Say goodbye to 10-stars.
Hey everyone, Nathan here. (Skip to the bottom for the summary)
Though we’ve done only three reviews so far (as of the publication date of this piece), we’re going to change the way we rate albums.
We’re going to remove our rating system. There isn’t a specific reason why we’re doing this but to be honest with the readers/music fans, sometimes a 10-star rating system doesn’t do an artist justice or any rating system for that matter whether it’s a 5-star system, a decimal system, a 100-point system or a letter grade, etc. (it goes on and on).
This is actually something I’ve thought about for a long time as a semi-professional music journalist.
And by the way, we’re not criticizing you (the reader) for rating albums however you please. Everyone has their own system and sometimes it’s easier to summarize your feelings towards a piece of art by hitting it with 4 or 5 star sticker. That’s totally fine.
But when I first started out doing music-related stuff on Range Dive, it took me a while to figure out an approach. I knew that lots of critics favored the 5-star system. In fact, the 5-star system is the unspoken universal way to rate businesses, TV shows, books, movies, and music.
Aggregate sites like Goodreads and RateYourMusic use 5-stars. It’s seen as an easy way to convey your feelings without second guessing yourself too much unintentionally by adding a large amount of complexity to your score.
I’m personally not too fond of 5-star scoring systems, I think I’d rather use 10-stars to fully convey myself. With 10-stars you know if something is either really good or really bad as you use more of the spectrum.
But I’m not going to give myself or anyone else a headache over finding the perfect scoring system.
So there it is, we’re going to remove scoring systems and just talk about the album. Readers can decide for themselves using their own system as I feel it’s more appropriate for the site in the long run.
We’ll see how this goes.