How do you determine an AllMusic rating?
The editors use a 1 to 5 star system. It is important to note that albums are rated only within the scope of an artist's own work; we won't compare a Miles Davis album to the latest album by Britney Spears.
Editors may choose to revisit an artist's discography, especially if an artist releases a great new album, to re-factor the earlier releases to better fit within the band's history. For example: in 1993 an editor may have given Radiohead's Pablo Honey four-and-a-half stars when it came out, being one of the best Britpop albums to date. As time goes on and Radiohead releases The Bends, OK Computer, Kid A, etc, Pablo Honey may not warrant being their highest-rated album. The text of the review is still valid, but the older rating gets adjusted.
Non-classical albums in the database very very rarely get a five-star rating upon initial release. The five-star rating for non-classical albums is reserved for an album that has stood the test of time and has become an important and very meaningful recording within its genre.
Classical albums are treated a little differently and a really terrific new classical release may be granted five stars if the classical editors see remarkable quality in the album. Our classical team seeks out the best of the new releases and often awards those albums a five-star rating if one is merited.
How do you determine an album or track pick?
When looking at an artist's discography, you may see a blue arrow with the AllMusic logo next to the album cover. That represents the Album Pick for the most representative album of that artist's entire body of work. It may be a well-known hit album, a compilation of the artist's best songs or just a really great record.
On specific album pages you may see that same blue logo and highlighting next to two or three tracks on a recording. Those are Track Picks, the songs on a recording that our editors feel are most representative of the entire album.
Each month, our team of writers and editors select the albums that most captured their attention. We feature these selections on our
Editors' Choice page, and with a special badge on our
Featured New Releases page each week.
Every day our editorial team selects a different album to highlight on the home page of AllMusic. This may be a recent discovery, a time-honored classic or a buried treasure. Think of it as an “album of the day.”
What does "Associated With" mean (under Related on an artist page)?
If the artist is an individual, this term refers to either major artists they've played with or artists with whom they've formed musical/personal partnerships. If this is in reference to a group, 'Associated With' usually refers to other bands that have shared members, or major individual artists that also spent time in the group.
What does "Collaborated With" mean (under Related on an artist page)?
This represents a behind-the-scenes musical partnership, or a relationship that didn't receive feature billing.
What does "Followed By" mean (under Related on an artist page)?
Artists who were influenced by the selected artist. This may be directly called out from research and interviews, or it may be a strong inference based on the opinion of the editors.
What does "Influenced By" mean (under Related on an artist page)?
Artists that have had a direct musical influence on, or were an inspiration to, the selected artist, as determined by our music editors.
What does "Similar To" mean (under Related on an artist page)?
Artists that share similarities with the selected artists. These are artists that sound similar, were part of a particular scene, or share a similar style or aesthetic.
What does "Group Members" mean?
Past and current members of the selected band.
What does "Member Of" mean?
Band(s) that the selected artist is, or has been, a member of.
Genres should be seen as the broad categorization of music into a grouping. Things like jazz, blues, country and pop/rock are all examples of the 21 genres that AllMusic breaks music into.
Styles are more specific sub-categories of music that fall under the broad genres. They usually relate to a specific time period (like power pop, old-school rap) or a regional breakdown of where the music was heard (such as northern soul or new wave of British heavy metal).
Activities or events particularly suited for a song, album or overall body of work.
Adjectives that describe the sound and feel of a song, album, or overall body of work.
By creating an AllMusic account, we invite you to tell us what you think about the albums on our site. How do you feel about
Zaireeka by the Flaming Lips? Love Lou Reed’s
Metal Machine Music but hate
Songs for Drella? Did D’Angelo’s
Voodoo change your life? Now you can rate albums on the same five star rating scale as our editors do.
You can also see how other AllMusic users have rated albums and the number of times users have rated an album, find out if the AllMusic audience agrees with our editorial ratings, or sort an artist’s discography by average user rating.
More information can be found
here.
How do you come up with your album recommendations?
By rating albums, we’ll find other albums you may be interested in. Our system takes into account the ratings you've assigned to albums and connects those albums to other records you might be interested in. The more albums you rate, the more precise our suggestions can become.
Lists is a feature on AllMusic that lets you create custom lists of albums you want to check out, keep track of your favorite records from this year, or curate your all-time top desert island discs. To begin, navigate to an album page and click the "Add To List" button. From there you can create your first list and then add up to 100 albums to that list. Lists titles can be up to 100 characters, and the optional description can be 500 characters long.
More information can be found
here.
Dedicated music fans who want to track which albums they own can now add albums to their collection list with a single click by visiting an album page. Your collection is available for you to browse and sort on both the AllMusic website and on your mobile device by going into your profile area. Sort your albums by year, artist name, album title or your own rating.
More information can be found
here.
What are New Release Notifications? Why should I "Follow" an artist?
Registered users can "Follow" a band or musician on the artist page by clicking the "Follow Artist" button under an artist's name. If an artist you are following releases a new album or single, AllMusic will let you know about it. A notification flag will light up at the top of the site allowing you to click through to the album pages, and read the reviews.
More information can be found
here.
User Profiles allow you to share your lists and collection. Navigate to the Profile Settings page in your user account and create your unique URL. You can see your profile page by clicking on "My Profile" at the top of any page. Once you’ve created your user profile, your public lists will be displayed in alphabetical order. Your lists are all private by default, but by toggling them to “Public” you’ll be able to let the world know your personal take on what’s worth listening to.
More information can be found
here.
Do you have a mobile app? What is AllMusic Roundup?
AllMusic Roundup was an iOS companion app to the AllMusic website, focusing on the new albums that come out each week and the featured articles we publish.
The app is currently not available due to the cost of licensing the music information. We hope to bring it out of retirement at some point in the future.
Why am I getting a 404 page?
Occasionally we have server issues or problems with our data provider's service which causes pages to fail. Usually these interruptions are brief so we suggest maybe waiting a minute or two and then refreshing the page. If the problem persists, please contact us via
our support page or by filling out
our feedback form.
I need help with a function on AllMusic that just isn't working.
Sometimes we hear about problems like this if a user is using a very old browser version. We support current versions of most browsers, but if you're using something like Internet Explorer 7 or Firefox v23, your system may not be capable of running modern websites.
Users also often see issues if they are using an ad block software or if they have Javascript turned off.
If the problem persists, please contact us via
our support page or by filling out
our feedback form and include the following information:
- The URL of the page that is causing issues
- Your operating system (Mac, Windows)
- Your browser version
- Whether you're on a a mobile device, tablet or a desktop/laptop computer.
Track samples aren't working.
Unfortunately our data provider is no longer making the 30-second sound clips available to us.
We understand that this was an
important part of exploring and discovering music on the site and we're
investigating other partnerships to try to bring the sound clips or
streaming options back.
How do I stream or download or purchase music on your site?
AllMusic is not a streaming service so we do not provide the ability to stream full tracks on our site, and we do not sell any products directly on our site.
We do not have the ability to stream full songs like Spotify or Apple Music do.
When applicable, we provide links to streaming services and places to buy the music. If you're not seeing that on the album page you're viewing, the album may not be available at those sources.
What happened to the Billboard chart info?
Billboard has changed their licensing terms and the cost associated with licensing that information to display on AllMusic was way WAY more than we can afford. We're pretty bummed about it but we simply can't afford to license the information from them anymore.
What happened to the sound clips/samples?
Unfortunately, in 2022, our data provider no longer made the 30-second sound clips available to us.
It was a huge undertaking to rip the music clips from physical and digital sources, and then to host and deliver those clips (in multiple formats). They've determined that while the feature was appreciated, they could no longer support the business case of providing it as a product.
We understand that this was an important part of exploring and discovering music on the site and while there doesn't seem to be any service that licenses 30 second sound clips anymore, we've incorporated embeds and links to Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music so users can still explore the way an album or artist sounds.