User's Shouldn't Be Able To Rate an Album Before it Drops/Leaks

[spenser]

Dunno if this has been extensively talked about before or not, I did try searching. I think user's shouldn't be able to input their numeral rankings for any album before they've actually had the opportunity to hear it, and the best way to do that is to somehow lock the user rating feature for each album review until a certain calendar date in which the feature will be automatically unlocked. Allowing users to rate before they've heard the album skews the ultimate user rating so other users get a fairly inaccurate ranking of the album. For example. if an AP staff member reviews Thursday's album and gives it a 98% and the users are rating it at 70% even before the album has leaked one may begin to think that the AP reviewer is just very biased and the album may not live up to the review. And when the users do get to hear the album and start ranking the 70% already established would impact the ultimate average user ranking. I know some people here have press advances to certain albums but if they want to share their opinion about an album they should plug their site's review of the album. What do you think?

[Explode]

People here rate albums before they listen to them? How is that possible?

[tyler2tall147]

The problem with this is that many users get advanced copies, so there actually are a handful of users who have heard many records before the leak.

[cwhit412]

Does anyone actually look at the user rankings?

[Jay Evan]

What is wrong with this? I typically listen to albums 1 - 2 wees prior to "release"

[lp670sv]

The problem is that 90% of the people who rate albums before they drop are often just doing it out of spite for the band. That's why you go in to a review that was just posted, for an album that hasn't leaked yet, and it has a rating of 17%. People suck. This is also going to be fixed on the next version of the site.