The Concept of EARs – Essential Album Rating System©

The concept behind our rating system that determines the quality of music, is based on two fresh new ideas:

The idea that music has an ongoing impact of pleasure that is also related to its time length.

The second idea is that higher ranked music has a far much stronger impact over lower ranked music – an impact of more than a mere “point” difference as reflected in common rating systems.

These two ideas make the core of our rating engine called ART, Accelerated Rating over Time©.

Rating Over Time©

The Essential Album Rating Sys© rates music in proportion to their TIME length. Longer tracks of similar ranked music are rewarded with higher ratings that express their true value contribution to the album and to listeners.

As for example, and by the system that we have built, a music track that extends over 12 minutes and ranked “Good” is given a HIGHER rating that a 6 minute track that also ranks “Good”.

And that makes perfect sense, because the contribution of these two tracks to the listener and to the overall quality of the album is different.

Maintaining quality, over a longer period of time, is rewarded by our system and appreciated appropriately!

Accelerated Rating

The ability of an artist to create quality music requires a great deal of work with lots of talent, bursts of inspiration and tons of creativity. That’s when it all combines into a remarkable piece of art.

Each step higher on the quality scale of music demands exceptional much more of the above qualities. But then, each step higher pays off at a growing rate on the scale of pleasure.

Appreciating this value of quality music, our system “accelerates” ratings, and steps up the point value for higher ranked music, expressing the true added value of higher ranked music.

The adoption of these two ideas had seen the birth of the first true music rating engine which I called ART, Accelerated Rating over Time©.

The EARs© System

The EARs© system provides accurate music ratings based on Your Taste.

Music Ratings are displayed at the album level, going down to the resolution of tracks. Differently from existing systems that employ the five star ranking, or a numbering scale system, EARs© “listens” to what you have to tell it about your music taste (choice selection) and it then processes that into the ART© rating engine that combines your choice with an Accelerated over Time Rating algorithm©.

Results are both, exciting and efficient.

Allmusicrating presents the overall average of all users ratings (for individual tracks and complete albums), and also presents your own ratings.

Ranking vs. Rating

What is the difference between ranking and rating music?



Music Ranking

Music Ranking fairly describes and approximately evaluates the range of music quality:

Music quality could be specified in ranking terms such as Good, Very Good, Poor and so on. A given track could differ in its ranking by various listeners, yet it would basically be agreed on, and accepted within the audience of a given genre.

Music Rating

Music Rating quantifies the value of music. Given its subjective nature as a form of art, music quality and music value cannot be measured with definite-absolute accuracy.

However, we can narrow down the tolerance of this measure, if we first agree on a proposed ranking, and then – from that agreed ranking – extract and draw out our music rating.

Who Needs a System to Rate Music?

The purpose of music ratings is well known to serious music lovers and music enthusiasts. If we could place our music on a measurable scale, and tag it by its quality, it would then prove to be very helpful in making better music selections and managing large collections of music.

If you can’t measure it, you cannot manage it.

Peter Drucker

Some of the benefits in music ratings include:


  • Ability to Organize, Categorize, Compare, and Classify Your Music
  • Make Better Music Selections
  • Get acquainted with your collection
  • Appreciate music Value
  • Efficient True Music Ratings
  • Find ratings for albums, and individual tracks.

How does the Allmusicrating system work?

There are two main options for using our rating system:

  • First option is looking into ratings of albums and music you are not familiar with. Simply search and select the relevant result, and look into the overall ratings. Please do mind that we are in a Beta stage, meaning that our database of albums that have been rated by other users is in the process of accumulating new entries – so please be patient with results.

  • Second option is to enter your own ratings to an album of your interest.

The system displays a snapshot of your ratings (My Rating), and the average rating of other users (Overall). These ratings detail every single track, and the complete album rating as figured out by the ART© rating engine.


Ratings are displayed with symbols and actual numbers where the symbols indicate the ranking and quality of the given music, and the numbers present the value of that given music.

The eight levels of rankings are placed for convenience, in three groups:


This arrangement of the three ranking groups was carefully crafted to provide an easy to use interface, and allow a wide variety of ranking choices that would make it a deadly accurate platform for making efficient true music ratings, available to us all.

You can relate to the symbols and what they represent in the following table image.


Quantifying Music Quality

Why do we present the album quality with a sign, and additionally present its rating value in numbers? What is the difference between the two?

The sign describes – in your language – the overall quality of the album, its ranking such as “Good” or “Very Good”.

And by the way, but very significant to our purpose, it is not just a simple quality indication but rather a calculated average of all tracks, considering each track’s quality AND it’s length of play, and its proportional weight in the total time frame of the album.

The “numbered” rating value on the other hand, reflects the total impact of all the tracks, considering each track, its quality, and its time length, and its proportional quality over time contribution to the overall rating of the album. This is our “True Rating” that reflects the value of the album.

For example, two different albums with the same quality but different time lengths would have different value to listeners. The album with the longer time period would deliver more pleasure, and that would show on our system. It will have a higher rating number indicating its higher value of an album. Its ranking would however be the same as with the other album.

How to use the Allmusicrating system

Suppose you would like to find the ratings of an album called “What a beautiful day.”



  • Type in your search term – or for this example, type “What a beautiful day” in the search field that is on the Ratings page. The database will return various results. These results would include all the musical possibilities that carry the title “What a beautiful day”, so you will see a list of performers, bands, tracks and other releases that carry this same title of “What a beautiful day.” They show in order of relevance, so you just have to select the one that matches.
  • Once you make your selection, you will get to the applications main page that will present to you a detailed insight of the selected album. If this album was previously rated by you, it will display all the ratings – your ratings, and the overall ratings that would be distinguished by a faded view. If this album was not previously rated by you, then the overall ratings would be hidden, to allow you an unbiased option for placing your own ratings. However, if you are unfamiliar with this music, you could skip on rating this album, and see overall ratings, by selecting the “Show Overall Rating.”
  • If you want to rate this album, then you simply begin my making the appropriate ranking selection for each track that is positioned at the far left field that’s beside each track. With every selection, the ranking window of choices would move to the next track. When you’re done with all tracks, you simply press the “Save” button.


EARs© will now digest and process your input selections and determine the exact rating for each track and for the complete album as well.

Quantifying Music Quality, to Appreciate Music Value.

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