Good luck to everyone! Include your neck size for the shock collar you gotta wear when you get selected. The mods hate when you're late on deadlines...

What are the responsibilities and benefits of both positions?

@Shart - For benefits you get 50% off Applebee's for Contributors, 75% off for Staff.

Good luck everyone!!!

Good luck everyone!!! [2]

(I got rejected after writing 47 reviews with 96% approval so unless the standards have changed, you might need it)

Nobody should feel discouraged from applying because most often applicants are not "rejected", which is to say that the door remains open in the future even when someone else was selected ahead of you in the past.

I love the fact related reviews to this thread are "random.access.misery", "Fun's Over" and "Alive or Just Breathing".

someone negged all of my reviews so my score is way lower than it should. i dont really care but it might matter since I put in an application.

fr don't let my ancient salt bring anyone down. I've just aged into my yelling at clouds phase.

Is the Staff Best Albums of 2025 list coming?? Or did I miss it somewhere

"someone negged all of my reviews so my score is way lower than it should. i dont really care but it might matter since I put in an application."

don't wanna speak for the mod gods but just to ease your soul, your approval rating doesn't matter at all.

Does one of these let me use gifs for my avatar?

"don't wanna speak for the mod gods but just to ease your soul, your approval rating doesn't matter at all."

Yeah, approval rating has never really had a meaningful function on the site, other than to just make you feel good (or bad) I guess. But as far as I can tell, it's never factored into the promotions. Besides, the number disappears when you become contrib/staff anyway lol

Go brickhed!

Approval rating means absolutely nothing bros.

Thank god. Hawks 1’s my favorite albums

HAHAHAHAHAHA

Maybe one of these years I'll feel like I have enough time to commit to more regular reviewing and try to be a contributor, but 2026 doesn't feel like the year. I'd like to do it someday.

Also, I think I need to get more output under my belt too. More practice is always a good thing!

"But as far as I can tell, it's never factored into the promotions."
ight cool, i may have just read the post wrong. been thinking about "hey, would i be willing to review at least one new album a month?" and worst case scenario i just do it like commentary youtubers. i'm busy with school stuff right now but at least one a month is doable.

i also still have a bit of burnout in me, but not as bad as january.

burnout 3 or burnout paradise

Burnout 3 lol hell yeah

The one month question is designed to be an honest self-assessment to help you set a goal for yourself. Answering honestly even if it's less than one review per month will not automatically disqualify you. We have staff who weigh in less frequently but still blow us away with their quality when they do.

“But as far as I can tell, it's never factored into the promotions“

damn, you mean my 100% (on 3 reviews) isn’t gonna get me auto-promoted to chief overseer like I was expecting?

seriously tho good luck y’all!

imagine if users/contribs/staff were all determined relegation-style by their approval rating

moment it drops below a certain threshold, bam there goes your title

So whoever has the most alts would win, lol.

I say this as a loser with no alts ):

"We have staff who weigh in less frequently but still blow us away with their quality when they do."

yeah, i'm trying to focus over quality right now. quick write ups that i could bust out in a half hour is cool, but it doesn't make me proud of them much. sometimes i have an idea and it flows from there, but i'm not getting that on a review i'm working on right now.

"moment it drops below a certain threshold, bam there goes your title"

sounds like a thing pitchfork would do

sputnik is a cockroach

- sowing 2026

Should I have a drinking problem before or after I apply

Do I get free mayonnaise?

I would like the title of grand poobah

You can have Imam Emim and like it.

Imam & Emims

So why was my comment asking about the staff list deleted lmfao

that's weird lol

Especially since it was like 3 words lol, apparently it was a real nuisance to someone

I mean, I can tell you I did not delete anything. Must have been the mystery mod. 🤔

I'm abusing my imam powers already

It's chill I'll just stay away

you can blame me for it, I started the bad juju itt by mentioning approval scores

"Must have been the mystery mod."

That dude is so elusive, I swear.

Let me be something

Who says it's a dude

Pls

Do we have reliable and refreshable stats on the number of active users remaining? It would be so fun to visualize the time series as we inevitably near the heat death of the sputnikverse

2027 will be my year

My mother applied for dog catcher.

"Do we have reliable and refreshable stats on the number of active users remaining"

by my sources: 92 active, 834 lurkers. just trust me bro

I'm tempted to apply for contributor but also feel like my music knowledge is pretty limited to metal, country and some dance electronic lol

Site's always been more metal centric anyway, so not a bad thing. Better than no reviews

I want to start reviewing more traditional hardcore punk and electronic stuff myself. Too many albums that need reviews

Would like to start writing again, this winter has just sucked the life right out of me

Maybe I should start reviewing jazz

@nash yes, please, I for one would love to read about jazz. Need some help getting into the genre

look, I love metal, but anyone with knowledge in anything other than metal would be appreciated rn lol

jazz would be especially awesome

I have two unfinished reviews on my computer as a reminder of how utterly terrible I am at committing to anything, otherwise I could likely thrash out a couple of substandard jazz reviews myself lol

@Demon, I am certainly not a Guru of Reviewing, but what helped me a couple of times when I was stuck with a review was to listen to each song from an album individually and write my very brief impressions about each separate track in a Word file as I go through the album. Very brief, literally one to five words per song. Then the whole album would come together in my head. IDK if you need this or if I'm even explaining clearly enough, but I am bored at work again, so I need to bother people here.

^That's adorable.

Thanks for the tip. I could see how that could be helpful but honestly, thinking of descriptors for specific parts of a release is likely the least of my issues lol

If anything I'm overly ambitious and end up just spiralling down an increasingly convoluted path of over-explanation and questionable comparisons to things I just fancied mentioning (for reasons which I can no longer fathom the reasoning behind), so I guess this is just a lack of focus hmm I'm hungry what's for lunch where am I?

This can be tough, some of my reviews are obviously overwritten because of similar issues. Guys, maybe someone more experienced has an advice against that?

Lunch is a good idea certainly, it's almost 2 PM now in Kyiv and I still haven't eaten anything

Oh get a load of this guy

I started working on my first review last night

Jrlikestoreview

I feel like I should just drop three or four paragraphs about something I liked last year and I'd feel a lot better. hanging around the site without writing anything has depressed me. I think I got sideways when I started worrying about how many people were seeing my reviews instead of just enjoying writing them.

Yeah, don't let the view counts detract you from writing. Even if my reviews only garner a handful of comments, I honestly try to remain grateful that others took the time to read it at all. My other suggestion is to use it as practice. Find something thematic that can be applied to the album and that really helps develop direction and purpose.

Never write for anyone else's happiness other than your own tbh. Fuck the approval ratings and all of that noise.

Everyone writes for a different reason and I can appreciate the thought that goes into who the audience might be. I write largely assuming that just our community will be reading it, but the view count implies we still have at least a small readership outside of the userbase. I agree that writing starts with doing it for yourself though. Sometimes I don't know how I truly feel about a record until I write it all down, and that helps me throughout the year as I decide what music is important to me long-term and what is sort of just a fun album of the week or flash in the pan. Regardless, you can be assured that this is one of the more supportive communities around, so unless you churn out utter trash, the reception will at the very least be constructive.

Like others said, no use looking at the views and approval. I tend to check the views actually, but it's to have a relative point of reference as to how much visibility I've provided for the album/artist on Sput, not because I take pride in higher digits.

"ook, I love metal, but anyone with knowledge in anything other than metal would be appreciated rn lol"

i've been getting back into idm and been interested by drill and bass recently. but damn the fanbase for that stuff here is basically null now. at least theres a few noise people but you're telling me barely anyone has heard of Bogdan Raczynski here? would be willing to do some reviews on that later in the year.

Hell, some of my favorite reviews I've written are the least-viewed ones. So I agree with Hawks, don't let view counts and approval ratings deter you.

There's a whole bunch of reviews I had the mods delete some time ago because they were my earliest ones and the most harshly received, and I was embarrassed. But in hindsight, I wish I hadn't done that.

lol my first review is laughable. I love it.

"There's a whole bunch of reviews I had the mods delete some time ago because they were my earliest ones and the most harshly received, and I was embarrassed. But in hindsight, I wish I hadn't done that."

SAME HERE!!!

"lol my first review is laughable. I love it."

I feel that lol. I go back to my (admittedly thin) backlog of reviews and wonder what I was thinking for some of them.

My first review was written in a manic daze after I didn't sleep for nearly 4 days and it shows.

Username checks out 😊

one of my big cardinal sins early on was I would talk about how much I liked an album but wouldn't even talk about why.

I remember I did a review for American Idiot and got roasted for saying that one of the album's best features was that its lyrics could be interpreted in different ways.

Idk who left the comment but I vividly remember someone saying "what kind of vapid, horrible music do you normally listen to if you think that an album's lyrics are noteworthy for being interpretable"

Icing on the cake is I literally made NO effort to share my own interpretation of said lyrics lmao

For me it's hard to find a happy middle ground between unapologetically sharing my own opinion and trying to be as objective as possible.

That and I don't usually care to edit much, since I just write my own reviews for fun/to give albums that don't have any revs a write-up.

Is there a mascot position. I could be a potato sattelite

Sputnik mascot will just be the last remaining user with an intact avatar.

In all seriousness though don't let self-doubt be a roadblock to applying. Plenty of writers improve on the job, and we have space on the roster these days for those who show promise.

yaaaay! let's go guys good luck, love to see it

I second what Sowing said.

"If anything I'm overly ambitious and end up just spiralling down an increasingly convoluted path of over-explanation and questionable comparisons to things I just fancied mentioning (for reasons which I can no longer fathom the reasoning behind)"

Sounds like any of my reviews!

Good luck everyone!

"I have two unfinished reviews on my computer as a reminder of how utterly terrible I am at committing to anything, otherwise I could likely thrash out a couple of substandard jazz reviews myself lol"

Definitely relatable... I have a good 7-8 unfinished reviews in my Google Docs that I intended for Sputnik but never finished. And now that I'm no longer contributing to Sputnik, nor the new Substack the other former staffers created, I have no idea what to do with them. Idk, maybe I'll turn them into scripts for my YT channel lol

Koris you better do the right thing and post them where they were originally intended to be posted!

Might as well post them here [2]

also + for more jazz reviews, would love to find a great new jazz act. i'm mostly stuck between classics and jazz-adjacent stuff, wondering if the new kids are up to something nice or if there's a particularly strong scene somewhere

^ I reviewed one of his albums about 4 years ago, but I highly recommend Myele Manzanza. He's a New Zealand-based jazz drummer and composer who blends elements of traditional bop and a more modern synth-driven sound. So you get these extremely tight instrumentals, but with some really slick (almost symphonic) keyboard backdrops that provide a lot of atmosphere. Awesome stuff

"Koris you better do the right thing and post them where they were originally intended to be posted!"

Honestly, until my deployment is over, I might just do that. I'm trying to pass the time however I can, and Sput is one of the only music sites I can access right now (mostly due to how ancient it is)

I've had a review of Chappell Roan's debut in my back pocket for the last year or so, but was never able to get past the first few paragraphs for some reason. Kinda sucks, because I had a really interesting perspective on it... guess I gotta power through now, lol

Plus, it'll be like old times. I remember writing reviews during my first deployment back in 2018

ewww I'm about to be deployed to. kinda.

Eh, still waiting for @jrlikestodance first review...

Same here!!!

Applied for staff. Good luck to all applicants!

Yeeted a contributor application m//

NICE.

Yeah I figured I'd shoot my shot and go for staff. Though I'm just happy to be here either way lol.

shoot your shot it's all you got

I know we're at the day before the deadline, but I'm going to make that a very soft deadline by extending the application process through at least the weekend. This is due to the recent slowdowns and site outages. If anyone wants to apply but is unable to via this site, feel free to email me directly at sowingsputnik@gmail.com.

Question: whether contributor or staff, are these types of reviewers given specific albums to review by the moderators or is it the contributor's responsibility to seek out and review albums in a timely manner?

^^It's a bit of both, actually.

@Christbait, contributors and staff both have free reign to review whatever they would like to. We do not assign albums to be reviewed. "Timely manner" is subjective, but the general aim is to get a review out within the release week. And while we strive for 12 reviews/yr from every writer on average, this is obviously pretty flexible. One year you might be super busy and do less, the next year you might churn out a ton of material. The quality of the writing matters just as much.

Just bumping this one last time in case anyone was prevented from applying due to the days of site slowness.

I'll leave applications open through the weekend, or longer if more continue to apply.

Super nice that we got a review from Koris for the first time in quite a while. Bringing the emerita back to writing is my second dream along with mobilizing the lurkers. Still hoping for those reviews from jrlikestodance and DemonoftheFall though. At this point you guys could just type "ASS" for three paragraphs straight and still get a pos from me.