Rate Your Music (or RYM) is an online collaborative metadata database of musical and non-musical releases and films which can be catalogued, rated and reviewed by users.
By December 2011, there were approximately 370,000 user accounts on Rate Your Music.[34] Around one half of the people visiting the website come from the United States, the United Kingdom or Canada, the other half primarily coming from Western Europe (especially Scandinavia and the Netherlands), as well as from Poland, Russia, Mexico, Brazil and Australia.[1]
As of April 2018, RYM had over 40,000 user-created lists ranging from "popular lists" to "ultimate box sets," which uncover various music genres, including rarest micro-genres.[8] The top rated album on the RYM charts is Radiohead's OK Computer,[35] while the bottom rated album is Nostalgia Critic's The Wall by Rob Scallon and Doug Walker.[36] In 2014, the second highest-rated album was English progressive rock band Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon.[29]
On December 2018, Rate Your Music indexes over 3,700,000 releases by over 1,255,000 artists.[37] As of January 31, 2020, the site had 662,475 users.
Rate Your Music has been received generally favorably. M.O.V.I.N [UP]'s MaurÃcio Angelo praised RYM as "the best guide to discovering new music, in all styles, of any tempo."[16] Hypebot staff found Rate Your Music "snobby and multilingual and people come to show off their various incredible music collections. I’ve loved it for ages."[38] Wired's Andy Baio deemed it "quirky."[39] Radio Wave's Karel Veselý praised Rate Your Music and Discogs as "[t]he cult music portals."[40]
Flashmode Arabia staff commended RYM as "a fantastic way to discover new music" but critiqued its user experience.[41] The Daily Star's Deeparghya Dutta Barau called it "one of those hip sites that offer functionality over aesthetics."[42] Similarly, Newonce's staff was somewhat critical, stating the site was "Extremely ugly visually (its creators like the consistency: RYM has not changed the layout to this day), but quite useful."[43]
Centuries of Sound founder James Errington said "[he consulted] websites like Rate Your Music and Acclaimed Music to pick top hits" for his year-by-year mixtapes of the 20th century.[44] Pigeons & Planes's Adrienne Black highlighted the forums, stating, "if you haven't already spent half your day exploring the above, there are the highly active, engaged threads to dive in to."[7] Evolver.fm's Eliot Van Buskirk advised readers to "Keep a wishlist on rateyourmusic.com."[45]
In an interview with PopMatters, American electronic musician Skylar Spence noted that he would use Discogs and Rate Your Music to find "a lot of cool, old, hidden treasures that way."[46]
While detailing the history of the band Lightnin 3, Stereogum's Nick Patrin observed that "Rate Your Music, exhaustive as its user-built catalog is, comes up empty for the band and the label alike."[47] Likewise, Patrin found Australian electroclash artist Dsico's entries on RYM and Allmusic to be "incomplete ghost pages."[48]
There are literally thousands of peoples ratings of u2's albums on the site and here is the league table of u2 albums on there by average score (out of 5)
The Joshua Tree 3.75
Achtung Baby 3.75
War 3.70
The Unforgettable Fire 3.63
Boy 3.52
Zooropa 3.27
Rattle and Hum 3.23
October 3.20
ATYCLB 3.09
Pop 2.95
HTDAAB 2.79
NLOTH 2.74
SOE 2.54
SOI 2.36
Number of ratings on the site which gave the averages above.
The Joshua Tree 13,543
Achtung Baby 9,632
War 8,547
The Unforgettable Fire 6,058
Boy 5,244
Zooropa 4,350
Rattle and Hum 3,964
October 3,850
ATYCLB 5,282
Pop 3,865
HTDAAB 4,812
NLOTH 3,290
SOE 1,169
SOI 2,512
https://rateyourmusic.com/artist/u2