Tags:

High-end: An album that stands out from others in its rating, but that I can't quite give a higher rating yet. They could very easily move up upon more listens.
Low-end: The opposite. Many of these retain their current rating because of how much I once enjoyed them, but if I can bring myself to re-evaluate them, they may be moved down. It could also be an album that has just been moved up that I'm still unsure about.

These tags might not perfectly reflect my feelings for each album. For example, a high-end album might not necessarily be better than all the other un-tagged albums of its rating, and vice-versa for low-end albums. It's more about how much I'm currently thinking about moving that album up or down. There could be sleepers in the un-tagged albums that I haven't gotten around to re-evaluating yet.


I use a positive rating scale because I enjoy most of the music I listen to, so it felt like a waste to give a handful of albums the same number of levels of distinction as albums I enjoy. I also obsess over the ratings for many albums, so I much prefer being able to give half stars on a 1-10 scale.

My personal rating scale, from 1-10 (which then gets converted to a 1-5 RYM score):

1-4: Again, I don't tend to listen to a lot of music I don't like, so I'm not very good at distinguishing bad albums. The only real difference between these would be how many redeeming qualities an album has.
5: Perfectly average. For me, this more often than not means that I don't have any strong feelings about the album either way, and not that I liked half the album and disliked the other half.
6: Good. The majority of the music I listen to falls somewhere in this range. I enjoyed the album, but nothing particularly stuck out to me. These albums are often forgotten, unfortunately.
6.5: Not particularly well defined, but just an album that is somewhere between a 6 and a 7.
7: Very good. This could be an album that stuck with me the first time I listened, or it could be an album that I revisit often but that has flaws that prevent it from getting a higher rating.
7.5: This is where the half stars start to have their own feeling. These albums stand out to me a good deal more than 7's, but they don't quite reach an 8. As a rule of thumb, I usually don't rate an album higher than this on my first listen.
8: Great. At this point, an album really stands out to me and I have probably listened to it multiple times. If an album settles at this score, that means that I'm closely familiar with it, but there's something preventing it from reaching a 9.
8.5: I can listen to one of these albums at practically any time. They don't quite feel like my personal canon, but these albums are decidedly close to me and are my second-tier favorites.
9: Favorites. I listen to many of these albums often, but even if I don't, there is something special about them to me. They feel like my personal canon.
9.5: A 9 that stands out from the rest, but that doesn't quite reach a 10. I don't worry about this rating too much as it feels very close to 9 and very far from 10 to me.
10: A score that isn't really defined in itself, but rather by the albums that achieve it. My absolute favorite albums that stand far above the rest. Not necessarily flawless or perfect, but simply the pinnacle of music to me.