How can I learn more about the person reviewing my music?
This is one of garageband.com's most frequently asked questions - and "Reviewer Ratings" is our answer. We understand a musician's desire to place a listener's comments in context, but we also respect our reviewers' right to privacy. So "Reviewer Ratings" offer a rough guide to what the last few bands and anonymous review raters thought of a particular reviewer's comments.Every time a band gets text comments, the band is asked about how helpful the review was to them, and if they thought of it as original.
The review is also rated by an anonymous third party who determines how relevant the review is. These questions determine:
- if it contained profanity/abusiveness, gibberish or cut and paste text used in multiple reviews
- if the reviewer was too vague and didn't mention specific song elements,
- if they addressed only 1 or 2 specific song elements,
- if they addressed several specific song elements
- or if they went indepth into several specific details about the song.
The anonymous third party also answers a question about how insightful a review was, whether it was
- utterly useless
- somewhat useful
- adequate
- insightful
- very insightful
Lastly, they have an extra credit they can add if they felt the review was original.
From the band's and third party rater's answers to these questions we derive a score for each review, and a user's Reviewer Rating is an average of the scores they've received for the text reviews that they've written. It's not an exact measure of a reviewer's ability or taste - but it helps bands know if a critical review comes from someone who most other bands and 3rd party raters think has a fair perspective. You can also check out what the reviewer says about themselves and what they said in other reviews by clicking on their screen name to see their Public Profile.
New reviewers start with N/A (Not Available) as their Reviewer Percentage until they do more than 5 text reviews that are rated.
(Reviewer ratings, Reviewer Percentage, Reviewer Average)
Last update: 2006-10-31 14:27:13
