[!@#$%!]

so metacritic was used because it lets you look at stats very easily, and you can spot changes in trends without having to resort to claims such as "back in my day, a critic would...."

pretty well written article actually. touches on things like fan harassment of critics enabled by social media which incentivizes people to gush over garbage.

here are the last 2 paragraphs:

Stephen Thomas Erlewine, senior pop editor at TiVo and a long-time music critic, says a positive development is that critics have become more diverse and fairer to subgenres such as nu-metal that were dismissed in the past. Critics, he says, should focus on what an album means, not just whether it’s good or bad. Yet he worries that the narrowing focus on megastars—all those positive reviews, nuanced think-pieces and fun lists—is fueling a trend where pop’s 1% get more and more popular at everyone else’s expense.

“Music criticism, like journalism in general, is the first draft of history,” he says. “Without some sort of writing about what’s happening in the culture, we’re going to be poorer in the future.”