My favorite music-related Blogs and Channels

My original post is slightly outdated. I'll now update this list whenever I have the time to do so.

Before I start, I would quickly like to ask the readers to follow my blog, it is something new I have enabled.

Forum

The Criticism Room

A new forum. The criticism room is still in its early stages. Thankfully, it looks good so far, and a great place to find discussions over song quality, and industry analysis soon.

Blogs

Note: I excluded the big obvious ones everyone goes to, such as Billboard, Arama Japan, Allkpop, IZM or Rolling Stone.

555 Reviews

555 Reviews tackles both Korean and Thai reviews. The latter of which is a world of music I have been meaning to get into for years. Thus, the reviews are a great place to start.

8.5 Music is a review and recommendations blog run by Terrance (who you see occasionally in the comments). Common features you see on the site are album reviews and anime and K-Pop single recommendations. You have to wait several days between posts, but it is a case of quality over quantity.

A Floating Realm In The Corner

A Floating Room In The Corner is run by Bluerasberrysyrup. It is a site in construction, but some reviews are already up. The most striking thing to me so far is how different some opinions are from the majority ones that everyone seems to have. Plus, the reviews are greatly written.

Alienhits AKA #1 Hits from another Planet (No Longer Updated)

Operated by Nick James of The Bias List (coming later), Alienhits reviewed Swedish and European pop music primarily, with a strong bias towards the band The Ark. Besides showcasing early K-Pop reviews, there is quite a lot of gold here (including a best of the 2000s decade list series), which is worth finding after navigating through the fluff.

Deforested Music

Deforested Music is run by Deforested/StillBangtan, who you will see often in this blog's comments. After a few months of seeking what to do, the blog came into its own. StillBangtan is a strong critic, and a song getting a 9/10 on Deforested is a true achievement, and means the song is a near must-checkout. Deforested also has its own award show system, which actually probably involves more research than many large awards. Finally, the site's unique skill is the 'Trackscore', which aggregates review scores from other sites, to figure out the general consensus amongst critics for a song.

Hallyu Reviews

Hallyu Reviews is run by Una and Lina and is quite different from the rest of the review sites (Una comments on this site often as well). It places a strong emphasis on past K-Pop songs with the 'Song of the Moment' feature. They also occasionally K-Dramas, books, and movies, which is pretty neat!

Jei's Kulture Notes

Jei reviews music weekly, often with big compilation posts. While it is not really too hard to get a high score (I mean, it is out of 5), the reviews are greatly written.

K.Kive

Shamara's KKive may not be the harshest review blog out there, and I commonly disagree with her tastes, but the reviews are greatly written, thus I often go there.

KBopped

KBopped is run by ArpyDarpy, and is one of my favorite K/J-Pop review sites to come up in early 2020. Recently, some updates have made it much more navigatable, while ArpyDarpy has become much more consistent in his posting schedule. KBopped also is a site based on a history of J-Pop, giving a new view when reviews are written.

Kpop Reviewed

Kpop Reviewed has been run since 2013 and thus is the oldest active single-person run K-Pop exclusive blog I follow. Album and single reviews are aplenty, and you can be pretty certain of the fact that almost all idol K-Pop singles (and most albums) will be reviewed.

K-Pop's Lost Fangirl / The Lost Japanophile

Despite the writer's insistence that she does not know about what she is writing on, the reviews are actually pretty good, especially since they are less than a paragraph. Also check out her strong industry analysis moments, filled with great research.

K-Pop On My Mind (No Longer Updated)

A blog that goes great along with Kpop Reviewed, K-Pop On My Mind was pretty great for MV/Song reviews. Just like K-Pop On My Mind, the reviews are from the point of a listener, not a critic, giving it a more personal angle.

Phoenix Talk Pop Culture Japan

That is some title! It also tells you what the blog is about, it talks about Japanese culture. In this, music is often covered, including the idol and visual kei scene (yep, visual kei is still going on).

Roverguraa

I just found this blog yesterday, so I don't have too much to write about, but I expect I will come back later on. It focuses on visual kei reviews, and considering how much I love X Japan, I am certainly going to check it out later.

Seoul Beats

Seoul Beats has K-Pop commentary and reviews. What separates them from other K-Pop sites is they review based on conceptual consistency. Their commentary posts are particularly great reads.

Spotlight Reviews (Defunct)

Spotlight Reviews is run by Yan Zaman, who you often see in the comment of this blog. This is Yan's second attempt at a blog, and easily the better handled. Despite being one of the newer blogs here, Yan's reviews have shown their reliability.

Note: Spotlight Reviews is now Defunct. Thankfully, Yan wrote some of his reviews in The Bias List's comment section and occasionally continues to do so.

The Bias List

I doubt The Bias List needs an introduction, it is perhaps the most popular of these blogs by far. Sometimes it is even referenced in the 'critical reception' page on Wikipedia. Despite this, Nick James (the site's owner) is quite helpful, answering questions (the other day, he gave me some rare MP3s from The Mo, and an old Swedish band).

Channels

DKDTV

DKDTV analyzes K-Pop from a Korean standpoint. Their videos are great for understanding the history and references in K-Pop international fans may not get.

K-Ville Entertainment

K-Ville has been active since 2014, and gained popularity quickly. An interesting thing, I have been going for the weekly charts since 2014, I think I even remember some videos now removed (I still remember the joy I had when Bigflo's Deliah hit number 3 on the chart!).

10/10 - Music

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