Every other year I do a Favorite Album list. And, so I'll start working on my new list in just three short months. Yipe.
But, I was thinking it might be fun to do a group Favorite Album list, too. We could each submit our top 25 (or 20, or 10, whatever) and then use a simple "A vs B" ratings app to compare submitted records against one another. The app would pick records out of the submitted list, two at a time, at random; you pick the best one from the pair; the win/lost gets recorded; rankings are updated; repeat. And, the back end could use some kind of Elo ranking system (like they use for chess, Scrabble, etc.) to calculate a final ranking. Leave voting open for a month or so, then, see what we picked. We could limit voting to people who submitted albums, or open it up to anyone, etc.. details can be hashed out later.
It would be a pretty simple web app to write, but I won't do it if there's no interest.
So, let me know if you're interested!
Count me in.
Sure, I’ll play.
Music?
Lists?
Ranking?
White guys?
Arguments?
This is basically why the internet was invented. I’m in.
I’m new around here, lately arrived via Balloon Juice, but I’m always interested in lists and exercises like this!
I’m in like Flint.
This is a very cool idea. A couple considerations:
1. The more contributors, the better. It diminishes the likelihood of good picks being forgotten. I have no recommendations on how to accomplish this, of course.
2. Knowing the regular crowd here, there are going to be several albums nominated that nobody else has heard of. What’s the most convenient mechanism for letting people sample an album?
i was thinking about allowing for a link (or two) in each album submission – you could link to YouTube videos, Amazon album pages (with all the preview samples), or band web sites, or whatever.
a per-album comment from the submitter is another possibility. but for some reason i’m thinking it would be better to present the albums free of comment. not sure why i’m thinking that.
but, if you don’t know one or either album in the vote, should you vote? obviously, given a choice between your favorite record and a record you don’t know from a band you hate, the choice is probably easy.
regardless, there should be a “skip” button on the vote page.
Because you’re right.
Count me in as well. I think this will be a fascinating exercise as we all seem to somewhat music nerds but in a lot of subtle directions.
Links to the All Music Guide entry for the album would allow people to listen to a clip of every song, and get a decent enough write up of the album to boot (though their write ups are hit and miss, but that would be true of anywhere.)
“though their write ups are hit and miss”
indeed they are.
so i was surprised to see that Apple uses them in their iTunes listings.
I’ll play, as a voter at least.
ok, so my other bright idea is to allow submitters to add a link to album cover art images. those little visuals can be pretty powerful when it comes to remembering old favorites (not so useful in these days of MP3s).
so, how are you all on finding ways to link to and/or host album cover images? (hint: allmusic.com) or, should i add some kind of image upload thing? (not that i really want to do that…sounds like more work than all the rest of the app).
I can link to and/or host myself. I am total album art junkie and spend what my wife considers an insane amount of time organizing and tagging our 40,000 mp3’s.
Allmusic is a great place for album art. Wikipedia is not bad. Discogs.com is great for obscure.
one more question:
what’s a good number of albums ?
assume 10 of us submit our lists, with 20 records each. no duplicates.
if i have my probability right, to compare every record to every other record requires 19,900 (200 Choose 2) comparisons. that’s a lot of clicking. if we submit 10 records each, that means 4,950 are required to compare every record against every other record – still a lot, but a bit more realistic.
that’s about the extent of my probability, though, so what follows is speculation…
19,900 comparisons is probably not realistic. but, i don’t think it’s really necessary to compare every record to every other record for the Elo system to work. after all, not every chess player in the world plays every other chess player in the world and their rankings are still valid. but, obviously we don’t want to have too few votes for the number of records in the pool … we want this to be statistically valid! :)
opinions?
10 records each seems like a good amount. To me anyways.
10 is perfect.
Will we be allowed multiple albums by the same artist? I think 10 from different artists might be more interesting depending on how many people submit.
your X favorite records, any way you want to choose them. they could all be from the same artist, if you want.
Is that just your assumption for the mathematical argument, or are you going to try to control for duplicates?
both.
a duplicate doesn’t really make sense for the ranking algorithm; think of one player with two different rankings in the same chess league, where the result from each game he plays goes randomly to one of the two rankings. the only way to know how good he is would be to combine the rankings. and the only way to do that is to recalculate a single ranking based on the results from all his games. which is the same as having one ranking in the first place.
but, the duplicate removal will be invisible to you all. if you and i submit the same record, it will be put into the pool once. but the database will keep track that both of us submitted it, in case we want to know who submitted what when the results come out.
I like this game already, before it has even started, because for the last couple days I have songs from my favorite albums running through my head. (Also because every time I think of the phrase “my favorite albums” I flash on “My Favorite Buildings” which is one of my favorite songs…)
Possibly of interest to this crowd: Musicovery Map
ok, so i have the input pages about 99% done. hopefully i’ll have them ready to go this weekend.
so, get yr lists ready…
while we’re getting our lists in, i’ll start the voting pages.
I have my list ready. It was hard. Really hard.
Earliest album = 1967
Latest album = 2004
Argh. Why did I just see this today. The problem is when you say “top five albums” there are always three you know for sure and 20 fighting for the last two slots. Top ten. Much thinkitude needed. And gin.
you have plenty of time. no rush.
once i open up the submissions, i’ll leave them open for a couple of weeks. at least.