Brainstorming Session: CD Reviews
I’ve been thinking that it might be time to take this website’s CD review feature to the next level, and I’ve been brainstorming for ideas. I don’t mean this post as a conclusion, but rather as the start of a joint brainstorming session.
I could institute what everyone else does: Rating projects on a 1-5 or a 1-10 scale. The only catch is I wouldn’t use the lower end of either scale, because if I don’t like a project and can’t find nice things to say about it, I simply don’t review it at all. I only review projects that would get at least 3 of 5 stars or 4/5 of 10. But everyone else is already doing this, so it doesn’t tell you much new.
I am considering also rating song selection. Rather than using a straight 1-5 scale, what I could do is list how many individual songs on the project I rate as 5-stars in iTunes, how many get 4, how many get 3, etc. In the end, what I think of an album comes down to how good its songs are.
I could do a host of other things, such as production quality or appearance, but I don’t know how much is too much. I’m open to input there.
Finally, I did come up with one outside-of-the-box idea, something nobody else is doing right now: Rating each CD on a traditional – to – progressive scale. Say a very progressive CD (Crabb Family, Crossway) would get a 1 or 2, while the Dixie Echoes’ Sounds of Sunday would get a 9 or 10. If your tastes incline toward progressive, you’d like CDs with lower numbers better, and vice versa.
What do you think? Would this add to the value of this website’s CD reviews?

