[jdaug]

I am a GB participant as well. I generally agree with gradgt, that the reviewers there are the lowest common denominator. I've had diametrically opposed reviews to the same song from different reviewers. One guy will say my production quality was terrible, the next guy will give me high marks for production.

But this is how the real world works as well. Everyones ear is different.

Overall I think garageband.com is a good exercise if you want to try to make your music commercial. You will go through the same gyrations if you are trying to send stuff in to major labels, video game producers, movie studios, etc, except the talent scouts there probably have a better ear for recognizing potential in amateur recordings.

I have learned not to take any GB reviews at face value until after I have listenened to the music of the reviewer. Many times, the reviewer is making music in a completely different genre than me. I dont know why a blues guy would want to review in the death metal genre, but it happens. Not all of my positive reviews come from people with similar influences and musical taste, but I have noticed that the vast majority of my negative reviews come from people who I share almost nothing in common with musically. This makes sense. This is also why I dont review in genres that I dont like (rap, hip-hop), because I know that I cant give a fair assessment, and I am not familiar with how pro-recordings in these genres are supposed to sound. I have generally discovered that my songs that I am happiest with overall are the ones that do the best on GB, so there does appear to be some correlation between quality and rankings.

Then there are other sites like Indiecharts, where your ability to network and market (i.e. manipulate people) seems to be more important than your music itself. If you are willing to go to enough peoples band pages and kiss their asses and give good reviews (even if you didnt listen to the music), then ask them to return the favor, you can create a page with a whole lot of "friends" and "fans" and get a bunch of good reviews, again, even if your music sucks. You can make it look like you have a pretty substantial fanbase. Its all about stroking off the other guy in order to get stroked off yourself. GB is at least blind reviews, and you cant "buy" more or better reviews by kissing ass.