Best Ever Albums

Re: Voting on Genres Through Charts

Anonymous — Fri, 12 Sep 2014 11:24:13 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 09/12/2014 15:24

I like the tag idea more that mine. Not a lot of people here have custom charts. I recently search for alternative charts, and only two or three showed up (excluding my newly made one). We don't have enough users for custom charts, anyway.

Re: Voting on Genres Through Charts

albummaster — Fri, 12 Sep 2014 06:34:28 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 09/12/2014 10:34

I've been watching the thread develop to see which way it would go. The primary reason for wanting to include meta data about each release is to aid discovery. For example, if you are in a search engine and want to know the best jazz albums, currently BEA can't provide an answer to this except for checking out the charts that a given album appears in and hoping that similar albums might also appear in that chart. But without the descriptive information about the album's genre, you wouldn't know that other albums in the same chart were the same genre (except if you were already familiar with the artist/genre).

As others have said, the problem with assigning descriptive labels to any kind of music is that it will be extremely subjective, and different people will have different ideas of what genre an album should appear in, which is bound lead to argument & bickering. I think it's definitely more of a problem the deeper you go into a particular style. As mecca alluded to, you can go to infinite degrees with any genre & we will end up spending time unproductively on the most pointless debate about which sub-genre(s) an album should belong to & still people might not agree. Yes, we could borrow the data from a catalogue or license it (but not sure from where), but BEA'd then be reliant on an external source and still have the problem that people might not agree with the data, so I prefer the idea of BEA being in control of their own data in some way.

I also relate to what martinho said, there is something intangible about pigeon-holing albums which needs careful treatment:

martinho wrote:

we are going to vote for what genre the beatles help is?? this to me very strange urge to squeeze an album into just ONE genre and indeed by the use of the exclusional democratic system is just : WRONG... there are of course many albums out there that really belongs in a certain genre, but on the other hand there are just to many ones that has their octopus arms in multiple genres for us to chop 9 of them off just like that. be openminded about it. it's only music. it's only art.

The alternative idea (which would have less management overhead) would be to have a tagging system which would work a bit like Last.fm (and other sites) with the most popular tags being more prominent. This would allow people the flexibility to do what they like, but also has drawbacks in that the vocabulary of the tags can't be controlled and the tags could then be misused (e.g. with plain rubbish, spam, and derogatory terms). Neither solution is perfect which is probably the main reason nothing has been implemented yet.

A third option would not be to add any genre detail and instead rely on some kind of recommendation engine to provide suggestions based on which albums tend to appear together in the same charts etc, or a user recommendation system (discussed elsewhere), but I do think some kind of descriptive meta-data would be useful for people browsing the site & would add another dimension to BEA.

Re: Voting on Genres Through Charts

Anonymous — Sun, 7 Sep 2014 15:38:36 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 09/07/2014 19:38

Kiki wrote:

Have an option when creating a chart to assign a genre to it. Then when you click on 'THe Charts' between Statistics and 'Overall' one of the options in 'Customise View' is 'Select Genre' or 'Select Chart Genre' and you can find a few charts with those genres :)

I like this idea, as well. But my concern in if users would want to see the top albums of the assigned genre decided by these genre charts.

Re: Voting on Genres Through Charts

meccalecca — Sun, 7 Sep 2014 14:56:38 GMT

Author: meccalecca

Posted: 09/07/2014 18:56

Kiki wrote:

I quite like this idea as well.

Re: Voting on Genres Through Charts

mickilennial — Sat, 6 Sep 2014 14:03:05 GMT

Author: mickilennial

Posted: 09/06/2014 18:03

meccalecca wrote:

Ehh. seems like a waste of time and energy, which will ultimately lead to loads of ridiculous bickering about stupid sub sub sub genres. "Cocteau Twins are shoegaze. No, they're dream pop. No, you're both wrong, they're ethereal wave!"

Romanelli wrote:

This is just my opinion...but I do think that genre tagging would be the beginning of over complicating things around here. I think it would create a lot more work. And I think that people have, already at their disposal, enough ways to help them to put their music into categories. I'd be willing to bet that most of the people who would use this site already have enough of an idea of what genre an artist or album should reside in.

Data moderation has not been exactly flowing lately, either. Album tracks have just been caught up today after having been running at least 24 hours behind for some time. And the backlog in the artist moderations were just recently caught up from June. Do we really need to add yet another category to that?

Not to be a parrot, but this echoes my thought to a lesser extent. Last.fm which people keep citing is a mess; their tagging system is awful and is simply majority vote (whereas rateyourmusic has more nuances than "Im tagging Phil Collins as black metal lolololol!"). I don't want a genre system on this site and I find the history and development of genres interesting as all hell.

Re: Voting on Genres Through Charts

Anonymous — Sat, 6 Sep 2014 13:54:54 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 09/06/2014 17:54

Kiki wrote:

I actually quite like this idea. It keeps the focus on charts while still implementing a way of sorting by genres. Maybe you could just use a tagging system for the charts in general? Though not too many tags, you know, there'd probably have to be a limit so someone doesn't type out a seemingly endless list of genres just to get their list to come up in a search.

Re: Voting on Genres Through Charts

Skinny — Sat, 6 Sep 2014 13:01:15 GMT

Author: Skinny

Posted: 09/06/2014 17:01

Kiki wrote:

Sure someone could choose a blatantly different genre than the albums on their as a joke. The custom charts are only made by level 8's (am I correct?) so no one will consistently do it and it would only be funny the first time.

I'll put a fiver on Happymeal at evens.

Re: Voting on Genres Through Charts

Anonymous — Sat, 6 Sep 2014 12:58:36 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 09/06/2014 16:58

Have an option when creating a chart to assign a genre to it. Then when you click on 'THe Charts' between Statistics and 'Overall' one of the options in 'Customise View' is 'Select Genre' or 'Select Chart Genre' and you can find a few charts with those genres 😄

Sure you could simply go finding the genre charts yourself but I don't know what Patman, HigherthantheSun, Jman, Dividebyzero etc etc etc have in their custom charts. I will have to go through every user individually or wait for new posts on 'Chart Talk' thread. If you look at my custom charts they're a huge list of jumbled up lists, some half hearted and unfinished. Other users have even bigger lists. The idea above would give so much convince.

Sure someone could choose a blatantly different genre than the albums on there as a joke. The custom charts are only made by level 8's (am I correct?) so no one will consistently do it and it would only be funny the first time.

Re: Voting on Genres Through Charts

Skinny — Sat, 6 Sep 2014 12:30:59 GMT

Author: Skinny

Posted: 09/06/2014 16:30

Puncture Repair wrote:

I think genres are important for a number of reasons. Firstly, when discovering music it makes life much easy to hone in on a sound that you fancy discovering more of, and then once in your music collection, it again makes it much more simple to shape what music you're listening to. I frequently use the genre tag in my music player to find an album to listen to when I'm unsure what I want to listen to next, but understand which genre which fit my mood best. But also I think genres are importantly contextually and historically, and I think it's great that by applying a music a tag, like a genre, it's placed into the wider picture of music and how the music around it has influenced it.

So, would it be nice to have a genre system on BEA? Absolutely. Is it worth the time and the effort to implement one? I really don't think so, a quick google search does all of the work for the user in an instance, and websites like Last.fm and RYM have very strong and established voting and tagging systems that produce some very accurate results. Maybe the system would save the user from a coupe extra clicks (which certainly add up), but I think it's best to focus on BEA's USP (creating charts) before gradually evolving it into a music database.

I really hate it when somebody disagrees with me whilst being totally reasonable and rational. I still think having genre tags or assigned genres here on BEA would be extremely beneficial, but I can't fault anything you've said here.

Re: Voting on Genres Through Charts

Anonymous — Sat, 6 Sep 2014 11:59:47 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 09/06/2014 15:59

Skinny wrote:

I find myself in the strange position of agreeing with JMan. I don't actually spend much time thinking about genres, but it would be handy if we were able to filter albums in the database or individual charts by genre. I dunno, I'm all for it.

Pretty much this. I don't understand why people get so worked up about genres. It's just an occasionally useful way to categorize music, it doesn't hold any deep meaning or objective truth that allows others to pass judgement.

That said, I'm also cool with Romanelli's suggestion of using some official source for the genres, so as to bypass most of the bickering. People can still make their own personalized genre charts if they don't agree with what's in the database.

Re: Voting on Genres Through Charts

Romanelli — Sat, 6 Sep 2014 09:27:32 GMT

Author: Romanelli

Posted: 09/06/2014 13:27

I do understand that people want genres, and I understand why. But having the genres chosen by the BEA community is another animal. I reiterate: if there is a source from which genres can be easily taken from, then cool. But voting on them, and narrowing down, and having genre charts, etc. (that's why we have the ability to make fun charts) turns BEA into something it's currently not...all of the other sites that I don't like to use because they are too cluttered and busy.

I don't want my BEA experience to be about putting labels on albums...I want it to be about listening to and discovering albums, and about making the almighty lists.

Re: Voting on Genres Through Charts

Anonymous — Sat, 6 Sep 2014 09:10:14 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 09/06/2014 13:10

Skinny wrote:

I totally understand what you're saying, but this is a terrible example. There are times I look at people's charts and see an album or artist I've never heard of, and it would be nice to know what genre it is without having to ask. That way I can make an informed decision as to whether or not I want to take my time checking it out. Nobody needs to know what genre Abbey Road is, or It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, but have a look at some 2014 charts and just play a game of guess-the-genre. Chances are you'll be as clueless as I am when I look at these albums. It would be a useful addition to the site, IMO. Not without flaws, but still something that would be beneficial.

YES! 😲 I brought an album by an artist named Collabro recently. Just wanted another generic NME indie album recorded by moody men with guitars... but... but it w... it was classical.

Re: Voting on Genres Through Charts

Anonymous — Sat, 6 Sep 2014 09:03:03 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 09/06/2014 13:03

I think genres are important for a number of reasons. Firstly, when discovering music it makes life much easy to hone in on a sound that you fancy discovering more of, and then once in your music collection, it again makes it much more simple to shape what music you're listening to. I frequently use the genre tag in my music player to find an album to listen to when I'm unsure what I want to listen to next, but understand which genre which fit my mood best. But also I think genres are importantly contextually and historically, and I think it's great that by applying a music a tag, like a genre, it's placed into the wider picture of music and how the music around it has influenced it.

So, would it be nice to have a genre system on BEA? Absolutely. Is it worth the time and the effort to implement one? I really don't think so, a quick google search does all of the work for the user in an instance, and websites like Last.fm and RYM have very strong and established voting and tagging systems that produce some very accurate results. Maybe the system would save the user from a coupe extra clicks (which certainly add up), but I think it's best to focus on BEA's USP (creating charts) before gradually evolving it into a music database.

Re: Voting on Genres Through Charts

Skinny — Sat, 6 Sep 2014 08:56:56 GMT

Author: Skinny

Posted: 09/06/2014 12:56

Romanelli wrote:

(although I think that if someone is dumb enough to leave BEA because it doesn't have a genre listed next to Abbey Road, then they really SHOULD go elsewhere)

Re: Voting on Genres Through Charts

Patman360 — Sat, 6 Sep 2014 08:51:47 GMT

Author: Patman360

Posted: 09/06/2014 12:51

While that may be possible for a lot albums, there are certainly going to be some obscurer albums that won't be on other databases and will require the input of users to determine a genre. I wasn't saying anyone would be leaving the site cause they couldn't tell what genre something like Abbey Road was, I meant it more along the lines of someone coming onto the site, looking for punk albums or hip hop albums, etc., they wouldn't be able to find them here as easily as somewhere like RYM. I never said the moderators had more time, I've seen the list of albums alright and have even updated some myself when I've had free time, I know how a large a task this is, I meant if we all plug away at genres over a period of time it'll gradually get there. I'm just agreeing with JMan's point that by not having genres here we are not attracting as much users and losing them to other sites.

Re: Voting on Genres Through Charts

Romanelli — Sat, 6 Sep 2014 08:37:03 GMT

Author: Romanelli

Posted: 09/06/2014 12:37

The voting for genres, or having users pick them, is bad, bad bad. If there needs to be genres on the site (although I think that if someone is dumb enough to leave BEA because it doesn't have a genre listed next to Abbey Road, then they really SHOULD go elsewhere), then find a source that has already tagged the genres of albums and use them.

And as for moderators having more time...have you seen the list of almost 16,000 albums that we are currently working on adding full release dates to?

Re: Voting on Genres Through Charts

Patman360 — Sat, 6 Sep 2014 08:31:39 GMT

Author: Patman360

Posted: 09/06/2014 12:31

I wasn't keen on the idea, until JMan pointed out that by not including genres we may actually push some new users away to other sites and I think he's right actually, nearly every music site I've seen has genres listed in some form or another, while some of us may say 'genres are needless, music is music, etc.' and I don't think we need genre charts, the fact is genres are a huge part of music and aren't going away anytime soon so why not embrace them here too? I can imagine people have come to this site and tried to find punk albums or pop albums specifically, but were unable to do so and ended up searching elsewhere instead, I myself have gone looking for album types elsewhere by genre. Admittedly there will never be a concrete system for defining genres, but what if we use a tagging system which gives the top 3 results as chosen by data moderators or something like that, granted it will take a lot of work also, but if we can maintain so many albums in the database between all of us I reckon we can add tags between all of us too, even if it takes awhile.

Re: Voting on Genres Through Charts

Skinny — Sat, 6 Sep 2014 08:05:26 GMT

Author: Skinny

Posted: 09/06/2014 12:05

I find myself in the strange position of agreeing with JMan. I don't actually spend much time thinking about genres, but it would be handy if we were able to filter albums in the database or individual charts by genre. I dunno, I'm all for it.

Re: Voting on Genres Through Charts

Romanelli — Sat, 6 Sep 2014 07:56:26 GMT

Author: Romanelli

Posted: 09/06/2014 11:56

I don't care what genre my music falls under. If I like it, I like it. There was a time when you had a handful of genres, and life went on. Now, there are thousands of them, and having so many different genres has not changed the way I listen to music, or my love of music, at all. The name of the category under which people file the music of any artist means squat to me...if I like it, I like it.

If you think you need genres to add to your experience, that's your thing. Me, I'd be much happier with something like this:

"People who listen to _________ seem to also like _________."

But for me, genres are a waste of time, space, and worrying about where to file a certain band is time I could be actually enjoying listening to them.

Re: Voting on Genres Through Charts

martintho — Sat, 6 Sep 2014 02:37:59 GMT

Author: martintho

Posted: 09/06/2014 06:37

i am so verri sorry, jman, but i find your suggestion terrible. we are going to vote for what genre the beatles help is?? and if the majority thinks that it is blues, then that's that? your point shows how genre-choosing is bad for music and indeed, bad for this site. if those three other sites that you mentioned operates with genres and BEA don't well that just tells me that this site is serious about it. ok, if we're gonna have genre tags in the future, be my guests. i have understood that this is on its way. but this creepy need, this to me very strange urge to squeeze an album into just ONE genre and indeed by the use of the exclusional democratic system is just : WRONG. the best music around don't take heed to genres. and for music to innovate or implode these two things are the most important: a) inexperience b)genrelessness. there are of course many albums out there that really belongs in a certain genre, but on the other hand there are just to many ones that has their octopus arms in multiple genres for us to chop 9 of them off just like that. be openminded about it. it's only music. it's only art. soon it's christmas again. there's a genre for you.