Can we do something about this BEA? - Music

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albummaster wrote:

Something I might look at is weighting each year and decade differently to try & even out this effect.

This makes a lot of sense and should really be considered; I can't think of a year that was bad enough to negatively affect it (if any years are bad at all).

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lethalnezzle wrote:

I suspect that the actual effect the one-album-per-artist rule has on the top 500 is so minimal as to barely matter. I'd say that rabid fanboys filling their charts with every album by their favourite bands, including the poorer albums, has much more of an influence on the overall chart.

I think you're right. The difference between 491 and 500 is 56 points, and the rate increases as we extend the range. It would take multiple users ranking an album very highly to influence its position in the top 500. My apologies. Smile

albummaster
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Just looking at the stats, the current spread of decade charts is fairly even (a lot more even than I initially thought):

Decade Charts
2010s 273
2000s 294
1990s 292
1980s 269
1970s 268
1960s 250
1950s 133

... and this is the spread for year charts on BEA (top album in each chart is awarded one point):

Year Charts
1950 11
1951 11
1952 16
1953 17
1954 20
1955 30
1956 41
1957 43
1958 41
1959 49
1960 47
1961 47
1962 50
1963 71
1964 73
1965 94
1966 95
1967 103
1968 101
1969 103
1970 111
1971 112
1972 109
1973 112
1974 102
1975 108
1976 105
1977 107
1978 102
1979 106
1980 106
1981 103
1982 100
1983 101
1984 101
1985 100
1986 102
1987 105
1988 104
1989 101
1990 107
1991 113
1992 107
1993 115
1994 119
1995 110
1996 114
1997 114
1998 113
1999 114
2000 127
2001 123
2002 128
2003 126
2004 127
2005 124
2006 126
2007 122
2008 129
2009 121
2010 130
2011 137
2012 140
2013 146
2014 94

Tbh, a factor in all the charts is the recency effect, and people's overall charts are at fault as much as anything else for the bias towards newer albums (maybe more so, since these charts contribute far more points than a year/decade chart). You only need to see the composition of people's overall charts to see the general bias to more recent decades.

Romanelli
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lethalnezzle wrote:

I suspect that the actual effect the one-album-per-artist rule has on the top 500 is so minimal as to barely matter. I'd say that rabid fanboys filling their charts with every album by their favourite bands, including the poorer albums, has much more of an influence on the overall chart.

Possibly. I think not. But at least the "rabid fanboy" chart is honest, and doesn't leave an album off of the #20 spot just because another album by the same artist is rated #10.
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CubaZed

Romanelli wrote:

Possibly. I think not. But at least the "rabid fanboy" chart is honest, and doesn't leave an album off of the #20 spot just because another album by the same artist is rated #10.

Pablo Honey is rated 721, your point is invalid. Razz

In all seriousness though, I thought the chart was just a tool that attempts to combine popularity with critical acclaim and in that it succeeds. You can just go to the overall chart and click on "sort by Average Rating" which is a more accurate (though not without its flaws) tool to sort through the album ratings.

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Romanelli wrote:

Possibly. I think not. But at least the "rabid fanboy" chart is honest, and doesn't leave an album off of the #20 spot just because another album by the same artist is rated #10.

I have nothing wrong with somebody choosing to include multiple albums per artist in a chart (up to a certain point where it just becomes overkill, of course), but claiming that a chart with one album per artist is less "honest" is a pompous, toxic, and unnecessarily elitist argument. I outlined my thoughts on chart makeup in this post, which hopefully sheds some light on why I (and others) choose to lay out our charts in such a way. I certainly don't think it makes me any less "honest", but I guess people will cling to whatever they can.

Romanelli
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lethalnezzle wrote:

I have nothing wrong with somebody choosing to include multiple albums per artist in a chart (up to a certain point where it just becomes overkill, of course), but claiming that a chart with one album per artist is less "honest" is a pompous, toxic, and unnecessarily elitist argument. I outlined my thoughts on chart makeup in this post, which hopefully sheds some light on why I (and others) choose to lay out our charts in such a way. I certainly don't think it makes me any less "honest", but I guess people will cling to whatever they can.

"Rabid fanboys" may also, to be fair, fall into the same category.

In the spirit of keeping this cool, I'll replace the word "honest" with "accurate", and in my opinion. Because I'm not trying to change your mind or your way of doing things...I'm stating just my opinion here.

It IS less accurate. In my opinion. Let me clarify what I mean by that. I'm not being pompous, toxic, or unnecessarily elitist...I simply want to know where those albums fall in your mind. I want to know what your thoughts are on the albums that you consider to be top 100 material, but not the #1 album by that artist. And if you think Album A is the best by that artist, how do their other albums sit with you? Are they top 100 material? I don't know if they are or not, because you have decided to include only one per artist. Which means that the rest of your chart may not be ranked correctly. If you believe that Album B by Artist A is the 20th best album of all time, but you keep it off of your chart because you believe Album A by Artist A is better, then TO ME you are not being completely accurate about what you think is the 20th best album of all time, and TO ME, your chart does not accurately reflect what you believe to be the 100 best albums of all time.

I'm not saying that's how you intended it to be seen...but that's how I see it when I look at it.
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Romanelli wrote:

"Rabid fanboys" may also, to be fair, fall into the same category.

In the spirit of keeping this cool, I'll replace the word "honest" with "accurate", and in my opinion. Because I'm not trying to change your mind or your way of doing things...I'm stating just my opinion here.

It IS less accurate. In my opinion. Let me clarify what I mean by that. I'm not being pompous, toxic, or unnecessarily elitist...I simply want to know where those albums fall in your mind. I want to know what your thoughts are on the albums that you consider to be top 100 material, but not the #1 album by that artist. And if you think Album A is the best by that artist, how do their other albums sit with you? Are they top 100 material? I don't know if they are or not, because you have decided to include only one per artist. Which means that the rest of your chart may not be ranked correctly. If you believe that Album B by Artist A is the 20th best album of all time, but you keep it off of your chart because you believe Album A by Artist A is better, then TO ME you are not being completely accurate about what you think is the 20th best album of all time, and TO ME, your chart does not accurately reflect what you believe to be the 100 best albums of all time.

I'm not saying that's how you intended it to be seen...but that's how I see it when I look at it.

Yeah, "rabid fanboys" maybe does fall into the same category. My apologies for using the term "pompous", but I do think the argument is a toxic and elitist one. In denying somebody's sincerity you are questioning their integrity, but the term "accurate" does a much better job of conveying (what I hope) you meant.

As for your question, I just don't know. As I said, there are so many albums that I love almost equally that deciding on a Top 100 is a tricky business. I just realised today that there are albums that weren't there that should be, but couldn't decide what to take out in their place. As I was saying, I was going over it earlier today I also realised that outside my Top 10, which genuinely are (as of right now) the ten greatest albums of all-time in my mind, there is a rung upon which 300-400 albums sit roughly equally in terms of how good I think they are. For me, there is pretty much no discernible difference in quality between, say, Heart of The Congos (which sits somewhere around #12 on my chart) and Roc Marciano's Reloaded (which is at #100). I also don't see there being a discernible difference in quality between those two albums and Purple Rain, my second favourite Prince album, or Roots, my second favourite Curtis Mayfield album, or Fishscale, my second favourite Ghostface Killah album, or Five Leaves Left, my second favourite Nick Drake album (all artists in my Top 10). I don't have albums I consider "Top 100 material", I just have a few hundred albums that are all "my favourite albums". So I'm not attempting to create an inaccurate chart, I just simply wouldn't know how to create an accurate one. My mind simply doesn't go, "well, I love The Fall's Complete Peel Sessions precisely a little bit more than Jerry Garcia's Garcia and precisely a little bit less than Mr. Fingers' Ammnesia, so it should go right there", it thinks, "well, all these albums are fucking fantastic, and I love them all so much that to live without any of them would make life a far less fun and interesting proposition, so just stick them anywhere; they're all equal in quality anyway" (and yet I still can't find space for some of those albums on my chart). My mind doesn't work that way, it doesn't instinctively rank things. I just have a very small handful of albums that I think are near-Godlike, and then a massive trolley-full of albums that sit just below that, inseparable in terms of how much I love them. And so, because there is no difference for me between The Doors' debut and some I-Roy compilation that I love, I'll put the I-Roy compilation higher up the chart in order to give it some promotion, both in terms of people looking for recommendations and in terms of its position on the overall chart. It doesn't mean I'm being dishonest or inaccurate, it just means that I love it and that deciding where it sits exactly on the list of the best albums I've ever heard is genuinely not possible for me.

sp4cetiger

My chart tends to break down in tiers, within which I do have trouble distinguishing between albums. When I move an album on my chart, I don't carefully place it, I just give it a somewhat arbitrary bump based on how much its standing has changed in my mind (usually a multiple of 10). The first tier is my #1, which has a very special place in my life. Beyond that, it's something like 2 - 5, 6 - 10, 11 - 20, 21 - 40 , 41 - 70, 71 - 100.

I've given up on even thinking in terms of "greatest" or "best" because to me those words mean something that is beyond my depth to judge. They're really just personal favorites. And that doubles as my response to this thread -- there's absolutely nothing wrong with people liking those albums. At least one of them is in my top 100, though I'm not going to go through the list in detail because that would be giving the OP too much credit.

alelsupreme
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Yeah, when it comes to ranking albums it's fairly arbitrary for me, though there is are kinda blurred lines (hey hey hey) somewhere amongst it all. saying "the albums above this are better than those below it".
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Romanelli wrote:

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