I have a query about the method with which the AM 3000 is compiled.

My thought is this: Lists are designed to be interesting and entertaining. Consequently they avoid letting any one artist dominate the list, ie by including 13 studio albums as the top 13 albums ever, because no one would read it. So the second best album album by a given artist is negatively biased, and the third best even more so etc. This bias exists even if the list states there is a limit on the number of entries by one artist. Furthermore it is not agreed which album is the best/second best/third etc, so a different album receives this negative bias in every list.

Consequently if one artist has multiple similarly good albums, then all of these albums will appear further down the list than if they were the only work by an artist.

For example Let It Be is recognised by AM as the 615th best LP and the 9th best LP by The Beatles. Now what list of 100 is gonna include 9 Beatles albums? In my opinion if this bias was corrected then albums like this would appear as higher on the list.

Any thoughts? Is this actually a problem or have I just misunderstood? Should this be corrected for?

Thanks for reading

I don't think the intent should be to limit an act to a certain number of albums (or tracks). If a title has enjoyed a great acclaim performance, it should rank where it ranks.

What Henrik does do when calculating and compiling the list- and he can clarify if he reads this- is the following:

1. Gives non-singles a different weight than singles (as singles are more likely to be cited in best-of lists)

2. Gives non-first-singles from an album a different weight (as lead singles usually fare better on best-of lists, especially year-end ones; there are exceptions to this, of course)

3. Not sure about this one, but I'd think it would make sense: Gives a different weight to albums/tracks from years in which year-end lists were not as prevalent as they became from the 90s-on. Look at how many lists the most acclaimed albums in the 2000s appeared on, compared to the 90s, 80s, etc. With Internet access and more outlets compiling lists, that explains the dramatic rise in lists.

4. If a list highlights a main entry and then lists additional ones- i.e. the 1,001 Songs.../10,001 Songs to Download book- the main entries (1,001) get a higher weight than the secondary ones (9,000). Same goes for something like "Other recommendations" that would follow a main entry (i.e. that French book, La discothèque parfaite de l'histoire du rock).

Henrik probably has other notes about compilation methods.

ol, I actually do something that meets your issue. For every list with more than 50 albums/songs with no artist included more than once I assume that they limited the number of entries by artist to one and therefore I blank the other albums For example if there's a top 100 list of albums by 100 different artists and Revolver is included. I would then "blank" Sgt Pepper so that the list isn't used in sgt Pepper's match-ups and hence it doesn't suffer anything from not being on this list).

JR, what I do is using a match-up system (between pairs of songs) instead of a point system and I would describe 1-4 differently.

1. Non-singles do not have a different weight than singles. The thing is that for non-singles, lists of best singles aren't included in the match-ups (the non-singles are blanked in the spreadsheet). Well, I guess you could then say that singles lists have zero weight for non-singles.

2. Singles released after the album it belongs to have a lower weight for the EOY lists. Especially if the single was released the year after the album.

3. Again, not different weights but different conditions for the match-ups. Take this example: Song X released in 1973 and song Y released in 1991 are included in the same three all-time lists and nothing else. While there are no EOY lists from 1973, song Y could have been included in EOY lists from 1991 but wasn't so it loses in many matchups against other 1991 singles. Hence song X gets a better rank on AM.

4. Again, not different weights (we probably just use different terminology) but a main entry beats a secondary entry in the pairwise match-ups.

Thanks for the clarifications/explanations, Henrik. :) It seems to be a very intricate process that you have and only the mastermind knows for sure the specifics.

I did think, though, that you said non-first singles that fared decently on lists had some sort of advantage over first single from an album, because first singles often are the ones cited.

Yes, if they do better in all-time lists than in the EOY lists and the weight for the EOY lists is decreased then that's an advantage for those singles.