Critical Metrics is a web-based music recommendation service. Unlike user-driven sites like The Hype Machine

The Hype Machine

-History:The Hype Machine was created in 2005 by Anthony Volodkin, a sophomore computer science major at Hunter College. The site was born out of Volodkin's frustration with music magazines and radio stations. He said, "I discovered MP3 blogs like Stereogum and Music for Robots...

 and Pandora

Pandora (music service)

Pandora Radio is an automated music recommendation service and custodian of the Music Genome Project available only in the United States. The service plays musical selections similar to song suggestions entered by a user...

, Critical Metrics features only expert-generated content. Aggregating reviews and playlists from over 150 publications, both print and online, the site also encompasses historical sources. The site then ranks the songs mathematically, based on the information gathered. With a methodology based in the fields of bibliometrics

Bibliometrics

Bibliometrics is a set of methods to quantitatively analyze scientific and technological literature. Citation analysis and content analysis are commonly used bibliometric methods...

 and sentiment analysis

Sentiment analysis

Sentiment analysis or opinion mining refers to the application of natural language processing, computational linguistics, and text analytics to identify and extract subjective information in source materials....

, Critical Metrics quantifies these positive citations and sentiments into indices for media playlisting and consumption.

Streaming audio and YouTube

YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....

 videos are presented with the original recommendations, along with the option to purchase via iTunes

ITunes Store

The iTunes Store is a software-based online digital media store operated by Apple. Opening as the iTunes Music Store on April 28, 2003, with over 200,000 items to purchase, it is, as of April 2008, the number-one music vendor in the United States...

 or other online retailers. When the site was launched in April 2007, it hosted the streaming music itself. A licensing arrangement with Rhapsody

Rhapsody (online music service)

Rhapsody is an online music store subscription service, launched in December 2001, and available in the United States only. On April 6, 2010, Rhapsody officially declared its independence from RealNetworks. Downloaded files come with restrictions on their use, enforced by Helix, Rhapsody's version...

 removed the free music, but allowed unlimited listening and playlist-building for Rhapsody subscribers.

Critical Metrics was founded by Joey Anuff, the co-founder of Suck.com

Suck.com

Suck.com was one of the earliest ad-supported content sites on the Internet. It featured daily editorial content on a wide variety of topics, including politics and pop-culture and was targeted at Generation X...

 and a former VH1

VH1

VH1 or Vh1 is an American cable television network based in New York City. Launched on January 1, 1985 in the old space of Turner Broadcasting's short-lived Cable Music Channel, the original purpose of the channel was to build on the success of MTV by playing music videos, but targeting a slightly...

 executive. The site was praised by Boing Boing

Boing Boing

Boing Boing is a publishing entity, first established as a magazine, later becoming a group blog.-History:...

, the Wall St. Journal, and Business Week. Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....

senior music critic Ann Powers

Ann Powers

Ann Powers is an American writer and pop music critic.Powers has been writing about popular music and society since the early 1980s...

referred to the site as her "favorite snobby top 40 station."