Another rant, sort of.

I've been thinking about this all day, and I think I've come to the conclusion that music critics are virtually useless, at least in popular music. (classical music is another thing) Unlike film, book, and video game critics, just because a music critic says one album is bad doesn't always mean it's bad. And even if it is bad, that doesn't mean people won't like it. I mean, look at Black Sabbath's career: almost every single album of theirs has been universally panned by critics, and yet most of them sold very well, if not decent, at least. And then there's lots of indie bands that are generally mediocre, and yet they're commercially successful, too.

Now, in movies, books, and video games, if critics say they're mediocre/bad, that usually means that they will be mediocre/bad. There's exceptions to this, as always, but (as far as I know) there are far fewer exceptions to this than in music.

Actually, the problem with critics in general is that they all have different tastes. If you compare 2, say, book critics that specialize in romance novels, even though they both know what a good romance book is and what isn't, they won't be consistent with each other. One could give a book a 9 out of 10 and the other could give the same one a 6 out of 10. If all critics were somehow bio-engineered to have equal interest in all genres of their media, not preferring one over the other, then scores would be more consistent throughout reviews.