Now, I'd rather use Wikipedia, which has more comprehensive information without the advertising overkill. Your website is dying, and only the website managers can save it. Limit advertising, update information, or your supporters will abandon you.

Or find a way to display ads of a certain size so the page doesn't have to continually adjust. 

(Feel free to reach out if you want the specific username, but I'm sure you're already aware of this person. Hint: they review a lot of metal acts.)

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A certain AllMusic user has posted over 41200 reviews since November 9, 2019—that is, nearly 30 reviews a day for 3.8 years. With few exceptions, the reviews are content-free and negative/dismissive. Almost none of them demonstrate even a cursory engagement with the album they're supposed to be reviewing. Instead, they generally follow one of a set of obvious templates, coupled with a seemingly arbitrary rating. Some of the most common templates include:

The band's [YEAR] album, [ALBUM_NAME],
- isn't any different from the rest of their discography.
- is continuation of their usual style.
- is a (rehash|replica) of their (past|previous) (works|discography).
- is a (rehash|replica) of the (past|previous) (one|two|three|...).
- is a replica of their debut.
- is indistinguishable from their previous efforts.
- (continues|shows) the band's compositional stubbornness.
- shows their little relevance among their niche.

Roughly 13300 (>30%) of their reviews follow the above pattern.

[COUNTRY]'s [ARTIST_NAME] are a clone of [ARTIST_1], [ARTIST_2], ..., and [ARTIST_N], as shown by their [YYYY] (album|debut|EP), [ALBUM_NAME].

About 4200 (>10%) of their reviews follow that pattern.

In several thousand other cases, this user's reviews dispense entirely with the pretense of being a review. A random sampling from a few pages of the "Album Reviews" section of their profile, with accompanying star ratings:

- "Their first EP." (1 star)
- "Their second EP." (1 star)
- "A stop-gap EP." (1 star)
- "Their only album before disbanding." (1.5 stars)
- "One of its albums." (3 stars)
- "Self-explanatory." (1 star)
- "Fourth EP" (1 star)
- "A cash-in compilation." (1 star)
- "An early-years compilation." (1.5 stars)

Please notice those star ratings. Over 37000 (~90%) of this user's 41200+ reviews are rated two stars or fewer. Often this user makes their way through a band's whole catalog, burdening each release with an excessively negative rating that, as I've hope I've managed to establish, is based on nothing. 

I'm not sure what this user's deal is, but whatever their intent, the result is that they're making your site a less useful, less welcoming place to visit. Their valueless, mean-spirited reviews show up as the highlighted review in User Reviews sections across your site, sitting right alongside AllMusic's official (and generally far more thoughtful) reviews—and in cases where AllMusic hasn't supplied an official review, the reviews stand as the only review of a given release.

I've used and enjoyed the AllMusic Guide for something like twenty years at this point. I (and I'm sure many AllMusic users) would really appreciate it if you could do something about this issue. I have to believe this kind of low-quality, artist-bashing spam cannot be what AllMusic had in mind when they implemented user reviews.

Just one missing rating to start with:

• Touché Amoré - Stage Four

While the review is short, the reviewer does breifly descibe the music. Furthermore, a similarly short review for the act's previous album, 'Is Survived By' has already been rated.

I'm observing long pauses on loading band pages and discography pages. I'm a subscriber (have been for years), so it doesn't seem to be ad related. I took some network traces, and it seems to be samples.json that is taking a while to load. On three pages I loaded (the pages for Kool & the Gang, Big Black, and the Melvins, and yes, that's quite a trio), samples.json took about 4 seconds to load twice, and then 19s. I've attached screen shots of the network traces here.

As another report presented (link below), here is how the reviews are patterned most of the time.

The band's [year] album, [title],
- isn't any different from the rest of their discography.
- is continuation of their usual style.
- is a (rehash|replica) of their (past|previous) (works|discography).
- is a (rehash|replica) of the (past|previous) (one|two|three|...).
- is a replica of their debut.
- is indistinguishable from their previous efforts.
- (continues|shows) the band's compositional stubbornness.
- shows their little relevance among their niche.- "Their first EP."  

and then a slight variation:
- "Their second EP." 
- "A stop-gap EP." 
- "Their only album before disbanding." 
- "One of its albums." 
- "Self-explanatory." 
- "Fourth EP" 
- "A cash-in compilation." 
- "An early-years compilation." 

very rarely have I ever seen a positive review from Appolini, and rarely do they deviate from this formula. When they do, it's still negative and stunted but goes a bit longer than these types they rely on. My main gist here is that this is spam, and it disrupts the reviewing process which is meant to express personal opinions and help passersby decide on what music to get into. Appolini is very clearly a bot, they have to be, and the rare authentic-looking reviews probably only exist to dispel any accusations of spamming (which has to be against policy, it just has to be). There is another report concerning this individual (see: A spammy reviewer is actively making your site worse), but the maintenance person Zac did a shoddy job addressing the situation. On that page, Zac said:

"I've had discussions with this person (who is a person and not a bot) and while I don't agree with their takes on music or how they choose to rate things, they're not violating any of the terms of service or our guidelines for reviews. The majority of the reviews are not helpful, and the low ratings are equally not useful, but they aren't selling anything, they aren't using hate speech, and they aren't using bots or mechanical methods of submitting."

He didn't get to the root of the problem. Sure, they're not selling anything or using hate speech or rhetoric, blah blah blah. But they are clearly using bots and mechanical methods of submitting, it's undeniable, the evidence is right there. He failed to take appropriate action against this bot and to ban the account, which is the action to take. And Simone Appolini continues to review bomb metal albums and other genres too with impunity and it's getting infuriating. No federal crime or anything is being committed by Appolini, but their intent is far from honorable and they're just making AllMusic a miserable place for readers of reviews; not because of the negativity but because of the mechanical repetitive nature of their useless reviews. Someone, please do the right thing and remove this account from AllMusic, they're obviously spamming and review bombing, which in other platforms is against policy. I don't know if AllMusic has such a policy, but they ought to.

Dear AllMusic team,

I’ve been with you since the All Music Guide first appeared on the Web in the mid-1990s, not long after Michael Erlewine’s Gopher archive became a fully fledged website. 

Your liner-note rigour taught me how to listen, and since 1999 I’ve written a few hundred long-form reviews myself. Even when I demolished Cher’s Believe, I spelled out why—because an artist deserves at least that much respect.

That respect is exactly what’s missing from huge swathes of the current user-review feed. One profile—Simone Appolloni—now shows 60 015 reviews spanning 82 636 albums. pril 2025 reveals ten fresh reviews stamped the very same day. A couple run several paragraphs; most are drive-by blurbs such as “One of their releases.” Many are shorter than a tweet, yet they sail straight through your 50-character filter.

Why the arithmetic smells wrong

• One single, front-to-back spin of each album (45 minutes on average) equals 45 000 listening hours—more than five solid years without sleep.
• Spread across ten active years that’s roughly twelve hours of music every single day, before a word is typed.
• Serious critics usually listen twice or thrice, pushing the workload past the hours in a day.

How IMDb handles the same problem

IMDb isn’t perfect, but it does one thing right: it sets the minimum length for a user review at 600 characters—about 100 words—and rejects junk padding outright. 

That rule forces writers to articulate at least one coherent idea. AllMusic’s 50-character minimum (barely half a sentence) invites the opposite.

A simple request

Please match IMDb’s standard—raise the floor to 600 characters. Here’s what else would help:

1. Re-enable strict character counting at the point of submission and block anything shorter.
2. Cap daily output from any one account—say, twenty-five reviews unless a moderator approves more.
3. Show transparency badges (average review length, star curve) so readers can weigh credibility at a glance.
4. Let three “not helpful” flags hide a review until staff can check it.
5. Spotlight depth, not speed—feature one exemplary community review on the front page each week.

Why it matters

Unfiltered, low-effort ratings drag catalogue scores down, mislead casual listeners and bury thoughtful voices. Artists see their life’s work distorted by a single hyper-active account; readers meet skewed averages; and a site celebrated for three decades of scholarship risks sounding careless.

Page-view metrics are oxygen, but credibility is your lifeblood. If every album is a labour of love, every review should at least listen long enough to love—or dislike—with reasons. Matching IMDb’s 600-character rule is the quickest way to put quality back in the driver’s seat.

I’ve recommended AllMusic for almost thirty years. I’d like to keep doing so—with pride.

With appreciation, and hope for a small policy remix. 

and

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/rein-xeed-mn0001559253

are redundant. Artists are the same.

Shawn Cotterell - Primary Artist, Producer, Vocals, Arranger


Craig Bauer - Engineer, Mixing
Dave Harris - Mastering
 

Ermine Gittens - Choir
Patricia Shirley - Lead Vocals
Londa Larmond - Lead Vocals
Toya Alexis - Lead Vocals
Norene Williams - Choir
Jason Nelson - Choir
Denise Brown- Thomas - Choir
Donna-Lee Saunders - Choir
Morlon Brown - Choir
Nordene Simon - Lead Vocals, Choir
Sonya Davidson - Choir
Vishaun Clark Bogie - Choir
Nevon Sinclair - Choir Lead Vocal
Danah Martin - Choir
Andrea Hall - Choir
Kenny Blake - Choir
Grace Clarke - Choir, Lead Vocals
KC Roberts - Guitar
Shelly Jones - Choir
Sonia Brown- Hamright - Choir
Otis Williams - Drums
Adene Blackwood - Choir

At first, I thought the updaters were just busy and would correct them within a few days, whether the values were wrong or the star-rating images attached. But a couple a weeks later and still no changes...

From my understanding, when an album is rated or rerated at AllMusic not only is a new rating value entered on your system but it also has to seperately have a star-rating image attached that matches the rating it has been awarded. These two things aren't often done at the same time, with the image usually being attached to the review first and the actual system value being added a few days/weeks later. This is why when a specific star-rating is selected on the the search engine that newly rated albums usually don't get listed amongst the results. Or if the album has been rerated, it carries its old rating in the advanced search engine for a while.

If correct, is it possible that the AllMusic team intended to update the rating values for a selection of old albums a few weeks ago but forgot to change the star-rating images to match the new values?

One album has been fully changed so far - Aaliyah's self titled album has already had its star-rating image updated to match the new value. If it's helpful, I can list of the other album entries affected.