Today I often listen to a couple of albums a day and can eventually not remember one. I rarely take the time to dive in deep and give myself room to learn to love something new. That would show in ratings, too, naturally.

Yeah I'm always very surprised when I see yearly tops with several hundred entries .. I personally don't rate an album or add it to my yearly top before at least 2-3 listens..

Not to judge either approach or drift into war stories from back in my time, but most of what I really *love* is from that period.

That's not what it was in the age of physical media. You'd mostly only happen to find a band through recommendation or active research and once you had a CD, you'd spend time with it. Weeks to months.

So less time to grow, less time to figure out brilliance after the 100th listen etc. The way people comment many bands leads me to believe the culture has changed to "listen once, form opinion".

I always wondered whether the almost universal access to music these days has an effect there, too. Time investment aside, you can easily listen to every album released in a year. But you'd spend less time with each one.

That would confirm the theory that album ratings inflate over the years and we should maybe not be too worried about current lower ratings .. They'll go up eventually ? :)