AnyDecentMusic? is a website that collates albumreviews from magazines, websites, and newspaper. It includes music albums, covering rock, pop, electronic, dance, folk, country, roots and urban. Reviews are sourced from more than 50 websites, magazines and newspapers, largely from the US and UK, but also from Canada, Ireland and Australia.
History
AnyDecentMusic? was set up in 2009 by Ally Palmer and Terry Watson, the directors of PalmerWatson, a newspaper and magazine design consultancy. On creating the site: "Newspapers are our business. Our other passion is music, and we've combined the two things."
Site organization
The site's creators, Palmer and Watson, say: " surveys reviews of recent album releases in newspapers and websites and provides a constantly updated chart of critical reaction." Ratings are averaged and albums ranked in a chart intended to give an overall picture of critical appraisal of current releases, based on the averaged score out of 10. This chart forms the centrepiece of the site. Users can also view charts showing rankings over 3 months, 6 months or 12 months. It is also possible to view a genre-specific chart, or to exclude genres not of interest. Short extracts of the review are provided, with hyperlinks to the original article. Some print-only reviews are also included, but not all of these have extracts from the original. AnyDecentMusic? assesses reviews which do not provide a numerical score and assigns what it deems to be an appropriate score, based on the tone and content of the review. On album review pages, there generally is a link to streaming media service such as Spotify. The music website AltSounds was added to the list of ratings sources in November 2012. They announced it by saying: "AltSounds has recently joined the tastemaking chart website Any Decent Music, where our reviews are a part of the construction of the album chart." In July 2012, an AnyDecentMusic app was launched within the music streaming service Spotify. This was Spotify's App of the Day on July 19. It was described by Spotify: "Developed from the AnyDecentMusic.com chart, which provides music lovers with constantly updated listings of the most acclaimed albums, this novel Spotify app uses ratings from the leading expert, independent review sources across the world to help you discover the best in new music". According to Palmer and Watson, "the focus on the ADM Spotify app is on all contemporary genres, from indie to electronic to hip hop and everything in between." They went on to explain the website's process of aggregating reviews:
Similar sites
The site is similar to other review aggregator websites such as Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes in that it gathers reviews to assess critical acclaim. The site differs in the sense that it specializes in contemporary music in its chosen fields. It does not cover jazz or classical releases, or many world music albums, and tends to ignore most reissues, compilations and various artist collections. It also differs in its choice of sources, electing to be more selective, rather than cover all available reviews. The site also offers regular track recommendations, called "Today We Love", and regular playlists, with themes that appear sometimes to be topical and sometimes random. Although similar in principle to other review aggregator websites, AnyDecentMusic? puts some focus on its users finding new music through its features, with users able to formulate a personal "chart" through genre and time period search filters. Palmer and Watson described their reasoning behind the site on their PalmerWatson.com website: "We couldn't find a site that did what AnyDecentMusic? does, so we built one."
Chart
Once an album or release has five reviews from different sources, it enters the current Recent Releases chart, where it remains for six weeks. It is this chart that forms the centerpiece of the site. In 2010 The ObserverSunday newspaper regularly featured the AnyDecentMusic? top 10 in its charts page. There is an "All-Time" Chart, but this covers only the duration of the website's existence, which is approximately six years. Since the site's beginning, the following albums have the highest aggregate rating:
