How to rate albums on CriticsFM

CriticsFM is ChartFM's music review module. In it, users can rate albums, EPs, mixtapes and music projects with scores and written reviews. The idea is to create a space for music criticism generated by the community itself, not by staff journalists, but by people who actually listen to and feel the music.

The name is a nod to the music criticism culture that has always existed among fans: in forums, personal blogs, discussion groups and homemade zines. CriticsFM formalizes that space within ChartFM, giving visibility to the community's opinions.

CriticsFM ratings are independent of weekly charts. You can rate an album released at any time, not just those from the current week.

Access the CriticsFM page from the sidebar or visit the /criticsfm route directly. On a specific album's page, you'll find the "Reviews on CriticsFM" link, which leads to /criticsfm/[albumId].

The score ranges from 0 to 100, set with a slider. By default the slider starts at 70, but you can move it to any whole number between 0 and 100. This offers plenty of granularity to differentiate an album you consider a 75 (good, but flawed) from an 85 (very good, recommended).

The score is personal, there's no official ruler for what each number means. It's a way for you to record how much you liked the album, comparable to the scores you've given other albums.

Besides the score, you can write a text review, which is optional. There's no minimum character limit, a single sentence is already valid. But more elaborate reviews tend to generate more interaction and discussion with other users.

There's no correct way to rate an album. What matters is that your score and review genuinely reflect your experience with that work. Some criteria users often consider: track consistency, artistic coherence, originality, production, lyrics, emotional impact and relevance within the artist's discography.

Avoid rating based on excessive expectation or hype. An album that is exactly what it promised to be deserves credit for that, even if it didn't break new ground. Rate what's in the music, not what you expected to find.

Reviews that explain the reasoning behind the score, even when they disagree with the majority, tend to be more valuable to the community than simple ratings without context.

On CriticsFM, the score shown for each album is the average of the scores (0 to 100) submitted by every user who rated that album. This creates a collective consensus that often differs from professional critics' scores, and that's part of the platform's value.

You can browse the highest-rated albums, the most controversial ones (where scores are very divided) and the most recent ones. This helps you discover projects the community considers essential, even if they didn't get attention from specialized media.

You can also see other users' rating history, which helps identify music fans whose musical taste resembles yours, and potentially follow those people to discover new albums.

Use the search inside CriticsFM to find a specific album by name or artist. If the album doesn't exist in the database, you can suggest it for inclusion.

CriticsFM's homepage shows recent releases, trending albums and projects with lots of new ratings, which makes it easy to discover what the community is discussing at that moment.

You can also reach an album through an artist's profile, where all their registered projects are listed. This is especially useful for anyone who wants to rate a favorite artist's entire discography.

Go to CriticsFM to start rating, use Discover to find new albums and check out the glossary of terms of ChartFM.