´MEGA-CRITIC´ ARE THE UP-TO DATE CHARTS OF THE RUNNING YEAR´S BEST REVIEWED ALBUMS. THEY ARE PUBLISHED EXCLUSIVELY HERE IN THE ´ACCLAIMED MUSIC FORUM´ AT THE BEGINNING OF EACH MONTH.
SOURCES :
THE CHARTS ARE CALCULATED ON THE BASE OF 26 SOURCES IN 3 REGIONS :
UK / DROWNED IN SOUND - GUARDIAN - MUSICOMH - NME - OBSERVER MUSIC MONTHLY - Q - UNCUT
US / COKEMACHINEGLOW - PITCHFORKMEDIA - POPMATTERS - PREFIX - ROLLING STONE - SLANT - SPIN - TINYMIXTAPES
SCORES :
AN AVERAGE SCORE OF ALL THE REVIEWS IS CALCULATED AND ADJUSTED TO DO JUSTICE TO ALBUMS WITH A HIGHER NUMBERS OF RATINGS.
QUALIFICATION :
AN ALBUM QUALIFIES FOR THE REGIONAL CHART WITH A MINIMUM OF 3 REVIEWS (SCANDINAVIAN OR GERMAN ALBUMS HAVE TO BE RATED AT LEAST WITH ONE NON-SCANDINAVIAN, RESPECTIVELY NON-GERMAN REVIEW).
FOR THE COMBINED CHART A MINIMUM OF 6 REVIEWS (IN 2 DIFFERENT REGIONS) IS REQUIRED.
RELEASE DATE :
AS THE EOY-LISTS USUALLY START AROUND THE END OF NOVEMBER, ALBUMS WITH A DECEMBER RELEASE DATE (PARTIAL OR ENTIRELY) ARE ALSO INCLUDED:
GHOSTFACE KILLAH :
EU : DEC - UK : DEC - US : DEC
LUPE FIASCO :
EU : JAN - UK : JAN - US : DEC
WU-TANG CLAN :
EU : DEC - UK : FEB - US : DEC
JONNY GREENWOOD :
EU : JAN - UK : DEC - US : FEB
MARY J: BLIGE :
EU : FEB - UK : FEB - US : DEC
- OVERLAPPERS : ALBUMS WITH A PARTIAL RELEASE DATE PRIOR TO DECEMBER WHICH ARE RELEASED DURING THE NEW YEAR IN OTHER REGIONS QUALIFY ONLY FOR THE COMBINED CHART IF THE 2008-REVIEWS OUTNUMBER THE 2007-REVIEWS :
CASS MC COMBS :
EU/UK : 12 REVIEWS FEB - US : 3 REVIEWS OCT/NOV
OTHERWISE THEY ONLY CAN MAKE IT TO THE REGIONAL CHARTS :
RAVEONETTES :
EU/UK : 16 REVIEWS NOV/DEC - US : 6 REVIEWS FEB
BLACK LIPS :
UK/US : 11 REVIEWS SEP/OCT - EU : 8 REVIEWS JAN/FEB
LE LOUP :
US : 4 REVIEWS SEP/OCT - UK : 3 REVIEWS DEC
- LATE BLOOMERS : SOME ALBUMS RELEASED BEFORE DECEMBER EITHER ARE OFFICIALLY RE-RELEASED OR GET ALL THE ATTENTION ONLY IN THE NEW YEAR AND THEREFORE QUALIFY FOR THE CHARTS .
FIGURE OUT THE HIGHEST NEW-ENTRY TO NEXT MONTH´S COMBINED CHART AND ENTER THE CHANCE TO WIN THAT CD. POST YOUR GUESS (ONE PER PERSON) AS A REPLY TO THE RUNNING MONTH´S ´META-CRITIC´-POST BEFORE THE 25TH.
Interesting Stefan, and great work; I'm looking forward to the February list. And that competition, is that for the month March or can we guess for February now?
Hey, Neoptolemos, I always thought you were the Stefan who posted the Mega-Critic updates every month!I only realized there's a Stefan and a Stephan now with your post, haha!
The math nerd in me is begging me to figure out my own system which corrects for the fact that most of the albums near the top have extremely negative skewed distributions.
Maybe I can figure out the distribution of scores for any given publication and convert any given score to the percentile of scores that publication gives. That would give stronger weight to extremely positive scores, and less weight to extremely negative scores.
I finished the program I already referred to. (And the time efficiency is cubic, so clearly I'm a really efficient programmer!) The only issue now is it currently handles ties badly.
Thanks for the individual ratings, but I might pick my own sources so I can compile the data myself.
I think what I'm going to do is add one album to the data per day. That way I don't have to do a lot of tedious data entry all at once, but by the end of the year there'll be hundreds.
Another reason I want to pick my own sources is to represent more strongly sources that will give a fair listen to genres like folk and country.
Here's what I have so far:
(Position) (Band/album) (Total win/loss) (Percent of individual matchups won)
1. Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend 5 - 0 0.6428571428571429
2. Drive By Truckers - Brighter Than Creation's Dark 4 - 1 0.6444444444444445
3. Black Mountain - In The Future 2 - 2 0.5185185185185185
4. Hot Chip - Made In The Dark 2 - 2 0.46938775510204084
5. Magnetic Fields - Distortion 1 - 4 0.39285714285714285
6. Cat Power - Jukebox 0 - 5 0.3333333333333333
A win means, when album A was compared to album B, more critics rated album A higher than album B. If there's no win or loss, it was either a tie, or there were less than ten out of my twenty publications that rated both. I'm thinking of adding a few more sources since now I'm only adding one album per day.
