‘Tis a season of change, around CMCentral, Salem Publishing, and in the music industry at large. But say it with me, people: change is good. This is one that I think we will all enjoy anyway.

The present review scoring system was one I inherited upon my arrival as Editor of CMCentral a year ago. I never liked it, the readers never liked it, and I can only imagine that the artists found it confusing as well. But when questions were raised and sturdy arguments voiced against said system, the benefits of the 1-100 points were presented as a done deal. If it was good enough for grade schoolers, it was good enough for us.

Well, readers, let the church bells chime and the people flood the streets in joy, for the system, she is gone. In the wind. Out of gas. No more. The good people at Salem Publishing have allowed us to move into the 21st century with a new review score system, one that imparts information in a manner easily grasped. A review, at its heart, is simply an opinion, after all. I try to do a general run through of an album’s significant moments, but what I find significant may be quite different than what you find significant, and I recognize that not everyone is sitting on the edge of their seats with bated breath waiting for my opinion to drop from the heights. So a simple icon might present the general sense of a review in a quick, easily accessed format. A 5 star system will be our new scoring mechanism, one that most readers are already very familiar with. Let the grade schoolers deal with the percentages; we like our stars and half stars. Look for the shining to begin next Tuesday, the day that new reviews post on CMCentral.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 14th, 2008 at 10:07 am and is filed under Staff Blogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.