AllMusic

Used to be wonderful, professional, diligent, honest, easy to navigate. Now slathered in ads (some dangerous, like the *rollover* POS that just now launched a fake alarm pop-up and completely froze Firefox -- wtf?). Even worse, the site is now full of *altered versions* of older reviews... in other words, the truth has been replaced with marketing hype. For shame, Stephen Thomas Erlewine... you used to be beautiful, man!

It's the most comprehensive site out there. Essential for tagging, release dates and versions, album art, etc. More usable than discogs. I really like the genres & influences section, the music focused bios and the ability to traverse from one artist to another in multiple places (hyperlinks in biographies, member names, influences). I find it more useful than Wiki. It is not as extensive ex-US unless acts make it to at least medium sized international labels. Don't use it to listen to clips, though. I use streaming sites to actually listen to things. But I agree with the others about the horrible pop up ads and commercialization. I just don't know how it could stay free otherwise.

Great place! The music reviews are well-balanced and thorough. The links to "similar music styles" have led me to new discoveries that compelled me to go out and investigate on my own. While I find the site a little more complex to navigate now, as compared to several years ago, I still rely on it for tips about what albums are a group's best, and which ones to avoid. Best review site around.

I opened AllMusic.com (no other tabs open in FireFox) and within a minute I got one of the nasty pop up warnings telling me that my computer was infected and this was a warning from Microsoft. Couldn't close my browser without a reboot.
I know AllMusic doesn't put that ad there but whoever their ad server is isn't legit.
Not a safe site.

In the country of my residence (not MY country) it's renown for decades with local clones dragging feet in its wake. As a pro reviewer, for almost any information and in every instance I revert to Allmusic.com with no contender around, on the web. There are simply no apt album reviews and artist profiles like in this space. True, there are occasional minor mistakes but what's worrisome is the American leaning with European non-English and well deserving acts ignored or scarce covered. No Polish Breakout entry, for instance.

AllMusic is a pretty good website, and one of the largest databases for music which I know. The only problem are the search options, which do not make it very easy to find less known older music.

I used to visit AllMusic frequently from 2003-2010 for music reviews and discovering new artists. The website between those years was highly functional, clean, and a deep source of information. Today, in 2020, the site however is nearly unusable with ads covering almost half of the screen - a large banner at the bottom, a large banner at the top, and 1-2 ads that will pop up from the right - and almost always at the same time. I understand that times are changing but this makes the site a horrible experience to navigate now. It's a shame because the journalism, reviews, and music critique is still valuable as of today. It's just not possible to experience those things without ugly and intrusive ads.

Used to be a real treasure trove of extensive by graphical information about groups and artist. Completely superficial, horrible pop-up ads, etc. Back to Wikipedia for me

Being a hardcore music fan and musician, I have been reading record reviews all my life, and I know a good music critic from a bad one. I've followed Allmusic from the very beginning, 1995 when it first came on the web. I even own one of their pre-internet reference books. They were really good when they started. In the course of the 2000s, a bunch of bad decisions must have been made, because the quality of the reviews has gone way, way down. I've actually witnessed several instances of reviews CHANGING for the very same album, to a much less qualified and informed review. Even worse, the website went from fast, simple and user friendly to very sluggish and annoying. I now avoid Allmusic altogether and go to sites like discogs.com and wikipedia for information.

Best place on the Net to browse for hours about music.

A particularly nice feature is the "influenced / influenced by" and "similar acts" that allows you to, as it were, "ripple outwards" from a single source to discover other artistes in the genre, some of which may be new to you. (It's almost as much fun to disagree whether the acts mentioned really *are* that similar.)

Weak in some areas, coverage-wise - world music, for example, has better sites to explore. But for an all-round music overview with some nifty features, and great "starter portraits" of thousands of bands, it's hard to beat.

Stay away from this site. It is the worst possible alternative to anything every created that involves music. RUN. DO NOT WALK. Worst time of my life.

A Love/Hate Relationship. A lot of valuable information is available here but a pain in the butt to get. Very slow servers and frequent crashes to the site. I hate their "roll over" adds that keep on popping up when you drag your mouse over a certain area of the screen. There is a lot of music that is not on this site that can be found on others. It used to be a lot better than it is today. GONE COMMERCIAL!. Gracepoint used to be the place to go but they no longer have their database available online. I do everything possible not to use Allmusic unless I have to!

I get it, it's for free and they need ads to survive. But the way it's done, a slow wait and pops up on every screen refresh makes for rough navigating.
Some reviewers are professional, like its resident lead critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine. Some writes like fanboys. Some goes on and on and on. And in some cases the stars awarded do not fit what's written, like a 2-star album gets a rave review. Release information is rubbish, usually uses rerelease as master, Discogs is a way better site for that. Having said all that, still a good source for a quick (and rough) guideline to music.

This website is brilliant, use it all the time for everything. Even not music things.

I still use allmusic.com. I don't know if anyone else does. The primary use I have for it is to cross-check it against my music collection, to make sure that I have absolutely every single album by the bands that I love. Additionally, if I'm in one of those moods to categorize my music, I'll use Allmusic as a guide for genres and styles.

Once in a while I'd read the snippets about artists too, but generally it's better to rely on Wikipedia for that, as I tend to get distracted by the highlighting of other bands' names in the text. As well, I don't like having to click on "read more". I just sought out that one artist, isn't it slightly obvious that I would want to read more? It makes zero sense for me to target one thing in particular and then have to click on a link to read more about it.

Allmusic also has a section which gives you similar artists, influences and followers. It's all well and nice but somewhat useless in the age of last.fm, pandora and grooveshark which all allow you to listen to those similar artists right then and there.