I recently blogged about Flixster, a really cool movie rating site. It has ben pretty addictive, useful and fun all at the same time. I was thinking the other day that having a similar site for music rating would be awesome. Granted, you have playlist sites out there, but most are based on iTunes playlists, or make you actually link to the songs and create a playlist that way. I finally did an extensive Google search trying to find a music based community that focused on music rating and tagging. I finally found one, and it has almost all the features I was hoping for. RateYourMusic is simply a music rating/recommendation site. You type in the artist name, choose the album and click a rating (1-5). You also have the choice to state if you currently own the album, if you used to own the album or if you would like to add it to your wishlist. Finally, once you have chosen one of these options, you can pick which format the music you own/want is in. On the downside, the design of the site could use a little help, and it tends to be a bit buggy/sluggish when choosing your rating and ownership options. The layout is kind of bland, but I suppose it's better than being too cluttered. It would also be nice if there was an option to rate individual songs, because personally, I own a lot of MP3s that are independant of any album. That's the reason I love digital music: You do not have to buy an entire album to get the one or two songs from it that you enjoy. I like RateYourMusic, and plan spending the next couple of days entering my preferences, rating things and adding my collection to the site. You can check out my progress here. From the site:

RYM is an online community of music fans that lets users rate music, write reviews, and participate in message board discussions. Registration is free and doesn't even require an email address.