Bias Tracker: allkpop Switches Reviewer & Review Style For The Worse

Starting in November, allkpop switched their reviewer from Rowdyruff to rex_music, and with the personnel change came a shift in review style.

While rex_music himself isn’t a problem as a reviewer, the stylistic change and the implications of the switch make allkpop far worse off as a result.

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rex_music, perhaps better known as REX ROWDEE, has employed a song-by-song review system to go along with a short introduction and brief conclusion. In comparison, Rowdyruff, perhaps better known as McRoth or IMMATOP, started his reviewing career using the song-by-song format, but evolved his style over time to fit professional review trends.

Stylistically, reviewing everything song-by-song provides the greatest amount of detail, but most reviewers and readers quickly discover problems that come along with this. The main issue is that there isn’t a ton of insight to give about every track, so the writing can get tedious and repetitive at times. Additionally, it’s harder to look at the content as a cohesive element, which can lead to either a lack of overall message and opinion from the reviewer or a glossing over of those elements by the reader due to information overload.

Admittedly, the preference for a particular review style is a matter of opinion, one that I feel secure in taking a stand on, but one that I can understand either way.

The reason this article is in the Bias Tracker category and not Critical Eye is because of the nature of the switch in reviewer.

Given that 6Theory Media now has extensive roots with Korean companies, it should hardly be surprising that bias and censorship were the primary catalysts behind the personnel change. In the time leading up to the change, there were multiple instances where reviews were trashed due to management intervention.

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The switch from a hired outside reviewer who plied his trade on his own independent site (McRoth) to a 6Theory Media (allkpop’s parent company) management staff member (REX ROWDEE) is worth noting. Needless to say, the New.F.O review that McRoth wrote for “Bounce” would have never been cleared for publishing had he still been with allkpop, and that’s exactly the type of conflict of interest issues that exist with this reviewer switch.

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The debut review for rex_music was the comeback album for the Wonder Girls, and while the album received universal praise regardless, I’m unsure how readers are supposed to judge the credibility of allkpop’s reviews when the review gets posted the day after a site takeover for that exact album is run as allkpop’s background by JYP Entertainment. Plus, the reviews are now a rare treat because of the reviewer’s management duties, and as such, readers are forced to wonder about the timing and selection of the material chosen for review in the first place.

Furthermore, the implementation of having users rate the music themselves is asinine. I suppose it acts to give the community a feeling that they have a voice, but the rating will never be taken seriously, as it’s subject to every cognitive bias in the book. That’s all without even getting into the fact that they didn’t start using the star rating system until Asian Junkie implemented it.

Critiques without solutions obviously do nothing to initiate improvement, so there are a couple relatively simple things that can be done which would improve the product currently being dished out.

1) The reviewer needs to be sourced outside of the company and has to be given complete autonomy from management.

2) The reviewer should only have to answer to editors, not management, and only on issues such as format, grammar, spelling, and offensive content.

Granted, it will not be easy to convince everybody that the potential reviewer is completely without influence given allkpop’s reputation, but at least it gives the site a chance to have its editorial content taken with a modicum of legitimacy.

Yes, there will always be irrational and ignorant haters no matter what measures are taken, and this occurs with every site as its audience expands. However, there are a significant amount of readers out there who will listen to reason, and those individuals are usually the ones who have the power and influence to articulate logical and reasonable statements that have the potential to change the site’s image and perception.

Any change will undoubtedly take time, but at least the site would be headed down the right path in a journalistic sense, rather than continue to spiral further down the drain towards being a corporate mouthpiece.

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Disclaimer: McRoth is currently a writer/reviewer here at Asian Junkie, and he posts under the name of IMMATOP, as I’m sure the majority of you already knew. Additionally, he was not fired from allkpop, he resigned. Those facts have not affected my analysis of the given situation, but nevertheless, it needed to be stated for the sake of full disclosure.