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I would prefer charts based solely on album sales, metascore while interesting is full of bias. There are some artists who cannot be scored below certain thresh

I would prefer charts based solely on album sales, metascore while interesting is full of bias. There are some artists who cannot be scored below certain thresholds either because of likability or political correctness. However total sales is usually a better indicator and longevity of sales, as in how long after initial debut did sales stay good.

amelius 11y ago
But what if there are people who buy the album, only to find out later that it was disappointing? Or fans, who buy the album regardless of quality.
deleted 11y ago
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usrusr 11y ago
Sales numbers are not that exciting when some people can look at actual streaming statistics. Something like http://poly-graph.co/timeless/ http://poly-graph.co/timeless/ with album sales vs median track streaming count would be interesting. (median, because albums are not about hit songs)
shas3 11y ago
In addition to the biases, there is another flaw in this analysis- they assume that quality is a linear function of critic scores. So, jumping from 30 metacritic score to 50 metacritic score is considered the same as jumping from 60 to 80. This is quite unlikely to be the case. Thus, they should at least also incorporate absolute Metacritic score into the 'disappointment metric'. As an example, Kanye's MBDTF is great, but his two albums prior to it were 'very good', with an average of 77. While, Lenny Kravitz went from 58 to 70, i.e. 'ok' to 'pretty good'. You should penalize higher absolute scores on previous albums for 'surprisingly successful'. Likewise, higher absolute scores on current albums must be penalized in the criterion for 'most disappointing'. One certain way of addressing these biases and the linearity assumption is by plotting the distribution of metascores, and using that as a prior to improve fairness.
FireBeyond 11y ago
Album sales do nothing (or rather, little) to chart how disappointing an album is. An album can be disappointing or exciting. A sale is a sale, and says nothing of that.

amelius 11y ago

But what if there are people who buy the album, only to find out later that it was disappointing? Or fans, who buy the album regardless of quality.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

usrusr 11y ago

Sales numbers are not that exciting when some people can look at actual streaming statistics. Something like http://poly-graph.co/timeless/ http://poly-graph.co/timeless/ with album sales vs median track streaming count would be interesting. (median, because albums are not about hit songs)

shas3 11y ago

In addition to the biases, there is another flaw in this analysis- they assume that quality is a linear function of critic scores. So, jumping from 30 metacritic score to 50 metacritic score is considered the same as jumping from 60 to 80. This is quite unlikely to be the case. Thus, they should at least also incorporate absolute Metacritic score into the 'disappointment metric'. As an example, Kanye's MBDTF is great, but his two albums prior to it were 'very good', with an average of 77. While, Lenny Kravitz went from 58 to 70, i.e. 'ok' to 'pretty good'. You should penalize higher absolute scores on previous albums for 'surprisingly successful'. Likewise, higher absolute scores on current albums must be penalized in the criterion for 'most disappointing'. One certain way of addressing these biases and the linearity assumption is by plotting the distribution of metascores, and using that as a prior to improve fairness.

FireBeyond 11y ago

Album sales do nothing (or rather, little) to chart how disappointing an album is. An album can be disappointing or exciting. A sale is a sale, and says nothing of that.