Please do not message me asking me to share readily available albums with you - especially ones by indie bands that need your support! I am a music fan and a musician, and while I elect to give away the music I make for free, that's my choice.

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Despite being a in-club dominated by hipsters hopelessly enamored with tuneless, masturbatory bullshit and a useless throng of self-congratulatory junior administrators with nothing else to offer to the world of art but their insufferable lack of imagination, RYM still remains the best music database on the web for cataloging and rating your collection.

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I work at a start-up by day (and night), and when I'm not working I play in both an indie-pop band and a pop covers band. You may be interested in my twitter [ http://twitter.com/krisis ] or my long-running blog [ http://crushingkrisis.com ]

I believe that one paragraph can make a good record review, but single paragraphs do not make a record reviewer.

I think that short record reviews are great if they still say something worthwhile, and that long reviews are terrific if they truly give a sense of what an album sounds like. I believe that a good record review should present an album from either the perspective a relatively first-time listener, or from a totally informed insider.

I know that any song or album can grow on any person if they hear it enough times -- a record review should tell them why they should let it grow on them. In my ideal world, all record reviews would aspire to be like this: http://furia.com/twas/twas0372.html . Sadly, not everyone agrees with me.

I like thoughtfully made music with good lyrics, preferably performed by the person(s) who wrote them. I will take a heartfelt performance from an imperfect performer over an unemotional take from a super-talent, but I still expect everyone to sing as well as they possibly can given the instrument they're equipped with.

I don't believe in keeping music in the cloud - the cloud doesn't have the awesome collection I do. I currently own well over 35,000 individual tracks, and would review each one singly if i had the time.

And, mostly for my own reference:
5.0: Unassailable / 4.5: Remarkable
4.0: Excellent / 3.5: Great
3.0: Good / 2.5: Okay
2.0: Uneven / 1.5: Weak
1.0: Bad / 0.5: Terrible

For my own reference: http://rateyourmusic.com/stats/top_reviewers_by_words - Top Reviewers by Word Count
http://rateyourmusic.com/wiki/Visualize - visualization wiki
http://rateyourmusic.com/wiki/colors - colors wiki
http://rateyourmusic.com/wiki/Links - all "unlisted" links