Album review scores from 1999-2021

The next objective is to create a visualization that would encapsulate every album review score from 1999 to 2021. These scores would be projected over time along the horizontal axis. With a database of well over 20,000 music reviews, the task proved to be challenging. The initial goal was to create a multi-line chart where review scores were separated by the nine different music genres provided by Pitchfork's website. Users can then discover trends within each music genre in Pitchfork's publication history. Because the dataset was too unwieldy to provide a clear multi-line chart, the visualization pivoted to a bubble/multi-line hybrid chart. An interactive legend to switch between bubbles to lines for the different music genres can help the user filter through any visual clutter.

The visualization initially displays different colored bubbles for the 9 types of music genres. 1 bubble represents 1 album's review score. Rock albums appear to dominate the domain space by the immense amount of blue bubbles appearing in the visualization. This is due to fact that Pitchfork started as an independent music blog that focused solely on indie-rock music. In order to combat the visual clutter the user can click on the dots next to the legends to hide the bubbles associated to each music genre. Whats noticeable is the variance of review scores given to albums during Pitchforks early years of publication. As the years of publication become more recent the bubbes merge closer to the average review score for that genre. By hovering over the text on the legend the bubbles for that genre becomed grayed out and a line path appears across the horizontal axis. These line paths are formulated my taking the average review score per month for each music genre. The lines also confirm the observation of the large variance of review scores during the early years of Pitchfork's publication.