Guest [tom jaimz] Posted February 1, 2002 Share Posted February 1, 2002 I am really getting frustrated with the extreme negativity people seem to put into their reviews lately. Simply because you don't like something or it doesn't meet your tastes doesn't mean you have to be abusive towards it. It's arrogant and it's offensive not only to the artists, but to the people out there who really do like the music. By all means describe the music and then explain what it is about it that you don't like, but don't just diss it outright. Like it or not there are a lot of people who like most the music that the vocal ignorant minority on this website do not. Psychedelic trance sells more releases today than it has ever sold before, and this is not because it is selling out or going commercial, it is because it is maturing. It's fine not to like the new sound, but at least try to be mature in your reviews. If you don't like something, explain exactly why so that others can understand and respect your opinions. Don't just abuse it outright - you're just being provocative. I do wish those behind this site would implement a login-based review system. It would avoid a lot of the anonymous and the less thought-out reviews. Also hopefully we could follow links to see what a certain reviewer thought of other albums, and thus find reviewers with similar open minds to our own, instead of the arrogant close mindedness that seems to becoming more and more popular on this site. I'm not asking people to like music they don't like, I am asking them to at least give decent explanations as to what it is about it they don't like. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Elysium Project Posted February 1, 2002 Share Posted February 1, 2002 I totally agree with you tom. I just have one correction. Psychedelic and the more minimalisticIprogressive trance do not sell more releases today. Actually the sale has gone down 25% the last year (2001) compared to 1997 - 2000. A few artists/bands in our scene do sell more compared to the recent years but overall the whole genre has gone down in sales. Just wanted to let you know. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest [tom jaimz] Posted February 1, 2002 Share Posted February 1, 2002 Really? Sorry. I guess I kind of jumped to assumptions. From what I know the average pressing is about 3000 for a CD and about 1500 for a vinyl.. what was it a couple of years ago? I know SUN Project albums can often sell in excess of 14000 copies, and the last Koxbox moved over 16000.. both Son Kite and Ticon albums moved over 6000 as well.. can you give us a couple of numbers for the older releases? Sorry to bore people with numbers, but hey, I don't have a degree in Computer Science because of my interest in flowers, you know? :-) [er, specifically the moon flower, or datura :-)] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest kosto Posted February 1, 2002 Share Posted February 1, 2002 Why should people be "sympathetic" of something they don`t like? It`s not like when as a kid you showed your parents e.g a drawing which was just colourful doodling on paper, and your parents went like "Oh, that`s just wonderful. If I`m at a record store and listen to something which I dislike, I just react like "It`s crap!" and I stop listening to it,??? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest [tom jaimz] Posted February 1, 2002 Share Posted February 1, 2002 Listen, I'm not asking people who don't like the music to be "sympathetic" towards it. I'm not asking them to give a good review. I'm simply asking everyone to be a bit less offensive and abusive in their reviews. To use your record store analogy, I'd have no problem with you saying "It's crap", but I'd have a problem if you then stood in the store and announced to everyone coming in that it was crap, and then you put a sticker on it saying, "This is crap." Do you see the difference here? Someone might ask you, what do you think of that album, and you could say, "It's crap", or you could say, "There isn't enough melody in it to keep me entertained", and then they'd think, "Well, I like released without melody, maybe I'll give it a listen." Are we grasping the concept yet? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest bugbread Posted February 1, 2002 Share Posted February 1, 2002 I don't want to be abusive, kosto, but if the best review you can come up with is "it's crap", maybe you shouldn't be doing reviews. Being a reviewer is more than just having an opinion. It's being able to express the REASONS behind that opinion in a coherent sense so that other people who haven't heard what you're reviewing can understand it. Like Tom said, you don't have to give it a good review, but "It's crap" is only helpful to people who know they have the exact same tastes as you (case in point: on this whole entire site the only person who could write "This is crap" and serve as a valid review for me is Strumpling). Lately I read reviews here and don't know almost anything about the CD, only that the reviewer didn't like it. Since I don't know the reviewer, that helps me about as much as flipping a coin. Or, we could go by the "emotional continuum" approach to reviews, and get awesome results like this: The Delta - "New Album X" "Awesome! Deep! Kicks ass!" - anonymous "Crap! I could do this!" - anonymous Hallucinogen - "New Album Y" "Awesome! Trippy! Kicks ass!" - anonymous "Crap! Cheese!" - anonymous Is this really what we are aspiring to? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Elysium Project Posted February 1, 2002 Share Posted February 1, 2002 Well the average pressed copies of a CD release in 1997 - 1998 was between 5000 - 6000. Compilations reached quite more and labels such as Dragonfly, Flying Rhino and Blue room made many compilation sales above 12.000 copies.. They rarely do that today! The vinyl situation is still the same amount around 1500 (ususally only Dj's and collectors buy vinyl). KoxBox actually sold even more when they were on Blue Room and Harthouse (Germany) but I can't tell you the exact number. I don't know much about the sale figures for the acts you are talking about but it's quite rare that a band sell more than 2000 - 4000 CD Albums today. As I said there are bands that sell much more (Shpongle, Astral Projection ect.) but most bands can't even make a living out of it. I know some band members make much more as Dj's. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest yo momma Posted February 1, 2002 Share Posted February 1, 2002 quality of reviews would go up significantly if we somehow lost jsb and sun-wiz Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest dam10n Posted February 1, 2002 Share Posted February 1, 2002 maybe we should review the reviewers! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest [tom jaimz] Posted February 1, 2002 Share Posted February 1, 2002 If we reviewed the reviewers then we'd not only end up with a whole bunch of 'This CD is crap', we'd have 'That review was crap' as well. ;-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest AMP Posted February 1, 2002 Share Posted February 1, 2002 I believe that all of us understand that there are some reviews here that really dont bring anything to the musical interest of any of us. I agree with tom jaimz, if you dont like an album, just explain why.....dont go, this is crap and thats all, explain what you think about it, why do you call it crap. Do the same if you love it, just dont say its great and thats it, specify why you like it. Reviews are here for people to give their personal opinions about the music, but also to help others to know wheter they should buy those albums or not, and crap and great dont help that much. Plur Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Psymijis Posted February 1, 2002 Share Posted February 1, 2002 If the arguing is about the review of the new etnica album , they are right the album is pure crap Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Stormbringer Posted February 1, 2002 Share Posted February 1, 2002 The latest release of the mushroom magazine had some info about how many copies the different labels made of each release. For vinyl it was between 800-1500! That´s so few... it´s almost ridicoulusly few!!! Think about the population of earth (6 000 000 000?) and think about 800-1500 copies, ha ha ha ha! I FEEL SO VERY SPECIAL ;-) Stop downloading! Start buying! Stormbringer (vinyl-addict since 1981) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Basilisk Posted February 1, 2002 Share Posted February 1, 2002 stormbringer, only a few of us are fanatics like this =) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Stormbringer Posted February 1, 2002 Share Posted February 1, 2002 Those psy-labels should be very lucky that vinyl-maniacs like us DO exists ;-) They couldn´t live on dj´s alone!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest StoNeY! Posted February 1, 2002 Share Posted February 1, 2002 I agree with bugbread. I don't do reviews because I can't really describe music and make sense at the same time I think the same goes for reviews like "superb album, buy buy buy!!", those should be deleted as well, they don't tell you anything about the music... I hope that all this will be solved in the new design of the site, cause manually deleting all that stuff would take some time... (prepared to help if necessary btw...) Anyway, most of the time I scroll through reviews that are only 2 lines long. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Phaedrus Posted February 1, 2002 Share Posted February 1, 2002 I totally agree. Whether the reviews are positive or negative, one liners like "sucks" or "kicks ass" aren't very helpful. I think the existing reviews should be combed through and have this sort of thing removed. And take out the flame wars while we're at it... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest MK Posted February 1, 2002 Share Posted February 1, 2002 it's all good - i believe Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest kadafi Posted February 1, 2002 Share Posted February 1, 2002 People shouldn't write reviews if they don't have anything decent to say... If they like a piece of music they EXPLAIN WHY. If they don't they should EXPLAIN WHY. that's what I wanted to add that has already been said. Reading one-sentence reviews I often have a feeling their authors haven't even heard the music, like insulting the music and artists is just some stupid hobby of their frustrated lives... I mean if they are "real psyheads" , then why do they write such things? I mean :on every piece of music there is at least 1 thing that i appreciate about it and the stuff i don't like mostly have an explainable reason why not. I don't write negative reviews very often, because i don't feel the urge to express things i don't like and others do... But we NEED people who DO express what they don't like on the review page. but it seemes like most of those people have some difficulties expressing themselves... what a shame... "sorry...I don't know why... but THEY suck!" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest aje Posted February 1, 2002 Share Posted February 1, 2002 tom, I agree! About the recordsales, I think if you total all the Psytrancerecords being sold today, its more than 97 or 98, the difference is just that there are lots more labels and artists today, whereas back then there were blueroom, dragonfly, flying rhino, spirit zone and not much else(95 and 96 atleast), well maybe a few more, but there were not nearly as many labels as now. so there is less copies sold per release. is that right? By the way Im also a vynilfreak!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Elysium Project Posted February 2, 2002 Share Posted February 2, 2002 aje you don't have to think you need to know....:-) (just kidding) I speak with many of the labels very often and I am also signed to the biggest publishing agency Warner/Chappell that also take care of sales staistics around the world... Believe me when I tell you that the overall sales figures has drastically gone down! It's got nothing to do with the many different labels that are around...there were actually more established labels in 97-98. It has all to do with the business in generel (even the big major labels such as Sony, EMI ect. has gone down 25-30%) and the consumers hessitation to buy and it has even gone worse after the 11th of september. People simply use the internet more today than 3-4 years ago and the fast rising technologies are a big factor for people listening to music over the net more than they buy the msuic in shops! Of course this variate from country to country. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest didget Posted February 4, 2002 Share Posted February 4, 2002 maybe a good idea also to take some of the above writing and place it in the top of the Review section...so that when people are about write a 'review' can see what its all about... just an idea (maybe a crappy one Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Pswede Posted February 4, 2002 Share Posted February 4, 2002 Sales has NOT gone down in Sweden (atleast not according to Sony etc). Btw, I kind of hate big music companies, they make me sick (esp. those from the tv-show "Popstars", they are so mean and money/fame-hungry I cant tell you!..). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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