Here's an antique technology imported into the crowded soft-science of music recommendation systems: Critical Metrics. Using review content from "professional" music critics, Critical Metrics aggregates reviews for albums and tracks and posts mp3s and videos of the tracks so reader/listeners can 'audition' before buying, or import MC-generated playlists into other music services, like Rhapsody. Without coincidence I'm sure, it is a lot like Metacritic but with a/v, playlist capabilities and clunkier layout.

Unlike Metacritic, Critical Metrics filters only 4/5 and plus rated reviews and put all the content for these online, offering only critically-loved music so listeners, presumably, don't have to wade through the mostly mediocre. Perhaps it should more properly be named something like the old-fashioned "critics darlings" or the tres-cynical "tomorrow's backlash."

What I wonder about in a site like Critical Metrics is to what end is critic judgment being employed here? I believe that professional critics are to be supported because they have more depth of insight into music/culture (because of prolonged study, experience, exposure), grasp of journalism ethics and/or responsibility to factual accuracy/grammar and a dedication to the craft. These are the reasons that some people get paid and some don't. The road to being paid is filled with hundreds and maybe thousands of unpaid stories and reviews, in great and inspiring magazines that are still not "professional." Of course, even the professionals are becoming less so in the race for print profitability, but that's another story.

So my beef is that I can spot a few of their media roster who do not pay their writers and one who I know does no line editing whatsoever, so the consistency of the term 'professionalism' is questionable. I mean, c'mon. Vice?

Then there's the opinions. These sites about professional "writing" but professional "opinion." Like Metacritics, it is aggregating feedback, but somewhat more incidiously, leaving out critical dialogue (not everyone gives it a 4/5 surely) for the sake of consumer recommendation, and thus in some ways contributing to the hype cycle.

Then there's the words. Like I said, this isn't about words anymore than the tv soundbyte is about a subject's standpoint - it seems to be using critic's words as a vehicle for the authority of the site, to legitimate the project without the consent of the writers or (even?) the publications themselves. Granted, it is published and out there living life in public, but if these writer opinions/words start being used to, say, sell CDs or downloads, how is this different than the very costly intellectual property negotiation that goes on in liscensing review content? For instance, all Xgau's consumer guide reviews are available his site, and recently Rhapsody liscensed them for use on theirs/its/ours (I write for Rhaps) service - but under something like Critical Metrics, it seems that Xgau wouldn't have had to have been paid a cent for any of his words/opinions. Does the desire for critical influence in new media trump that of controlling credibility and intellectual property? I doubt it, but it seems that the old guard's reluctance to even put their archives/reviews online on their own publications in the first run of net content was a serious contributing factor to their downfall now - they lost the forefront to smoother operations like Pitchfork. Now whichever critic lands at the top of the google pile is, in some ways, the queen. These critical aggregators are not going to go away, nor do I think they should, but I would like to see one