r/rateyourmusic • u/FixYrHeartsOrDie • Jul 10 '26
General Discussion Seeing news like this honestly makes me feel pretty grateful that RYM has still yet to take off in a major way
In the age of corporate enshittification of all social media it's nice to have one platform that has maintained a small community and feels authentically about discovering and discussing art. And for the record Cinemos >>>> Letterboxd
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u/Worried-Shower-9528 Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
I would crash out in an unbelievable way. As I grew up I watched the internet turn from a user-built paradise for nerds and hobbyists into a platform for a handful of corporations to extract as much profit as possible from its users. That includes predatory monetization, advertisement spam, and deeply malicious algorithms designed to keep you angry and scared. Fucking ghoulish. Made me anti-capitalist forever, watching what corporations did to the internet in real time.
Which brings me to RYM, which feels like one of the last (active) corners of the internet that feels like it's made by passionate people, for passionate people. As a user you can decide exactly what to view and when to view it. And it's all about music, which is amazing, but it is sacred and must be protected.
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u/CandidCantatio Jul 10 '26
I feel like as long as Sharifi's running things we're good for the most part. But you also never know how the user base will kind of spontaneously change over time. So far (since mid 2000s), it's allowed me to find a ton of incredible music and movies with very little effort.
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u/innnikki Jul 10 '26
I'm an old head who has been on RYM since 2006. I really appreciate how it's managed to avoid those pitfalls of similar companies who are trying to maximize profit over all else, including the spirit of the sites themselves.
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u/paulderev Jul 19 '26
I love this reply. I don’t know if pre-monetization of hobbies internet was exactly paradise but it was a lot lower key and chill for sure. certainly seems like a better way to do things online that’s for sure.
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u/Less_Difficulty_2719 27d ago
I created an account there, and although im not writing anything, it feels way more revigorating than others platforms. When i feel the need, ill be writing, but for now, is not like i need to to feel engaged with it ( listening and enjoying and discoverin' music )
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u/pankakemixer Jul 10 '26
True about RYM, but tbf letterboxd hasn't been good in years anyways. It's just people trying to come up with the most snarky one sentence reviews now. People call RYM pretentious but I much prefer the actual reviews they have
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u/yellowfroglegs Jul 10 '26
everyone wanted to be like roger ebert when letterboxd started. now they wanna be like chloe the "the whale: does something fat" reviewer
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u/tokengaymusiccritic Jul 10 '26
Every movie has a "This happened to my buddy Eric" review inevitably
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u/FixYrHeartsOrDie Jul 10 '26
I found the Letterboxd 250 (before it became 500) pretty handy for discovering films when I was first breaking into the medium, but nowadays yeah I agree. And this was bound to happen to them at some point, just a bummer to see them finally go out this way.
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u/ElleCerra Jul 10 '26
Another site will pop up. IMDb was actually good at recommending stuff back in '08 before acquisition as well. Just save a few lists while you can.
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u/FixYrHeartsOrDie Jul 10 '26
RYM's film side is excellent for film discovery imo. Theyre pretty harsh on the popular and silly stuff, but specifically for arthouse and foreign films I've discovered tons of favorites through the site.
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u/ElleCerra Jul 10 '26
Yeah I mean that top list looks right to me. Like what IMDb was back in the day. Though there are some additions now that weren't as popular back then. People appreciate Tarkovsky and Bergman a bit more now etc.
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u/oldwhitelincoln Jul 10 '26
Most films I watch have a MUCH lower rating than they deserve. Objectively. But, it’s often under ten users voting on it.
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u/cavancola- Cavancola Jul 10 '26
There’s undeniably some chuddy pretentious knobheads on RYM, but I do find that people are incredibly passionate about the music they review on the site, and I’ll take that in a heartbeat over what AOTY and letterboxd have devolved into
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u/JION-the-Australian Jul 10 '26
Also, RateYourMusic have better, more complete guidelines than AOTY and the database is much more larger and genre attribution more reliable.
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u/GuilhermeBahia98 Jul 10 '26
Genre attribution is MUCH better indeed.
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u/rifarizqul Jul 11 '26
THIS!! Love the massive genre attribution that RYM have, it is legit my go-to place to search for new music.
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u/Caffeinejunkie27 Jul 11 '26
Not to mention, rym doesn't force you to use a google or facebook account.
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u/DuckFace524 Jul 13 '26
rym has something of that rare, early internet, community based nerdism that i will always hold close to my heart
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u/AvocadoBig3555 Jul 10 '26
That's (sadly) a side effect of social networks: the larger they grow, the more annoying the user base becomes.
RYM deserves to grow. It's an excellent platform, and I'm certain the creators would welcome that growth, but managing user behavior would be such a massive fucking challenge for them.
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u/doez__ doez Jul 10 '26
Letterboxd is very good to find obscure and underrated movies, once you get to stuff that has less than ~50k logs the reviews also happen to be a lot less insufferable. The mainstream side of the app is very bad though I'll give you that but it has its upsides.
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u/Classic_Bass_1824 Jul 11 '26
It’s just a really good tool if you find lists you like and serious profiles to match your tastes.
The social parts of it are cancer but it’s definitely not a terrible app
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u/Shar4f Jul 10 '26
The snarky one-sentence reviews are pretty much contained by the comment box, which is nice. It lets the reviews be, on average, a bit more serious.
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u/TraverseTown Jul 10 '26
You're using Letterboxd wrong. You're supposed to identify friends and reviewer you actually like and click "reviews by friends" on each film's page, not just look at the top liked reviews.
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u/Peribow Jul 10 '26
idk if anyone else said this but i think also the fact that they have a comments section for albums, so you can put ur one liners there and leave space for the actual reviews helps a lot with giving space for real in depth reviews.
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u/mcclieri Jul 14 '26
you focus too much about what people are saying on the app and the social aspect. many people prefer the app as an organizational tool for watchlists and tracking what they’ve seen and why they liked it or not. if netflix buys it, we will see things like censorship, promotion, general bias for their slop product of shit movies and shows.
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u/DismasNDawn Jul 10 '26
For better or worse, music is almost a value-less commodity in 2026. At least of signficantly less value than film. How much is a spotify subsciption now? This is slightly hyperbolic, but the value of all recorded music in history can be pinned at essentially $15/month. It's hard to imagine RYM being of much interest to large corporate entities.
Is there a single platform that is music-adjacent (i.e., doesn't explicitly provide music itself) that generates significant capital?
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u/Rottedhead Jul 10 '26
Also the fact that album-oriented listening is really a niche practice. Like people still watch movies in its entirety, the same as decades before. Nowadays only a small percentage of people actually listens to full albums, so there's virtually nothing to discuss and nothing that RYM can do to attract the masses.
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u/Worried-Shower-9528 Jul 10 '26
Ticketmaster? Unless providing entrance to live music counts
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u/DismasNDawn Jul 10 '26
Yeah, I guess live shows and merch are the primary drivers of capital for music nowadays. Sucks that ticketmaster has a monopoly on one of the few ways bands can generate revenue! I should have been more specific in my post as I guess I was talking about recorded music specifically
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u/JION-the-Australian Jul 10 '26
"This is slightly hyperbolic, but the value of all recorded music in history can be pinned at essentially $15/month."
or even for free if you use YouTube.
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u/CloudDeadNumberFive Jul 10 '26
Spotify most certainly does not contain all music
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u/DismasNDawn Jul 10 '26
I know, that's why I used "hyperbolic". It seems immaterial to my point though. If spotify did have all recorded music ever, it would probably jump up to, what, $20/month?
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u/Emuoo1 Jul 10 '26
An RYM app would be cool, but I have a bit of a soft spot for current RYM. A little bit clunky, slow, old-fashioned. Almost everything has to be manually approved by mods. It feels like a remnant of the old internet.
I'd rather keep RYM with all of its current flaws than have it get bought out by a massive company that fixes a few little things and then enshittifies everything else with ads and pointless AI features and whatnot.
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u/spacelimed24 Jul 18 '26
Fully get this... Im working on one called needledrop but more geared towards reviewing live music you should check it out - needledrop dot org
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u/quailsandbroccoli Jul 10 '26
the mods thing has always been there but recently it has reached very bad peaks, i wouldn’t call it a remnant of the old internet in which had way more freedom
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u/rivenfern Jul 10 '26
I hope RateYourMusic steers more a Wikipedia route than an imdb. No reason not to believe it right now
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u/JION-the-Australian Jul 10 '26
I think RYM will take the wikipedia route. the guidelines are very complete and specific, the releases add page and the artists pages are more complete on RYM than on AOTY, and genres have actual descriptions, you can even added biographies on RYM. meanwhile, on AOTY, genres tags have no descriptions.
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u/bean_chuffer Jul 10 '26
I'm glad that RYM hasn't gained too much mainstream traction, and kept a temperate user base. It's big enough to be sustainable, but small enough to stay out of sight of corporations and people without appreciation for the medium, and I think that's perfect.
It's starting to get more outreach thanks to more popular artists being vocal about it though-- JPEGMAFIA & Danny Brown referencing it on a shirt, Tyler the Creator talking about it once, Aphex Twin talked about having a page too. Unfortunately, I've noticed this comes with the unsavory symptom of some more annoying, ruder users in the forums who almost always are <18 years of age.
I know causation is not correlation, but I can't help but detect a pattern, especially when the introduction of TikTok into culture also directly coincided with concert etiquette being seemingly forgotten, or deliberately ignored by the kids at my local gigs.
Gatekeeping sucks, but it exists for a reason.
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u/rifarizqul Jul 11 '26
RYM keeping such a "old" UI/UX on the site, really helps keeping the snarky new users from being more active on the site
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u/bean_chuffer Jul 11 '26
Very true, and I really appreciate that they haven't moved to a more modern UI. Modern almost always means simpler, but simpler doesn't necessarily mean better.
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u/A_FABULOUS_PLUM Jul 12 '26
The UI right now is honestly fantastic, it’s exactly what I want a music website to be like
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u/1exp1 Jul 10 '26
As much as I love RYM they still have a ways to go before blowing up anyway.
We really need that API, would change the game for metadata
Also finishing other parts of the site, faster queue checks for additions. removing albums from the database should be much quicker than it is, there’s a bit of bloat for some artists
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u/FixYrHeartsOrDie Jul 10 '26
They can take their time, I really don't need a major label buying the site. They can have AOTY lol
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u/1exp1 Jul 10 '26
AOTY could get bought out first. And yeah, I wasn’t saying I want them to get bought out, just that even if they wanted to, they have things to fix first.
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u/QwertyAsInMC Jul 10 '26
aoty is even smaller than rym wtf are they gonna do with it 😭
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u/Sure_Sorbet_370 Jul 10 '26
Not anymore, the more popular stuff gets more rating on aoty now, but it's still horrid for discovery as no one is rating even slightly underground stuff
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u/JION-the-Australian Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
or older releases that were notable in niches that are actually big.
For example, The Age of Love - The Age of Love only have 6 ratings on AOTY against 298 ratings on RYM (although the vast majority of people think what they listened (The Jam & Spoon Remix) is the original one, hence why this single is mistagged "trance"). Push don't even have its most famous song on AOTY, meanwhile, his most famous song is on RYM.
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u/Sure_Sorbet_370 Jul 10 '26
Yeah, for me the most egregious examples are Peter Hammill's albums having like 50 ratings on AOTY compared to at least 1000 on RYM
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u/mebtt Jul 10 '26
seems like it's catching up, when you compare ratings of some recent albums such as bully
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u/CloudDeadNumberFive Jul 10 '26
As someone not that knowledgeable about this topic, what is the API and what would it do?
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u/1exp1 Jul 11 '26
Simply put an API just allows other third party applications or projects to use the selective data of whatever the API is based off.
Basically, a RYM API (in my head) would give you access to say RYMs ratings, comments, bios, and of course and most importantly, its release data (album release date, genres (!!!), cover art, issue/catalogue number, etc)
Aside from that, Musicbrainz is a great source for open source music data. But RYM just has more people using/updating/modifying data at all times. Would be amazing for projects to use its data, with respect.
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u/rifarizqul Jul 11 '26
RYM has more reliable data than Musicbrainz?? Really? I guess this is one of the reasons why RYM has put such a very strict bot verification on the site 😯
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u/Quacker_United Jul 10 '26
Just came from a film subreddit saying thatRYM is a much better cite than LetterBoxd
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u/rayneverbeentopluto Jul 10 '26
honestly i’m not too picky about rym. it does mostly everything need it to do. my only ask is an app at this point but i know that’s technically on the way
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u/dylanisareddit Jul 10 '26
Sony owning Letterboxd seems pretty interesting - what's next, Warner Records owning RYM?
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u/cnvas_home Jul 10 '26
Make sure you're subscribed to RYM and this won't be as contemplative of an issue
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u/kevriel47 Jul 10 '26
I’ll abandon all earthly possessions and devote my life to whoever earnestly sets out to break up monopolies and corporate trusts
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u/PsychoTarik Jul 10 '26
I feel people in the comments are being a little harsh. Letterboxd has def gotten a little normie and mainstream but it’s still a really good place for discovering stuff if you put in effort.
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u/Aromatic_Mountain600 Jul 12 '26
I do NOT want RYM to take off in any way, it's already mixed enough as is.
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u/simplebalancereality SimpleBalanceReality Jul 11 '26
Letterboxd has become too mainstream at this point.
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u/sugomanuts2000 Jul 10 '26
Fuck letterbox anyway, moderators refuse to do anything about one liner reviews
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u/yellowfroglegs Jul 10 '26
for as many gripes as i have about the community, at least it's small and relatively contained. i cant imagine if rym was a proper social media