Comments for Part-Time Music

Comment on Older Stuff // Woods by Woods // I Was Gone 7” « Part-Time Music

Woods // I Was Gone 7” « Part-Time Music — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:33:12 +0000

[...] folk group Woods, came in the mail this past week. Although probably not considered as rare as some of their other albums (an initial pressing of 1500 7′’s is the vinyl equivalent of what Dan Brown got for The [...]

Comment on Pitchfork // A Statistical Look at Their Ratings by Curt

Curt — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:01:50 +0000

Chris / Cale: I remember vividly what happened with the Sufjan record. There was never a bad review that was retracted. What you see on the site now is the original review with the original score. What happened, which supports one of the major points in this analysis, is that the record was reviewed positively and about two weeks later, when the editor heard it, it was given the “Best New Music” tag. The review with the added tag was sitting there front and center on a Monday morning.

Comment on Pitchfork // A Statistical Look at Their Ratings by P4K FAN

P4K FAN — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 09:29:16 +0000

Thanks, I really love statistics and pitchfork, so this was perfect!

Comment on Pitchfork // A Statistical Look at Their Ratings by TAL

TAL — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 18:07:26 +0000

Thanks for the insight and taking the time to code all of this up. As someone who does data analysis this raises a lot of questions. Interesting to me is, as you point out, the propensity to rate a record as a whole number. It is odd that, despite Pitchfork’s desire to use a quasi-continuum for their rating (e.g. 7.1,7.2,etc.) their reviewers tend to subconsciously return to intervals, which reminds me of some political science work on “feeling thermometers” where people tend to place themselves on the 10s. At any rate, this screws up the variance if we want to do some modelling. Lots of hypotheses to test here after you convince someone to collect more data. Again, thanks.

Comment on Pitchfork // A Statistical Look at Their Ratings by Pitchfork By The Numbers « Playtonic Dialogues

Pitchfork By The Numbers « Playtonic Dialogues — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 16:06:22 +0000

[...] am easily impressed by graphs and percentages. That is why I am fond of the article “Pitchfork // A Statistical Look at Their Ratings“ from the music blog Part-Time Music. The author does a solid job of conveying that the [...]

Comment on Pitchfork // A Statistical Look at Their Ratings by Hillel Wachs

Hillel Wachs — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 07:22:27 +0000

Fascinating and insightful. Puts it all in a different light…

Comment on Pitchfork // A Statistical Look at Their Ratings by mattgcn

mattgcn — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 05:53:38 +0000

try comparing given score to their ranking in year end and decade-end lists. there’s a lot of discrepency!

Comment on Pitchfork // A Statistical Look at Their Ratings by gbowles

gbowles — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 03:01:14 +0000

damn, this is a great article. good point about pitchfork ignoring metal… when you go on other websites that are public ratings oriented, metal is often near the top of ratings, and the albums are not usually the ones pitchfork deems ok… such as rateyourmusic.com or sputnikmusic.com, metal is always much more highly regarded, and you don’t see as much bias with re-releases and such. I think pitchfork should just drop their ratings because they are disingenuous.

Comment on Allah Las // “Long Journey” by raw B

raw B — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 02:38:59 +0000

yes!!!!!

more allah las please.

Comment on Pitchfork // A Statistical Look at Their Ratings by Charles

Charles — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 01:10:06 +0000

Mike: I would love for you to inarguably prove that Pitchfork’s label ad sales actually influence their ratings. That is a hefty claim to lob at them without indisputable evidence. Until you can, it sounds like a forum-ready conspiracy theory.

Chris: I think you mean “incomplete” instead of “dishonest”. Point/counterpoint would be great — they have some of the brighter music critics around. I disagree, though, that they “end” the discussion. To counterpoint you assertion, I believe they state their case and bring it to a larger audience. If they could provide some sort of “this writer liked this and this didn’t and here’s a reasonable discussion about it” balance, that would be great! I wonder, though, if people would dismiss it as too “snobby” without even giving it a fair chance.