Getting concerned about Allmusic.....

overkill · 13-02-2007, 4:20 PM

Don't get me wrong, this is a great way of getting reviews, and catching up with releases but..................... I'm getting more and more fed up with the increasing trend in the reviews to push the 'latest re-master/re-issue' with 'bonus tracks'. I even (how sad is this) wrote to them to point out the dangers of this.

Why?

First, that it's utterly misleading. The site is based, inevitably, on US releases, and anyone who has bought many of these knows just how poor US versions are when compared to UK, European and in particular Japan. Therefore stating that 'there has never been a quality release before' is bordering on handing out misinformation. I've got many of the issues they (literally) slag off on Vinyl and CD, and frankly I wondered at first what they were on about as the recording and production on many of them is absolutely first class.

Second, re-masters and re-issues are given blanket 'seals of approval'. This again, is utterly mis-leading. Many re-masters are good, but many, many are not. As for the dreaded 'bonus tracks', well, the number I've heard that actually added to the sum of the original album I can count on one hand. There is a good reason 'bonus' tracks, as anyone can tell, ended up on the cutting room floor, it's because they weren't good enough to make it first time out.

It comes across that Allmusic are under pressure to push re-issued CD's as 'better', and increasingly what was a good album review is taken over, or replaced by one, that spends two thirds dribbling over the re-issue and not enough on the albums musical quality. I know Allmusic has to make money, but this is starting to smack of hyping up releases to make the industry (and themselves) money. We had enough of that nonsense in the 80's.

I have no issue with mentioning re-issues, but not spend the latter part of the review hyping them, and making dodgy, inaccurate claims about previous releases. That's not why I started to use them.