Best Ever Albums

Re: Sudden huge leaps for European artists

mickilennial — Fri, 24 Mar 2023 17:31:11 GMT

Author: mickilennial

Posted: 03/24/2023 21:31

The more diverse our community becomes, the more representative and dynamic our charts as a byproduct do as well. After all, it's just an aggerate.

Re: Sudden huge leaps for European artists

albummaster — Thu, 16 Feb 2023 05:42:43 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 02/16/2023 10:42

Arthurknight wrote:

It's interesting how, once you move into the 3000+ overall rankings any one user can radically boost virtually any album of their choosing from absolute obscurity to kinda noticeable. In terms of French records, years ago now Jimmy Dread and I inadvertently did this with Catherine Ribeiro's Paix, shooting it from the 30ks to where it is now. I think this is really a consequence of how the overall chart pulls from chart selections, with major bias for greatest charts, rather than from an aggregation of ratings..

Agree, rankings here can have that effect, especially in the long tail where rankings can jump many places with an additional chart placement (but that's an artefact of how rankings work here - there's also a ratings chart hidden away somewhere).

National and language bias is evident in users from all countries - you can see that already in most charts across the site. It's just more noticeable when a non-native English speaker adds a chart.

Re: Sudden huge leaps for European artists

Arthurknight — Thu, 16 Feb 2023 03:26:54 GMT

Author: Arthurknight

Posted: 02/16/2023 08:26

It's interesting how, once you move into the 3000+ overall rankings any one user can radically boost virtually any album of their choosing from absolute obscurity to kinda noticeable. In terms of French records, years ago now Jimmy Dread and I inadvertently did this with Catherine Ribeiro's Paix, shooting it from the 30ks to where it is now. I think this is really a consequence of how the overall chart pulls from chart selections, with major bias for greatest charts, rather than from an aggregation of ratings.

I would say that in general the charts from these two users look to have mostly functioned to inflate the albums from France, Belgium and Quebec which are already the most popular French albums on the site. It's almost as if they just extracted the overall chart filtered by French albums into a greatest albums chart, but they have also added new French albums to the site so it doesn't look especially nefarious, just nationalistic.

Re: Sudden huge leaps for European artists

hwex9000 — Fri, 3 Feb 2023 11:28:11 GMT

Author: hwex9000

Posted: 02/03/2023 16:28

Lalulilelo wrote:

Hi! I just saw your post, sorry for the misunderstanding. I am not BenKar but I know her personally. We like similar artists but not in the same way. I have been going to BEA for 13 years now and grew up with the site. I decided to create my account and first charts in 2018. Yes I noticed that some French-speaking artists were very little represented but I'm not trying to push them up the charts, just to share my favorite albums with the community.
This misunderstanding allowed me to write my first post on the forum.
Have a good day !

Thanks! No worries - it's just that I follow the charts pretty closely, and things like this tend to catch my eye. Nothing wrong with more international diversity!

Re: Sudden huge leaps for European artists

Lalulilelo — Fri, 3 Feb 2023 07:33:25 GMT

Author: Lalulilelo

Posted: 02/03/2023 12:33

Hi! I just saw your post, sorry for the misunderstanding. I am not BenKar but I know her personally. We like similar artists but not in the same way. I have been going to BEA for 13 years now and grew up with the site. I decided to create my account and first charts in 2018. Yes I noticed that some French-speaking artists were very little represented but I'm not trying to push them up the charts, just to share my favorite albums with the community.
This misunderstanding allowed me to write my first post on the forum.
Have a good day !

Re: Sudden huge leaps for European artists

albummaster — Thu, 2 Feb 2023 04:03:29 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 02/02/2023 09:03

Thanks for highlighting. Tbh, as long as there's no duplicate accounts/gaming going on, personally in favour of more diversity. (I'll check into the accounts to make sure there's nothing nefarious happening).

Re: Sudden huge leaps for European artists

Hayden — Wed, 1 Feb 2023 19:09:58 GMT

Author: Hayden

Posted: 02/02/2023 00:09

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

Bonjur.

Re: Sudden huge leaps for European artists

craola — Wed, 1 Feb 2023 18:54:15 GMT

Author: craola

Posted: 02/01/2023 23:54

given how many users almost exclusively chart USA/UK albums, i think it's just as likely they really prefer the albums they're charting, which doesn't go against the spirit of BEA whatsoever.

Re: Sudden huge leaps for European artists

MadhattanJack — Wed, 1 Feb 2023 16:12:32 GMT

Author: MadhattanJack

Posted: 02/01/2023 21:12

This looks like a situation where a couple of folks from France (on different ISPs, if I'm allowed to say that) just decided that French music wasn't getting enough respect here and decided to do something about it. I'd have to say that what they're doing is within the rules, though it's presumably against the "spirit" of BEA. Or, that's how I would put it anyway.

If they were trying to be sneaky, they'd include some Radiohead or Pink Floyd albums up in there to look like they were trying to "fit in," but they're not, it's just all French stuff. And they're not really trying to pump up a specific LP, unless it's Jacques Brel's Ces Gens-Là maybe — but Brel is a fairly big name internationally, and that's probably his best album. So... I guess don't be surprised if AlbumMaster decides this is legitimate. The French have their musical idols too, just like everybody else! 😐

Sudden huge leaps for European artists

hwex9000 — Wed, 1 Feb 2023 11:13:05 GMT

Author: hwex9000

Posted: 02/01/2023 16:13

In recent days there have been numerous, hard-to-overlook sudden huge leaps on the charts (both in terms of ranks for individual albums, and number of albums on the all-time chart) for several classic European artists (notably, Georges Brassens and Leo Ferre). These are due entirely to updated charts from two users, BenKar and Lalulilelo.

I'm not going to argue that these artists and their albums don't deserve more recognition. But this level of chart movement for so many albums, in such a short time, is highly unusual. And someone (not me) once left a comment on one of Lalulilelo's charts that it was suspiciously similar to one of BenKar's. This might be worth looking into.