criticalmetrics.com: 15,000 songs rated by 90 reviewers — and you can listen to them free

I read about this website in yesterday's Wall Street Journal story by John Jurgensen.

Long story short: it ranks individual songs in order of popularity based on the consensus of reviews published in about 90 online and print publications.

But wait — there's more!

You can also listen — free — to nearly all of the songs recommended on the site, about 15,000 to date.

Here's the newspaper article.

Online: Music

A new site lets you find the songs that have the most critics buzzing

Music fans have been flocking to Web sites that automatically compile songs posted on blogs and music sites. Now a new site is trying to improve on that formula — by scouring "old" media, including magazines and newspapers.

CriticalMetrics.com ranks individual songs in order of popularity based on reviews published in about 90 online and print publications. The idea is to give music fans a consensus from dozens of critics about what's worth listening to. Users also can listen free to nearly all of the songs recommended on the site — about 15,000 to date.

The music industry has had a mixed reaction to sites such as Critical Metrics that let users listen to — though not download — songs free. The site's founder, Joey Anuff, says that he has received one request that a song be removed, and that he complied.

As with some similar music-discovery sites, such as Hypem.com and Elbo.ws, the site automatically trolls dozens of music blogs and aggregates the song files posted on them. Critical Metrics also adds a human element: about a dozen production assistants who page through publications ranging from Rolling Stone to the British magazine Mojo. When they find strong reviews for songs, they type in excerpts to the Critical Metrics database.

Users can search the site in a variety of ways — viewing all the songs that online magazine Pitchfork has ranked in the past year, for instance, or all those reviewed by a particular Pitchfork writer.

Topping an overall weekly ranking recently was the song "My Moon My Man," by Canadian singer-songwriter Leslie Feist, whose stage name is simply Feist. Reviews from eight sources, such as the Washington Post, were included.

Mr. Anuff, 36, created Critical Metrics with a small team after leaving a job as a television-series developer for VH1. Although he plans to add advertising soon, the site's only revenue comes from commissions of up to $15 that he collects when users sign up to music subscription sites such as Rhapsody after clicking through from the site.