What is your favourite online music review site?

February 16, 2005 6:15 AM

What is your favourite online music review site. I am looking for a good site that has comprehensive reviews of new releases from all genres. I know of sites such as Pitchfork, but they are all too genre-specific. I want something like Pitchfork which will also cover the new releases in world music, Jazz, soul, etc
posted by juniorbonner to media & arts (11 comments total)

The only place I can think of is AllMusic.com.

As you wrote, most on-line review sites are very genre-specific.
posted by njm at 7:03 AM on February 16, 2005

There's too much music out there for a single site to cover it all. For "world music," check:

• RootsWorld


• World Music Central (sometimes simply repeats the label's press releases)


• fRoots (website contains only a small % of the content of the paper magazine - I recommend you pick up an issue - fR is [IMHO] far and away the best world music resource. Check their list of links.)


• Dirty Linen (also a website adjunct to a paper magazine)


• Global Rhythm (ditto)

posted by omnidrew at 7:44 AM on February 16, 2005

You could try metacritic.
posted by ludwig_van at 7:58 AM on February 16, 2005

Splendid tries to be multigenre, but I doubt there's anything truly "comprehensive." Splendid says: Our focus is on independently-released material, and we review everything we receive. You'll find a wide variety here: punk, folk, world music, indie rock, electronic music, country, jazz, electroacoustic experiments, home-recorded CDRs and a whole lot of stuff that resists classification
posted by louigi at 8:37 AM on February 16, 2005

I highly suggest Adequacy! Or DOA as I like to call it. Daily reviews. No annoying ranking systems. None of the pitchfork arrogance.
posted by jasonspaceman at 8:41 AM on February 16, 2005

Oh, and pitchfork isn't really genre-specific.
posted by ludwig_van at 9:00 AM on February 16, 2005

PopMatters is alright. They seem to cover most of the genres in which you're interested. The usefulness of their reviews depends on how well their tastes align with your own, I guess. I also used to love the Onion AV Club until their interface got too annoying to put up with.
posted by stet at 9:15 AM on February 16, 2005

I'll second the suggestion of Metacritic and plug Drawer B. (slight self-link in that I am involved, but I'm not the main contributor. More of a facilitator, I suppose.)
posted by shoepal at 10:16 AM on February 16, 2005

This definitely skews indie, but I like TinyMixTapes quite a bit.
posted by nbrier at 11:06 AM on February 16, 2005

For indie/alternative music in general, you could do worse than getting a subscription to The Big Takeover. Jack Rabid and co. know their shit backwards and forwards, and without much of the hipper-than-thou attitude of Pitchfork. The online version really only hints at the absolute goldmine that is every print edition.
posted by scody at 3:26 PM on February 16, 2005

Pforkish, but Stylus is ok.
posted by mr.marx at 5:45 PM on February 16, 2005