Mike Love - Unleash the Love - Due November 17 - w/ 2nd Disc of BB Remakes

[guitarfool2002]

I mean, that can only explain these reviews haha

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/cr/B07667GM1W/ref=mw_dp_cr

Looks like Amazon deleted all the 1 star reviews.

This Amazon review at that link:
>>>>>
Solid solo release from Mike Love. New songs are a departure from The Beach ...
Customer rating 5.0/5.0
November 18, 2017 By Patricia Ferrelli
Amazon Verified Purchase
3 out of 8 found this helpful

Solid solo release from Mike Love. New songs are a departure from The Beach Boys' sound and the cover songs showcase the many talents of the touring band.
<<<<<

Ms. Ferrelli, the reviewer, is the president of the Mike Love Fan Club, literally, and has been since 1990 as posted on the Mike Love Fan Club's website homepage linked below. For a time in the early 1990's there was a classified ad in nearly every issue of Goldmine to join the fan club by contacting Ms. Ferrelli by mail in the days before email. I recognized it instantly.

https://mikelovefanclub.com/

Just pointing it out, that's all.

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

Nice.

[mikeddonn]

I mean, that can only explain these reviews haha

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/cr/B07667GM1W/ref=mw_dp_cr

Looks like Amazon deleted all the 1 star reviews.

This Amazon review at that link:
>>>>>
Solid solo release from Mike Love. New songs are a departure from The Beach ...
Customer rating 5.0/5.0
November 18, 2017 By Patricia Ferrelli
Amazon Verified Purchase
3 out of 8 found this helpful

Solid solo release from Mike Love. New songs are a departure from The Beach Boys' sound and the cover songs showcase the many talents of the touring band.
<<<<<

Ms. Ferrelli, the reviewer, is the president of the Mike Love Fan Club, literally, and has been since 1990 as posted on the Mike Love Fan Club's website homepage linked below. For a time in the early 1990's there was a classified ad in nearly every issue of Goldmine to join the fan club by contacting Ms. Ferrelli by mail in the days before email. I recognized it instantly.

https://mikelovefanclub.com/

Just pointing it out, that's all.

Are you still moderating at brianwilson.com?

[HeyJude]

That's a surprisingly bland, unenthusiastic, brief "5 star" review coming from the head of the Mike Love Fan Club.

[HeyJude]

Amazon only allowing "Verified Purchase" reviews reminds me of Roger Ebert's response to Kevin Smith from several years back.

Smith was upset about mounting poor reviews of his latest movie at the time, and seemed to feel that professional reviewers seeing the movie for free were more easily just bashing the film. He went on to suggest he might start charging reviewers to see the movie. Roger Ebert's response was: "Kevin Smith thinks critics should have had to pay to see "Cop Out." But Kev, then they would REALLY have hated it."

[The LEGENDARY OSD]

  Amazon, at the moment, has UTL at the same rating as TWGMTR. What a farce !! I just rated Amazon -10 for caving on that piece of garbage.

[guitarfool2002]

I mean, that can only explain these reviews haha

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/cr/B07667GM1W/ref=mw_dp_cr

Looks like Amazon deleted all the 1 star reviews.

This Amazon review at that link:
>>>>>
Solid solo release from Mike Love. New songs are a departure from The Beach ...
Customer rating 5.0/5.0
November 18, 2017 By Patricia Ferrelli
Amazon Verified Purchase
3 out of 8 found this helpful

Solid solo release from Mike Love. New songs are a departure from The Beach Boys' sound and the cover songs showcase the many talents of the touring band.
<<<<<

Ms. Ferrelli, the reviewer, is the president of the Mike Love Fan Club, literally, and has been since 1990 as posted on the Mike Love Fan Club's website homepage linked below. For a time in the early 1990's there was a classified ad in nearly every issue of Goldmine to join the fan club by contacting Ms. Ferrelli by mail in the days before email. I recognized it instantly.

https://mikelovefanclub.com/

Just pointing it out, that's all.

Are you still moderating at brianwilson.com?

Yes. Drop in for a visit sometime!

[CenturyDeprived]

Amazon only allowing "Verified Purchase" reviews reminds me of Roger Ebert's response to Kevin Smith from several years back.

Smith was upset about mounting poor reviews of his latest movie at the time, and seemed to feel that professional reviewers seeing the movie for free were more easily just bashing the film. He went on to suggest he might start charging reviewers to see the movie. Roger Ebert's response was: "Kevin Smith thinks critics should have had to pay to see "Cop Out." But Kev, then they would REALLY have hated it."

 It’s also ridiculous because one can formulate a perfectly valid opinion by listening to this entire album on Spotify, as I have. How is my opinion  less valid than somebody who purchased it on Amazon?

[guitarfool2002]

Is Amazon also filtering out member reviews from those who purchased the item(s) or just those from non-members? If someone buys the album from Amazon in this case, and declares it a turkey with a 1 star rating, I wonder if that review will be removed even if it's coming from a buyer.

[HeyJude]

Typically, anybody (with an Amazon account) can review any item, regardless of where they've bought it (or indeed *if* they bought it at all). If someone has purchased the item in question on their account, the review is labled as a "Verified Purchase."

You don't even have to put your name on a review, you can just use a nickname/handle.

I think they may push verified purchase reviews and also reviews posted under someone's actual name higher up on the reviews (their algorithm for how the reviews are initially ordered seems to be kind of like Yelp, seemingly but probably not actually random).

But typically as long as something doesn't have foul language, etc., it gets posted. I've seem some pretty scathing reviews on there.

I'm not sure how something is put in this special category where they start curtailing who can review an item. I would imagine the distributor of a product could request it, and also Amazon's own internal tracking may flag an item if it receives a ton of overwhelmingly bad reviews in a very short span of time (and/or it receives a ton of 1-star and 5-star ratings an little in between). 

I think it's pretty rare for Amazon to remove "Verified Purchase" reviews unless it breaks rules (foul language, etc.). The only exception I can think of is cases where a whole bunch of people give an item a negative review because they purchased it but the item is delayed/backordered/discontinued, etc. And that does make sense, the fulfillment of an item has nothing to do with the actual item. But then, they only remove even *those* types of reviews when there's a ton of them. So I've seen a ton of 1-star reviews on Amazon that complain that an item was damaged in shipping, or that they never received it, or received it late, etc.

I'm guessing someone said something to Amazon about the "Unleash..." reviews; there actually weren't *that* many reviews up there. A few dozen. It's not like some hot-button political book where there are like thousands of reviews on day one.

[B.E.]

If amazon is removing negative reviews indiscriminately, then I have a major problem with that. If they're simply removing all non-verified reviews, then I'm not convinced that it's the wrong thing to do (theoretically, though I'd like consistency across the board).

Just for the fun of it, I checked out some recent releases...

Playback (22 of 25 customer reviews were verified purchases)
Sunshine Tomorrow (71 of 81 customer reviews were verified purchases)
BW and Friends (59 of 66 customer reviews were verified purchases)

and then there was Unleash The Love (5 of 26 customer reviews were verified purchases)

I also checked out Brian and Mike's books and found that a higher percentage of Mike's reviews were non-verified, including, 24 of 30 reviews between 1-2 stars. Obviously, Mike is a polarizing guy and not all non-verified reviews represent people who didn't otherwise have access to the product, but I couldn't help but notice the discrepancy. I also wouldn't be too concerned that an inflated 4 1/2 star UTL rating will trick many buyers. How many of you would have great confidence in buying a product with only 5 reviews? And all positive? I'm not 'buying' that. And this only applies to those potential buyers who factor in the reviews at all. Anyway, I'm just throwing those numbers out there, partly because I wonder what we'd lose if Amazon did away with non-verified reviews entirely. It's a balancing act, for sure.

[rab2591]

I kinda get the reasoning for Amazon to trash the unverified reviews...in fact I wouldn’t doubt if they had some sort of algorithm that did this automatically for obviously polarizing products. With a product that has 30 second samples for each song people will easily be able to understand what they’re getting into.

Anyone who listens to the samples will quickly deduce that either the 5 star reviewers have incredibly bad taste or they are being insanely biased. And I notice that filledeplage is, as usual, bringing up the lawsuit aspect of writing 1 star reviews...tbh I would guarantee that ANY judge would take one listen to this album and throw the case out

[SMiLE Brian]

What a joke, Filleplage must work “pro-bono” for Mike....

[HeyJude]

The idea of bad reviews (outside of cases of libel, and even then it would be difficult) resulting in successful lawsuits is ridiculous.

I guess if people could prove that Amazon was manipulating the reviews to make something look bad, there might be a case against Amazon. But, Amazon would usually only have a vested interest in making most everything look *good*, because *they're* selling it!

This isn't like Yelp, where they call you up and offer to sell services that, wink-wink, result in good reviews of your business coasting ahead of bad (and conversely, if you *don't* pay for their services, a lot of bad reviews seem prevalent).

And the suggestion that Amazon would "unmask" individuals, and that those individuals would be successfully sued for writing a bad review, is laughable. Again, with obvious exceptions (libel, proof of collusion, etc.).

[HeyJude]

If amazon is removing negative reviews indiscriminately, then I have a major problem with that. If they're simply removing all non-verified reviews, then I'm not convinced that it's the wrong thing to do (theoretically, though I'd like consistency across the board).

Just for the fun of it, I checked out some recent releases...

Playback (22 of 25 customer reviews were verified purchases)
Sunshine Tomorrow (71 of 81 customer reviews were verified purchases)
BW and Friends (59 of 66 customer reviews were verified purchases)

and then there was Unleash The Love (5 of 26 customer reviews were verified purchases)

I also checked out Brian and Mike's books and found that a higher percentage of Mike's reviews were non-verified, including, 24 of 30 reviews between 1-2 stars. Obviously, Mike is a polarizing guy and not all non-verified reviews represent people who didn't otherwise have access to the product, but I couldn't help but notice the discrepancy. I also wouldn't be too concerned that an inflated 4 1/2 star UTL rating will trick many buyers. How many of you would have great confidence in buying a product with only 5 reviews? And all positive? I'm not 'buying' that. And this only applies to those potential buyers who factor in the reviews at all. Anyway, I'm just throwing those numbers out there, partly because I wonder what we'd lose if Amazon did away with non-verified reviews entirely. It's a balancing act, for sure.

To the extent that Amazon customer reviews are helpful, it would be hugely problematic to lose non-verified purchase reviews.

[HeyJude]

They've removed *all* negative reviews on the album's Amazon page, including the substantive, non-trolling reviews.

The album now has only five reviews, four of which are five-star and one of which is four-star.

At this stage, it would be much more fair to simply remove all reviews.

[B.E.]

They've removed *all* negative reviews on the album's Amazon page, including the substantive, non-trolling reviews.

Yes, indirectly.

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

That's not cool

[HeyJude]

They've removed *all* negative reviews on the album's Amazon page, including the substantive, non-trolling reviews.

Yes, indirectly.

I didn't say they removed them because the reviews were negative. I honestly don't know if any "verified purchase" reviews (negative or positive) have also been removed (or not approved); there would be no way to know for sure.

But assuming they simply removed all non-verified purchase reviews and kept *all* verified purchase reviews, then the reason for the "clean up" is obvious.

The *source* or impetus for this to take place remains unclear. It's easy to report reviews to Amazon. Considering BRI apparently employs someone full-time simply to troll around eBay and YouTube and submit copyright claims on a daily basis, I wouldn't be surprised if someone literally "on the payroll" in Mike's camp put in the request to Amazon to look at the reviews. It would of course be quite debatable as to whether such a request would be warranted.

[HeyJude]

Okay, who is going to volunteer to buy a *second* copy (or first!) on Amazon so that they can post an honest, polite negative review and see if it stays up? 

Let's also remember that a "verified purchase" obviously doesn't guarantee an informed review either. Someone can buy the thing and not listen to it, but still review it. Heck, I *think* one can even *return* an item and still post a "verified purchase" review!

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

Hell no.

[HeyJude]

Hell no.

Not even the deluxe vinyl with extra big 12 inch cover art? C'mon! 

[HeyJude]

In all seriousness, I think Amazon particularly is treading in weird territory by locking down reviews on music. There are a *ton* of legitimate, legal ways to stream the music (Spotify, Pandora, YouTube) that would allow people to still offer a legit review.

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

In all seriousness, I think Amazon particularly is treading in weird territory by locking down reviews on music. There are a *ton* of legitimate, legal ways to stream the music (Spotify, Pandora, YouTube) that would allow people to still offer a legit review.

Yeah, I don't like this one bit. What they NEED to do is remove those one sentence reviews, the ones that read "I lyke THiS mOVie a bunch it was goOd"

[SMiLE Brian]

Hell no.

Not even the deluxe vinyl with extra big 12 inch cover art? C'mon! 

Billy ain’t bout that life....