Rate Your Music and the Future of This Blog

I mentioned a little while back that my initial plan for the two year anniversary of this blog had been postponed whilst I figured out the logistics of how I would manage the idea. I decided instead to rank all the albums by Julian Casablancas (of The Strokes and The Voidz) to mark my blog's anniversary, a time consuming but much smaller task than my initial plan. Now though is the time to unveil what that postponed plan was, and to announce how it's getting put into action going forwards...

My task over the next few months is to slowly put all the scores I've given to the albums and EPs that I've reviewed over the course of this blog into Rate Your Music, a site for people to rate and review music. During this process I'll be updating my scores from the original reviews to suit my feelings on the albums now, but fear not as the original reviews and scores are all staying put right here on my blog. This decision is to help me keep track of all the music I consume as much as it is for you, and there will eventually be far more scores on Rate Your Music as I'll be able to score albums I've missed and albums from the past that I wouldn't usually review here on the main blog, a freedom that I've craved for a while. I'll only be scoring and not reviewing albums on Rate Your Music; my blog will continue as the home for my reviews as usual, and news on how that's changing is below this RYM news...

Going through all my old reviews and relistening to every album is of course very time consuming, and I have no idea how long it will take, especially given the amount of new, previously not covered albums I'll be rating over there on RYM. Not only will it force me to be continuously listening to new music and broadening my horizons, but it will also mean I'll have a larger pool of music than ever before in order to draw comparisons and to provide the context often needed to understand certain music. This is a journey that's incredibly exciting for me, and I hope it's an exciting prospect for you too as what I'm essentially creating is a band of all my opinions on all of the music that I've heard.

In terms of the longevity of the current review formula, I have been contemplating altering my review style at some point in the future to best display my thoughts on the albums I listen to. Right now, the reviews in my genre recaps tend to be three to four paragraphs long, and it can be both a constraint and a challenge depending on the album. I was wondering whether it would be worth splitting the atom as it where, and reviewing everything separately as I used to, but instead of churning out the whopping ten paragraph analysis on only a few albums a year and desperately recapping the others I have less to say on, I should instead take a direction more akin to The Guardian in that most often an album review will consist exclusively of a descriptive, opinionated paragraph perhaps preceded by an introduction to the artist, but occasionally taking a more in depth dive on an album if I feel it requires it. This way, I can write as much as I need to in order to get my thoughts across without the pressure of collecting five albums a month from a genre to spotlight, especially right now as many artists have been postponing releases due to Covid-19. This is a change I hope to enact pretty immediately as I've been finding the countless recaps incredibly draining and too similar for their own good, and it's had diminishing returns as I've seen my audience dwindling since I began them in January.

The first album I'll review under the new format is Empress Of's I'm Your Empress Of, and I sincerely hope that this is a format that allows me the freedom of expression I want whilst also allowing me to review the number of albums I want to without experiencing the burnout and writers' block that perpetrated the last exhausting recap.

As ever, thank you so much to all my readers, I hope this change is more digestible and entertaining for you too, and I hope you'll continue discovering brand new music through me as one of my main desires with this blog. Stay safe everyone, and enjoy yourselves if you can.