According to the recent polls, the vast majority of you think my review scores are on track (85%, not counting the people who think I'm stupid), and most of you want me to keep giving review scores (76%). Most of you also see the good in the review format (71%), so that will not be changing.
Miskatonic pointed out something that always bothered me, the fact that "I give it X out of X stars" appeared in every review. I couldn't think of a better way to do that before, but now I'm leaving it out of the prose of the review and setting it aside.
The only other change I'll be making around here is in what gets reviewed. In the past, I've had a policy of at least mentioning at least one submission from everyone (each band, PR person, or label gets one). With the quantity of submissions I receive, that's no longer possible. Given that change, I'll have to get better about e-mailing the bands and labels back, rather than leaving them hanging until I post a review.
What this should mean for you is that there will be no more half-hearted reviews, like most of the summary judgment reviews. If something doesn't make me want to talk about it, or nothing interesting comes to my mind, I won't force it. This will probably mean there will be fewer albums getting a 2.5 or 3 star rating, and there will be more high ratings. The very bad ratings probably won't go anywhere.
i try not to complain about my backlog too much (cuz people are sending me free music!) but yeah, i'm also finding it increasingly hard to keep up. i kinda feel bad when i take five or six months to get to people's stuff. i need helper monkeys or something.
ReplyDeleteI guess my choice was to drop anything from the backlog that I don't feel I have anything to say about. If I really don't want to finish listening, I won't, and I won't worry about writing a review. It might mean that I won't even post every day . . . but we'll see about that.
ReplyDeleteYeah, like I've said before, it's a good problem to have. I'm not complaining--it's just that priorities need to be set.