declaration of disbandment in 2020, Black Dresses has released two additional albums, Forever in Your Heart (2021) and Forget Your Own Face (2022).
Irreversible Entanglements is an American free jazz collective formed in 2015. The improvising quintet consists of vocalist Camae Ayewa, drummer Tcheser Holmes, trumpeter Aquiles Navarro, saxophonist Keir Neuringer, and bassist Luke Stewart. Their albums have been celebrated as among the best in new music by The Wire, The Quietus, Magnet, NPR Music, and Stereogum.