The Bat Cave

SCALE

5 – Masterpiece – Elite on every level. Timeless.
4.5 – Great – Mostly elite, but something is holding it back from being a masterpiece.
4 – Very Good – This is basically the cut off for my Bangers Playlists, which are essentially a list of my favorite songs of the year. I feel like I should never want to skip a song I give a 4. Any album that can average a 4 is probably amazing.
3.5 – Good – I feel like this is where you want to sit as an artist. Making good songs. Sometimes you will make really good songs and sometimes you will make some not so good songs. An artist that consistently reaches this level is by no means average though… they are nice. Any album that averages a 3.5+ is obviously a good album and possibly a must listen.
3 – Cool/Decent – When people say something is “not bad,” that’s what this is. It’s not exactly good, but it’s not really a weak track either. When I give something a 3, I like it, but I’m a bit lukewarm on it, whereas I’m 100% on board with something I give a 3.5. I basically consider a 3 to be “acceptable filler,” so I’m going to skip these tracks a decent amount of the time. You don’t want to sit here as an artist. The difference between an album that averages a 3.5 and one that averages a 3 is huge. A 3.5 is undeniably good while a 3 is decidedly mediocre.
2.5 – Weak/Decent – Any song I give a 2.5 to is something I’d cut from an album. It’s not good enough to be album material, but I’d probably still want to hear these tracks from my favorite artists because I want to hear everything they make. 2.5s are definitely dragging an album down though. A 2.5 is the ceiling for weak songs, so I guess they could be called decent, but decent isn’t good enough to be album material. This is unacceptable filler – almost always a skip. An album that averages a 2.5 rating is almost certainly trash.
2 – Bad – These are flat out bad tracks. There are songs I don’t really like but I’d call decent and then there are songs I don’t like that just plain suck. That’s what a 2 is.
1 – Trash – No need for a 1.5. A trash track is worse than a bad track. We are talking pure garbage here.

Spin Rate – This is an important feature because not only does it show how much listening love I gave an album, but it also reflects how reliable my opinion on it is. I’m going to trust someone that listened to something 5+ times through a hell of a lot more than someone that just gave an album one listen. It’s not perfect. I just add up the total number of listens for every song on the album and divide it by the number of actual songs on the album (intros, skits, outros are generally excluded). But if my spin rate is a 5, then you can assume I’ve listened to most of the album at least five times through.