I find that the media review sites I like the most are those that are not exclusively review sites. The best example is Penny Arcade for video game reviews. A game’s MetaCritic score does not hold as much influence with me as a favorable anecdote in the “news” section of Penny Arcade. Penny Arcade is not in the game-review business, but their reviews are better than all others becaue they are so candid.

The same is true in music. I like Pitchfork and Stylus, but when a blogger (trusted or otherwise) writes about a great new album he or she can’t stop playing, I am much more likely to investigate further and seek other blog reviews on The Hype Machine.

There’s something about the forced nature of sites that do reviews exclusively that makes them less trust-worthy for me (perhaps, in part, because reviewers are paid to write).

The rich content of casual reviews is evidence of the influential power of the blogosphere.

I wish I had a better way to navigate and search for casual reviews. Right now I use a combination bloglines search (better than technorati search), feed aggregation (also through bloglines), and del.icio.us search. It feels very inefficient and hacky. I want a solid aggregator for casual reviews from the edge.