# RateYourMusic

8 Hacker News commenters recommended RateYourMusic and 6 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 6 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Music fans recommend it for discovering new music through its detailed ratings and genre data; critics object to aggressive blocking and moderation.

## Why people recommend it

- Good for discovering new music (3 comments): "The best way to discover music nowadays is RateYourMusic." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46269009)) "has been invaluable for me in discovering loads of music" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46613620)) "RateYourMusic’s recommendations are solid" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48301607))
- Detailed genre and rating data (2 comments): "they assign rating weights to users depending on how their rating distribution looks like" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49856199)) "RYM genres would be extremely useful to have as a beets autotag plugin" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45878055))

## What people warn about

- Aggressive blocking and moderation (2 comments): "RYM, who absolutely suck due to their crazy aggressive blocking, self sabotage and unforgivable data poisoning" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49926503)) "Between the worst kind of Reddit tier moderation, the extreme anti-scraping measure affecting humans" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48305474))
- Site changes made it worse (2 comments): "before the site owners made them unusable or pointless" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49926300)) "rateyourmusic.com is also dead to me now" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49906824))
- Limited comments and similar-music results (2 comments): "you can't leave comments under specific tracks on RYM" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48300911)) "Neither page helped me find "similar" music" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46616527))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [MusicBrainz](https://hackerapproved.com/p/musicbrainz.md): 24 recommend
- [Discogs](https://hackerapproved.com/p/discogs.md): 12 recommend

## Where to get it

- [Visit the official site](https://rateyourmusic.com/)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "RateYourMusic", https://hackerapproved.com/p/rateyourmusic/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).