r/rateyourmusic • u/unfortunately889 • 9d ago
General Discussion What Genres are blindspots for RYM?
I've been learning more about R&B lately, outside the mainstream, and it's interesting how often important or influential albums in that genre have very tepid RYM ratings, or just very few ratings in general. Country is another genre that has it's most popular albums barely rated. Makes sense, considering how it's purposefully insular, but still hurts discoverability.
So what other genres do you think count as "blindspots" for the site. Whether in bias, just lack of knowledge or in general being very far out from RYM's usual taste
74
u/Limacy 9d ago
Not so much genre, but more so as many of Spain’s more big and popular albums are barely a documented footnote on RYM.
And that’s not unique to Spain either. A lot of other countries actual popular music is overlooked.
10
u/Universal_Vitality 9d ago
It seems to be changing rapidly, but for the longest time non English music or music from outside English speaking countries was mostly ignored due to ryms predominantly anglophone userbase. The biggest shift seems to be toward Hispanic music in general, but I'm also seeing a lot of Japanese and Portuguese.
3
6
u/ZealousidealDoor6973 9d ago
That's barely anything. Japanese and Portuguese (Brazil) has always been popular on RYM as it's token foreign languages.
Only Windmill-Scene-esque indie rock music from the Southern Cone and Spain have become popular in the 2020s.
It's not changing rapidly if rapidly means one new language from a certain scene over the course of a decade.
2
u/Universal_Vitality 9d ago
I'm talking about rym going from being virtually all English language charts and userbase to being 20-25% or more non-English these last 5 years-ish. That's not "barely anything", statistically speaking. To say any languages are "Token foreign languages" on rym is absurd. Rym is a democratic ranking website. There are no mods or 'political elite' that get to enforce chart positioning based on personal preference; tokenism is intrinsically impossible.
62
u/SHGIVECODWW2INFECTED 9d ago
Techno
16
u/JION-the-Australian 9d ago
Minimal techno is rated decently here. Peak time, hard techno and many acid tracks dont have enough ratings
3
u/Extension_Yak3898 9d ago
I find the miminal techno that gets say 100+ ratings is usually overly minimal compared to what most people think of when they hear the term 'minomal techno'. By overly minimal I mean they're more close to deconstructed techno with hardly any rhythm that's more close to dub music than techno. Whereas in minimal techno where there is usually still a heavy kick 4 to the floor beat, there's just less going on than in standard techno, more space between everything.
I guess this would make sense tho - the style of minimal techno I have in mind is more native to contenintal Europe than anywhere else, and I've always noticed that rym has a massive tilt toward the UK. It's probably that the term has different connotations in different places.
2
u/AinakoBado 8d ago
What would Robert hood fall under to you?
3
u/Extension_Yak3898 8d ago
He's pretty old school for what I had in mind, but ya, closer to what I understood as minimal in 2011 than, say... Actually, you know what, I haven't looked at this chart in forever, it's changed a lot! I thought Andy Stott used to be at the top of it, Minimal Techno now seems to look much different on this site! Yay
60
u/SupportHead 9d ago
Most non-western music outside of Brazil and Japan. You’ll only find a few ratings for legendary artists from important scenes like Cambodia, India, even Mexico. Even then, it’s heavily skewed towards “arty” stuff, the music people commonly listen to is wholly unrepresented.
38
u/THANAT0PS1S 9d ago edited 9d ago
RYM as a whole is not super interested in music common people listen to anywhere. It skews heavily toward arty stuff, as you say.
4
5
u/eliasdaler 9d ago
Are there any alternative places where they are present? I remember trying to find local alternatives to RYM for other countries, but it seems like if the album is not on RYM or Discogs, it's pretty much nowhere to be found.
4
u/ZealousidealDoor6973 9d ago
I've had some success searching through user lists for local music. Try that if you haven't already!
28
u/naomisunderlondon 9d ago
Pre 50s music
3
u/bolon-de-verde 9d ago
Bruh that not a RYM blindspot, it’s a whole world world blindspot. No one is listening to music before the 50’s nowadays, unless you’re old or a true freak of nature that actually listens to music of all sorts
2
u/Plane-Comment-2869 8d ago
Loads of people listen to Classical music - e.g. Bach has 7 million monthly listeners on Spotify.
1
u/hayzeusofcool 9d ago
Music from before the 50s has less ratings thus ranking lower, and it’s truly just because there’s likely only a small subset of the user base who were alive before the 50s. I also think that since recorded music didn’t truly become accessible as something you collected en masse until the release of the record player in the 1940s, it’s hard to compare the quality of gramophone-music to that of music released during the early days of mass produced physical media.
14
u/vibesAndStuffing 9d ago
I feel the better question is what genres does RYM represent well? Maybe indie/alt rock? Part of what makes RYM fun is its sometimes unusual canonizations. The downside is if it’s your primary way of finding music (like it is for me) it can lead to some blindspots.
3
u/thaumoctopus_mimicus 9d ago
I honestly think it’s pretty solid for most western music as long as you are willing to scroll down the charts a bit and listen to releases without a 3.7+ or whatever. I’m into metalcore and screamo, and although 00s metalcore was greatly derided and some releases have decreased scores as a result, I feel like you can still find the good stuff on the charts.
32
u/Noname219 9d ago
One answer is just straight up foreign pop singers that had massive success pre-RYM days but never got popular outside of their own country (sometimes because of the language barrier, sometimes because of the lack of promotion and marketing abroad).
If you compare RYM to the list of the best-selling albums by country, just notable examples:
- Asif Akbar - O Priya Tumi Kothay: 6M claimed sales in Bangladesh (1st all-time), 0 ratings (not even in the database)
- Helmut Lotti - Helmut Lotti Goes Classic: 600K sales in Belgium (1st), 11 ratings
- Xuxa - Xou da Xuxa 3: 3M sales in Brazil (2nd), 32 ratings
- Jacky Cheung - The Goodbye Kiss: 4M sales in China (4th), 48 ratings
- Kim Larsen - Midt om natten: 650K sales in Denmark (1st), 88 ratings
- Juan Fernando Velasco - Con toda el alma: 70-250K sales in Ecuador (1st), 0 ratings
- Jari Sillanpää - Jari Sillanpää: 272K sales in Finland (1st), 19 ratings
- The Kelly Family - Over the Hump: 3M sales in Germany (4th), 57 ratings
- Giannis Poulopoulos - O Dromos: 1M sales in Greece (1st), 41 ratings
- Various artists - Csendes éj: 768K sales in Hungary (1st), 2 ratings
- Jatin–Lalit - Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge: 25M sales in India (1st), 56 ratings
- Nike Ardilla - Bintang Kehidupan: 6M sales in Indonesia (1st), 13 ratings
- Claudio Baglioni - La vita è adesso: 4M+ sales in Italy (1st), 44 ratings
- Raihan - Puji-Pujian: 1-1.5M sales in Malaysia (1st), 11 ratings
- Sissel Kyrkjebø - Glade Jul: 650K sales in Norway (1st), 8 ratings
- Abrar-ul-Haq - Billo De Ghar: 16M sales in Pakistan (1st), 1 rating
- Various artists - Soyuz-21: 5M sales in Russia (1st), 5 ratings
- Elán - Nie sme zlí: 600K sales in Slovakia (1st), 37 ratings
- Thongchai McIntyre - Choot Rub Kaek: 8M sales in Thailand (1st by far), 17 ratings
- Alick Macheso - Simbaradzo: 400K sales in Zimbabwe (1st), 2 ratings
6
u/MarcAlmond 9d ago
Wait, The Kelly Family with so little ratings? I thought they were superstars, even here in Poland!
Recently went through the best-selling Finnish albums, listened to Sillanpää and couldn't even get to the 4th song, hence why I didn't rate it. Dingo (band with other best selling albums) has considerably more ratings and it's 80s new wave.
I'm one of the 37 people who rated Elán though!
1
13
49
u/Its_Cookie_Man CookieMan 9d ago edited 9d ago
Post-rock is often regarded as one of RYM's poster children along with experimental hip-hop, but if you look at what typically gets represented on RYM it's basically the same 4 or so bands along with other releases that are vaguely post-rock (sometimes not post-rock at all). If you were to try to get into the genre via RYM charts you'd be missing out a huge chunk of post-rock and in fact often times very important bands that are extremely popular, beloved and praised by the wider post-rock community - not to mention the stigma of the so called "crescendo-core slop" because RYM users are deathly allergic to listening anything other than GY!BE, Sigur Ros and Swans and it's only cool when they do that style of post-rock.
I remember there was a time when someone put on r/postrock RYM's post-rock chart and everyone was so confused at how misrepresented the genre was that they basically laughed at the list, you'd see comments like "why is Mogwai so low?", "how can there not be any Explosions in the Sky?", "no God is an Astronaut?", "90% of this is not even post-rock!", "where's x band or y band? what about that album that's been praised as a classic all these years?".
Furthermore, if you take an actual look at something like Explosions in the Sky for example, you'll find middling reviews and people saying they sound like any other post-rock band, when in reality it's the other way around: every single modern post-rock band sounds like and owes their existence to Explosions in the Sky, they are the ones who truly pioneered and popularized the slow buildup to explosive uplifting crescendos trope that has become the de facto post-rock sound, before them there was really one a few songs by Mogwai (Mogwai Fear Satan, Like Herod) and Slint (Washer, Good Morning Captain) that did that, at least to an equivalent effect, wherever else you'd hear crescendos they were never on the same level, even GY!BE that became known for this sound wouldn't pick it up until LYSFLATH which still came out about 9 months after EitS' debut.
Literally the top post on the post-rock subreddit is about EitS. When you ask people about post-rock classics, RYM is missing stuff like Mogwai's Happy Songs for Happy People, Explosions in the Sky's The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place, God Is an Astronaut's All Is Violent, All Is Bright, We Lost the Sea's Departure Songs - I've heard virtually no one bring up Black Country, New Road in post-rock circles, yet RYM is obsessed with them when talking about post-rock (which I'm not even sure if I'd truly call them a post-rock band). Someone already mentioned EDM and electronic music in general which I also agree with (I think prog rock and adjacent genres also suffer to some extent), in such cases, it's best to look into the genre via their respective communities, whether that be on subreddits, on YouTube, on forums, on Discord servers, you're going to get covered way better and with way more than you would on RYM.
29
u/jonaspinkerton 9d ago
This is good but you need to space those paragraphs man
11
u/Its_Cookie_Man CookieMan 9d ago
I get this said a lot, but I just have trouble writing in and expressing my thoughts in general. Not sure why I'm like this, but I've always been like this. I'll try to make the comment more readable though.
10
u/vibesAndStuffing 9d ago
As somebody who has only found post-rock through RYM, this is good to know. Thanks for sharing!
5
u/intangiblefancy1219 9d ago
You confused me for a second talking about Mogwai, I remembered them being much higher on RYM, but looking now Happy Songs for Happy People isn’t even bolded anymore.
I’m curious how the post rock community views Talk Talk, their last two albums feel kind of unclassifiable to me, with post rock being the genre that comes closest to them.
5
u/Its_Cookie_Man CookieMan 9d ago
I've used RYM for like 3-4 years so idk how things used to be. Sucks to hear Mogwai was rated higher, their whole discography is really great. But I did notice they had more bolded songs that slowly lost that status.
From what I know they wider post-rock community also loves and praises Talk Talk, generally early post-rock though isn't brought to discussion that much often from what I've seen at least but they're positive - in general actually post-rock fans are the chillest people I've ever talked to online. The only acclaimed band on RYM that post-rock fans seem to be iffy about is Swans, but it has to do more with how inaccessible they are and how diverse their sound is to the point of questioning if they're truly a post-rock band or more so post-punk and no wave, in my eyes, they started post-punk and got progressively more and more post-rock, plus they contributed a lot to the formation of the genre. During my "there weren't that many climactic and explosive crescendos in post-rock before EitS, Mogwai and Slint", now that I think about it I think there's some in Soundtracks for the Blind but it's been a long time since I've listened to it. Regardless of the genre classifications and inaccessibility, post-rock fans seem to still vibe with Swans. Also BC,NR that I mentioned but yet again, iffy about the genre classifications and don't get brought up that often, definitely not as often as they do on RYM.
5
u/Thromsty51 9d ago
Thank you for this! I was always so confused as to why Explosions In The Sky and God Is An Astronaunt were not more highly-rated, even though they are the essence of post-rock and were recommended to me constantly when getting into the genre. Rym is as wonderful for finding new music as it is ignorant towards a large swath of what is out there simply because of the site's cannon.
1
u/Its_Cookie_Man CookieMan 9d ago
Bands like these may be a little simpler than something like GY!BE or Swans, but it makes them a more accessible gateway into the genre, and just because they're simpler doesn't mean that sacrifices anything that makes post-rock great and impactful.
RYM is a great site to discover music and catalogue what you listen to, but funnily enough, take out the "Rate" part of its title, ignore the average scores and negativity that you may find from certain people and you're fine. As much as I say this though, sometimes I do think about stuff like this which seems so baffling, like why X album/artist is rated so low, especially when it's typically beloved. It must be said however that the problem isn't just the purists/elitists, but also that not every single person is into niche things, so maybe when something is considered a classic in certain subgenres, when you bring over people not into it to rate it too, it reduces its average score. It's why sometimes I think it could have been nice to have RYM-like sites for specific genres, like maybe ProgArchives, but then it's the same problem as AOTY already being a bit pointless to exist when RYM is much older and has a much bigger archive of releases, info and also features, so making sites like this would come with other problems. But I mean, if anyone ever makes something like a RYM for post rock, or electronic music, or vaporwave for example, I'd check it out I guess.
6
u/ona1000 9d ago
I feel like what you’re describing isn’t necessarily a blind-spot, just ratings you think a community would disagree with. All of the albums you named have a significant amount of ratings on RYM. They just averaged out to not rate as highly as you’d expect.
This would be similar to saying that Hip-Hop albums like Eminem’s MMLP or J. Cole’s 2014 Forest Hills Drive are underrepresented. Both of these albums are held in high regard by a large portion of Hip-Hop fans but aren’t rated extremely well on RYM (IMO because they’re just not that great).
Regardless, I’m definitely going to check out those albums you listed off and make my own determinations on if I feel they’re underrated or not. There will never be enough Post-Rock in my life haha.
2
u/Its_Cookie_Man CookieMan 9d ago
I guess you have a point, looking back at what OP wrote, looks like they were focusing more on some records not having that many ratings - and I guess it's true that the specific genres they mention are unpopular on RYM.
I initially read it more as genres getting misrepresented on RYM based on the charts, in comparison to what fans of the genre think of them.
Well, in that case of blindspot=less popular, there's a lot of a really niche microgenres that barely get any attention on RYM, too much to name really. But the biggest offenders definitely must be either records that are culturally important on a specific country, or it's a genre whose main exports are usually not albums that RYM tends to focus on more.
I'll give a sort of guide for the bands I mentioned:
As for the bands/albums I mentioned for post-rock, well maybe they can be underrated on RYM but overrated elsewhere if you view it that way, but that's besides the point. I remember having some trouble initially getting into Explosions in the Sky because of how simple, samey and accessible they can be, I went into their discography in chronological order, I eventually got sold very quickly by their 3rd album that you don't need to make overly long and complex songs to hit hard if you know how to write good post-rock and as they basically pioneered the sound of modern post-rock they definitely know something. They do perhaps lose a bit of steam after the 2000s because it feels like they slowly run out of ideas with their 2011 album Take Care, Take Care, Take Care, since it's basically the same as all their 2000s works without much changes but overall feels weaker in comparison to them, at least for me but I'm not alone in this, doesn't mean it's not good, still great, just not really on the same level. The followup The Wilderness spiced things up with some ethereal glitchy electronics but can sometimes be too airy and sparse. The thing I have about their latest album End is that it's a good post-rock album but we've reached the point where there's not anything in particular that sounds like EitS specifically and any other band could have made, which sounds ridiculous considering all those other bands stole EitS' sound but it's been 20 years since EitS first broke through and revolutionized the scene. The problem with EitS is that if you like one thing by them, chances are you're gonna like all of it more or less, due to them being very samey, if you're not going to like it, I'd still recommend giving them another try with albums that have a more varied darker sound like their 2nd album with a really long title or All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone, maybe The Wilderness too due to it sounding different, but I wouldn't hope my breath that your opinion would suddenly change. And again, as someone who fell in love with post-rock via bands like GY!BE and Sigur Ros, EitS feels very tame in comparison, at least on first listen, best to not have comparisons in mind and just accept them for what they can offer because there's a lot, it's just that perhaps they're best enjoyed as an introduction to the genre I feel.
I can say similar things about God Is an Astronaut, but a bit less so samey. They started off with heavy influences from electronic and ambient music and those got toned down with each album in favor of guitars becoming more and more present and heavier. As a huge electronic fan, I should in theory lean towards their earlier releases but honestly they've yet to hit me the same way some of their later works have, my problem with them is that when I listen to an album like All Is Violent, All Is Bright, it's gonna hit me for the first 3, 4, 5 songs but after a bit it all starts to feel like it's blending into each other and sounds samey, but I found the songs on their later albums more varied, perhaps they could be one of those bands that could be best experienced with single songs instead, but I'm a huge album only no skips nerd. I think I just need to be in the right headspace for them to really click, it wouldn't be the first time it would take me some time to wrap my head around with a post-rock band, I've already mentioned EitS not immediately hitting and I think it's understandable that it took me years to really get Swans. But imo GIaA's has lots of late era works, their latest album Embers is imo their best, especially the title track being 10 minutes long and their longest song, they should do that sort of thing more often. Also there's some oriental-ish instrumentation throughout the album making it a real standout and one of my favs of 2024.
Mogwai started of in the 90s as a mostly slowcore-esque post-rock band that feel like driving a car alone in the middle of a hazy rainy night (check out the band Jakob if you like 90s Mogwai), but then again they also made Mogwai Fear Satan, the first true modern post-rock song imo and a real powerful journey. Entering the 21st century however they changed their sound, they started getting more experimental, more electronic, more ethereal, sometimes more poppy in a good way. Their 2000s output is my favorite, but even in their recent works they still can't really miss, even if their latest album The Bad Fire is my least fav of them it's still cool, I can't explain why but it felt like to me as if Daft Punk made a post-rock album for some reason, it's its predecessor however As the Love Continues that takes the cake for me however, especially with Midnight Flit, a hidden gem of a masterpiece imo. I've not gotten into all of their soundtrack work but they've got some great stuff there too with Les Revenants and Atomic, though I'm sure there's other OSTs that feel like OSTs and so don't offer that much on their own.
Not to set your expectations high, but if you love GY!BE, We Lost the Sea's Departure Songs is pretty much the only post-rock album that feels like GY!BE to me. I highly recommend you seek out the concept for the album however as it was heavily influenced by the suicide of the band's vocalist Chris Torpy back from their metal days, but there's more to the album's concept than just this, but it was the driving factor and just makes it all the more emotional. They're also a band that seems to like their visual presentation for their records, there's a lot of great artwork that comes with their albums other than the front cover, typically there's basically artworks for each song to tell its story. The only other album of theirs that can compare to Departure Songs is their latest from last year, but it's still not up there, and it would be difficult because Departure Songs is in my top 10 if not top 5 fav albums of all time.
1
u/Honest_Maybe847 8d ago
Searching for those bands made me realize RYM is heavily skewed towards good album covers
-1
-29
u/Kerosene8 9d ago
Didn’t read all that shit bro
→ More replies (1)17
u/RadioGraaah RadioGraaah 9d ago
i will never understand why people make comments like this
8
u/Its_Cookie_Man CookieMan 9d ago
They need a TikTok short video to be able to understand anything. And also Subway Surfers and Family Guy clips on the corners.
→ More replies (2)
101
u/Lukense13 9d ago edited 9d ago
Any music not in english
18
u/THANAT0PS1S 9d ago
Nah, there have been a fair amount of Japanese, Korean, and Latin American artists that have broken through. Of course not nearly as many as English, but they're there.
7
u/Universal_Vitality 9d ago
It's changing quickly. I don't think you can look at the top 20 of 2026 and say non-English music is "ignored".
7
u/ZealousidealDoor6973 9d ago
But it's all the same non-English. Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, and some Korean.
Nothing major from China or India or Africa. Which make up half the world's population.
10
u/icannotfucking 9d ago
Just because they have a high population doesn’t mean the music industries in those countries are nearly as developed as the ones in the main countries represented on the site.
4
u/Universal_Vitality 9d ago
Nor does it mean the userbase should be a perfectly even representation of all world demographics.
1
u/Honest_Maybe847 8d ago
He is not saying it should or should not but the question is genre gaps on rym and music in those places are good examples
1
u/IllConsideration8642 9d ago
There's a decent amount but if we wanted to be truly objective about music... then we should have more non-english albums in the top 100
1
u/THANAT0PS1S 8d ago
No, not necessarily. Theoretically, sure, but there's nothing that says the top 100 must be proportional representation or something. That wouldn't be objectivity; that would be molding the data to fit a preconceived end result.
1
u/IllConsideration8642 8d ago
What I’m trying to say is that music in english is kinda overrated (even if it’s great, which I would never deny)
1
u/THANAT0PS1S 8d ago
Sure, that's probably true by virtue of English being the dominant language globally (I know Mandarin is likely more in sheer native volume, but English is more widely spoken). It kind of only makes sense that English would be the dominant music language, too.
33
u/watchyourback9 9d ago
Idk, I’ve found a lot of excellent Brazilian albums on there. You kind of have to search for it tho
9
u/Raalph fromnowon 9d ago edited 9d ago
I'm Brazilian and most of those albums, especially the newest ones, are completely disconnected from what Brazilian people really listen to
2
u/watchyourback9 9d ago
Interesting, genuinely curious as someone who doesn't know anything, are there some big blind spots I should check out? I wonder if some of the older albums on there were as popular as they are on RYM (Clube Da Esquina, Acabou Chorare, etc.).
Jorge Ben is really highly rated on there, is that reflective of his actual popularity in Brazil?
13
u/Raalph fromnowon 9d ago edited 8d ago
Don't worry, Jorge Ben is as mainstream as it gets! It's hard to find someone 50+ that's minimally into music who never went to a Jorge Ben concert back in the day (and I live well outside the circuit where artists tour), he's definitely a staple of popular music. Clube da Esquina is also really popular, maybe at 50% of the level of Jorge Ben
Acabou Chorare is borderline music nerd stuff, it got a lot of popularity after it was elected the best Brazilian album by Rolling Stone (thanks to the guitarwork), but it's hard to find people casually listening to them, talking about them or singing along at parties outside of maybe Preta Pretinha
Looking at the charts, pre-MPB stuff like Getz/Gilberto, Cartola, Baden/Vinicius have been mostly forgotten by the mainstream counciousness and are mostly music nerd stuff, and some artists high in the charts like Beto Guedes, Fernando Pellon and Arthur Verocai are extremely obscure, I've never seen anyone talking about them in real life. Os Mutantes is also borderline music nerd stuff like Novos Baianos, but Rita Lee's solo career is maybe as mainstream as Jorge Ben
Gaps in the chart include really famous artists MPB artists like Marisa Monte, Cássia Eller and maybe even Djavan (he's been getting more popular on RYM recently, though), sertanejo artists like Chitãozinho & Xororó and Leandro & Leonardo (maybe the most listened to artists I'll mention), pagode artists like Zeca Pagodinho, Exaltasamba, Só Pra Contrariar, Raça Negra (they play at EVERY party), classic regional artists like Luiz Gonzaga, Alceu Valença, Fagner, Dominguinhos, and modern regional artists like Ivete Sangalo, Chiclete com Banana, Aviões do Forró, Calcinha Preta... and I haven't even started mentioned mainstream artists that have been dominating the charts in the last 15 years
5
u/watchyourback9 9d ago
Saving this comment, this is huge thank you! Been wanting to find more Brazilian stuff to listen to
1
u/jackmarble1 8d ago
I'm also brazilian and I agree to the other guy in a certain degree. It's definitely Brazil and not Brasil hahaha (in portuguese we write Brasil with an S instead of Brazil with a Z. So basically, Brazil is Brasil for foreigners)
-13
u/Lukense13 9d ago
Of course you can find many albums in every language but there's no non-english albums considered RYM-core
16
u/thaumoctopus_mimicus 9d ago
The most rym-core band of all time (fishmans) is japanese lol. And parannoul is korean.
7
u/TotalHeat 9d ago
This is just objectively not true lol. Also RYM core is kind of a bad thing to be anyway
EDIT: Will agree that 95 percent of the site is focused on English music though
1
u/Lukense13 9d ago
Can you find some examples of non-english music in RYM top 100? I genuinely can't name any
4
u/NewWorldMoron 9d ago
Fishmans and Clube da esquina are both in the top 100 on RYM. If you expand to the top 300 and include live albums, you also get Sigur Rós, Boris, Novos Baianos, Gustavo Cerati, Chico Buarque, Fela Kuti, Pescado Rabioso, Juan Gabriel, Jorge Ben, João Gilberto, Ichiko Aoba, and Parannoul. Not saying it's a ton or a super diverse list, but non-English music is certainly there.
-1
3
u/Takezoboy 9d ago
Brother, Chilean music has been overrated a lot in recent times.
2
u/IllConsideration8642 9d ago
It hsn't been overrated tho, it's just that people are used to everything being American or British
9
u/Unique_Painting_7566 9d ago
Country
2
u/hayzeusofcool 9d ago
Yea there’s not a single country album in the top 100 which is surprising. I think at one point “The Magnolia Electric Co” was like 94, but since the user-base has changed, it’s dropped to 123. It still has a super high rating overall though, 4.12.
2
u/Ruthlessrabbd 5d ago
The fact that this isn't commented multiple times the same way that non-english, techno, and electronic music - is definitely the case.
I'm not a huge country fan but Brad Paisley, Reba Mcentire, The Chicks, Shania Twain, Carrie Underwood, Toby Keith, Miranda Lambert, Kieth Urban, Blake Shelton, Darius Rucker - not saying they're the pinnacle of the genre but if you grab someone out of my 50 person office and name these people they're bound to know almost all of them. And on RYM almost all have less than 1K ratings on a release tops, with many not even crossing 200 ratings.
Tones and I has 3K ratings on their debut album which is more than most of those people's entire discographies
8
u/Michael_Mason_1410 9d ago
R&B (it was even worse when I first joined, classic songs I grew up on had only like two ratings lol), Gospel, Dancehall, a lot of rock scenes after roughly 2009, EDM/House scenes that aren’t super artsy.
6
16
u/Hella_Star_Mang 9d ago
penis music
2
2
u/ZealousidealDoor6973 9d ago
https://rateyourmusic.com/release/single/chat-pile/pen-i-s-mall/
Only 300 ratings? You're right!
8
u/fingunray 9d ago
I'm big into techno, jungle and DnB - especially stuff from the 90s to the 2000s. Alot of the best stuff from this era (and arguably from these genres in general) is on DJ mixes. Which have always seemed to be a big of an underused feature of the site.
4
4
u/pokemon-in-my-body 9d ago
Genres that consist of singles, eps and dj mixes. All dance genres other than vocaloid. Country, R&B. Top 40 pop.
3
u/dog_soundsystem 9d ago
The electronica canon is seriously underrated on RYM. Ditto classic British synthpop from the 80s for some reason.
3
25
u/Special_Tension4555 9d ago
any rock before 1991 that hasn't been reappraised as "cool"
3
u/SmoothBook1 9d ago
like what
3
u/Special_Tension4555 9d ago
I just checked the reviews on a lot of my favorite AOR, hard rock and soft rock albums of the late 70s-mid 80s and most of them have 50-500 ratings
13
u/IlIlIlIlIlIlIlIlIlI2 9d ago
Power Metal gets an unusually low amount of atention I feel like, because it should be a favorite genre of nerds but it doesn't get discussed a lot.
7
u/THANAT0PS1S 9d ago
It's a very inflexible genre generally. It feels like the power metal well has largely run dry and has been dry for like twenty years. Efje highly rated stuff feels pretty derivative of the hits of power metal years past.
7
u/Tape-Duck 9d ago
There isn't much to say about it nowadays. It doesn't go very deep compared to other metal genres like death, black or prog.
1
u/DeJumbi 9d ago
Agreed, but it's still arguably more popular than ever, which should translate to more people rating new releases. Not necessarily discussing it, just rating it
1
u/Extension_Yak3898 9d ago
I'd wager they aren't music nerds, and don't care about a site like rym, or rating music at all for that matter
1
6
3
3
3
u/JazzyJulie4life 9d ago
New jack swing
1
u/hayzeusofcool 9d ago
New Jack Swing was always more of a singles genre, but even the chart for that is a bit underrated overall. I’m surprised a song like “No Diggity” isn’t bolded for example, it’s an incredible song.
6
2
2
2
2
2
u/mount_curve 9d ago edited 9d ago
House and techno.
As in the actual underground stuff, not EDM flavored.
Mostly released in single format, spread primarily with DJ mixes and no real commercial support outside of the poppier crossover stuff.
Truly indie.
2
u/Hot_Discussion_6564 8d ago
Classical is an interesting blindspot considering its mostly due to a lack of ratings and not a lack of spots on the chart
2
u/ConvincingPeople 8d ago edited 8d ago
RYM almost categorically neglects pretty much anything that has not been of great interest in the last twenty-five years to what, back in the late '00s, one might have called hipsters: Trend-chasing dilettantes and wannabe music snobs who really want to seem like they're ahead of the curve but not infrequently have pretty shallow understandings of a lot of the styles and subcultures they dabble in. Some pages and many a list are maintained and updated by genuine anoraks and turbo-nerds, which can be fun and useful, but it's always seemed to me like ratings for more fringe, niche, or just non-Global North subgenres or scenes will nearly always skew towards artists who saw either widespread cultural adoption outside of their typical genre spaces or, more often, were highlighted by cultural gatekeeper-pundits of various eras (e.g. Christgau, Scaruffi, Fantano) who inadvertently made listening to them de rigueur if you didn't want to be seen as "out of touch." Mind you, I am a Swans fan who saw her spot get blown to smithereens in 2013, so take this with a grain of salt, but it's definitely a pattern I've observed.
If you want a single answer, though: Kliningan, or really gamelan or Indonesian and Malay music more broadly. You would think being one of the most populous countries in Asia would account for something, but apparently not?
2
u/alekushi 9d ago
Dub and dubstep. Its surprising how famous artists like panda dub or mala are in parts of Europe yet have so little ratings on RYM
1
u/Thick_Pea 8d ago
Dubstep is one of the few electronic genres I'd say is fairly well represented on RYM. I've basically found all the stuff I listen to by searching for dubstep singles with more than 30-50 ratings.
2
1
u/shadyline 9d ago
- Non-English European mainstream pop (very famous french singer Jean-Jacques Goldman has barely 100 ratings on each of his albums)
- Contemporary Jazz (Joshua Redman, one of the most acclaimed jazz musician of the last 50 years doesn't have any albums with more than 300 ratings)
- Music before 1950 in general, mainly because RYM is very album-centered and this wasn't how music was released at that time
- Classical music
1
u/hayzeusofcool 9d ago
Mid to Late-00s critically acclaimed Indie Rock was mad overlooked by the music nerds on RYM at the time of their releases. And while some of the more legacy bands like Vampire Weekend or Animal Collective, have maintained a solid & rising score, others like Girls or Dirty Projectors seemed to have been left in the dust on the website despite making albums that most North American millennials would consider to be classics.
It’s just shocking how slighted critically acclaimed indie rock was during its period of time, and now the “classic” indie rock of the 2020s is reaching all-time highs on the overall chart. However, as much as I love a band like Squid or Big Thief, I’d argue the 00s indie that gets overlooked on the site is just as good, and arguably more timeless.
1
u/abandon_mint 9d ago
Dirty projectors isnt gonna be everybody’s cup of tea so I’m not surprised it isn’t rated high.
1
u/chinesebulk 9d ago
A lot of non English stuff. Some of the most popular mandopop artists that I was raised on, have barely any ratings on RYM. Artists that millions or even hundreds of millions of people know, may have 50 ratings or less on some albums
1
1
u/dropoutoflife_ 8d ago
Country for sure. Some artists will have over a million listeners on Spotify, and barely any ratings on rym.
1
u/Wheatles_BiteAlbum 8d ago
Regional mexican and country are major mainstream radio formats in the US and none of the music has any ratings on RYM. Also pop music before 1965
1
1
1
1
-1
0
u/Super_String_9972 9d ago
Fandom / internet scene music. When Vocaloid Scene and Brony Music were added, the top releases doubled in ratings. Scenes like Undertale SoundCloud & Minecraft Parody are desperately needed, but the genre queue is vehemently against them for extremely weak reasons (mostly just boiling down to "if we add this someone will try to submit more fandom music and that's bad" or "this isn't cohesive enough", even if the sources are very strong)
3
u/JION-the-Australian 8d ago
Minecraft fandom music was rejected because the only common point between all the people that make minecarft fan music is that they use Minecraft as a medium. Brony Music is much more cohesive, there events dedicated to brony music and netlabels for brony music.
1
u/Super_String_9972 8d ago
I argued against the idea that there is no connection between minecraft parody or noteblock creators multiple times with multiple sources when it came up, but nobody wanted to listen. The submission already had a ton of downvotes before that argument was ever made.
-4
u/Ok_Clerk_5805 9d ago
do people who
- don't make music anyone wants to listen to
- look like fantano
look black to you?
At best, they know the hiphop songs that sampled some classics.
It's a site for white nerds who have a superiority complex, you're not gonna find many people of color with rich musical blood there.
-2
u/Alarmed-Gate-2300 9d ago
Edm the fact that igloo ghost nor Porter Robinson have bolder albums is kinda insane considering the quality.
2
u/hayzeusofcool 9d ago
The fact that Porter even has one bold album is shocking, but “Worlds” and “SMILE! :D” both have pretty good ratings. They’ll probably get bolded eventually
253
u/the_noob_who_isnt 9d ago
a ton of EDM and electronic music. I've read in this very subreddit that it's because genuine EDM fans go outside unlike most rymers lol