Patent Law

Rolling Stone Announces More Five-Star Rated Albums And All I Got Was This Lousy Feed

By Erik J. Heels

Want to know why the music business is broken? Look at how Rolling Stone Magazine mismanages its most prized asset: five-star reviews.

Over the last two months, Rolling Stone Magazine published five-star reviews for three albums. Rolling Stone rating an album five stars is as rare as a four-leaf clover or a Bush apology. How did Rolling Stone announce this rare event? With a red carpet event? With a press release? With a blog post? No, with minimally competent mentions in their pathetic feed:

Wish you could browse the full list of Rolling Stone five-star-rated albums? Wish you could to be able to buy all of them easily as MP3s? Or hear samples of some of them? Keep wishing.

The music industry wonders why album sales have been decreasing. Check out this chart. I argue that the 1990s almost killed rock. Note that many albums in the "2000s" column are reissues - it's an imperfect science (but at least I'm trying).

I've done my best to do Rolling Stone's job for them, but I'm getting tired of doing these updates. This may be my last. Here's the full list of albums rated five stars by Rolling Stone magazine:

• Rolling Stone Five-Star Rated (Mostly Rock) Albums
• Rolling Stone Five-Star Rated (Mostly Rock) Albums: The 1950s, 1940s, 1930s, 1920s
• Rolling Stone Five-Star Rated (Mostly Rock) Albums: The 1960s
• Rolling Stone Five-Star Rated (Mostly Rock) Albums: The 1970s
• Rolling Stone Five-Star Rated (Mostly Rock) Albums: The 1980s
• Rolling Stone Five-Star Rated (Mostly Rock) Albums: The 1990s
• Rolling Stone Five-Star Rated (Mostly Rock) Albums: The 2000s

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Full post as published by Erik J. Heels on November 25, 2008 (boomark / email).