Rating albums and tracks

[Bloopy]

This is worth a whole separate thread:

So, I finally fiddled around on RYM and discovered the ability to rate individual tracks. Now, I'm listening intently and doing track by track ratings and calculating an overall rating. I've been surprised to see how they tend to turn out lower than if you just listen to the whole album and arbitrarily give it an 8 or 9 out of 10 based on overall feeling.

If you marry average track ratings to album ratings, the track ratings take on extra meaning. On its own, a 7/10 song is just a rather good song. But if the album feels like a 9/10 overall, then the 7/10 becomes harsh and says that song is really dragging the album down. The song may actually be worth more in context for adding variation to the album. There's also the problem of the cap at the top of the scale. If you decide your favourite track lifts the album just as much as the 7/10 song is dragging it down, you can only imagine you gave it 11/10 to reflect that. I just tried playing around with a few track ratings in a spreadsheet, but I don't think I'll fall down that rabbit hole any time soon. It's so tough picking suitable points on the scale for lesser tracks.

When I rated my all-time favourite albums, I realised I had to have them in two tiers. The 9/10s are just not on the same level as the 10/10s. So then I have 8/10 = great/almost favourite, 7/10 = very good, 6/10 = good. Defining something like that could help push your album ratings closer to your track averages and make them less arbitrary.