Music category in the reviews

I've been thinking about how we score all our reviews. One thing that boggles me is the music rank. Now I know a lot of the anime out there has some incredible original scores like Evangelion, etc. However, I did notice when I looked up some reviews for anime I wanted to get some opinions about, most if not all of them didn't have a focus on the music. To me, I believe that the music ranking option is a waste of space. I mean, I'm not completely against it. But, in my reviews, the music is the last thing I'm paying attention to. If anything, I'd like to know who agrees/disagrees to nix the music rating from the reviews. I know that everyone can choose to rank or not to rank the music. I just find it meaningless to be up there. If someone can see it in another POV, I'm all ears.

If I don't notice the music, then it wasn't that special and as such, that says something. So in my reviews, if you see me note the music (good or ill), that meant that something about it caught my attention.

Music is a lot more important for me than Art (which is why Music has the same weight in my scoring formula as Art + Animation combined!). I can't really name an anime where the Art or Animation alone made me dislike it (even though I tend to give harsh downgrades for Animation at times) but that's very different with music.

Music = 10 (which I gave four anime series so far: Silent Mobius, Kimi ga Nozomu Eien, Iriya no Sora, UFO no Natsu, Cossette no Shouzou, plus three movies and one OVA special, out of 170 reviews) means that this anime makes me shiver with joy when listening to certain of its tracks in WinAmp even without watching the video (thus being on par with my favourite non-anime albums), and I usually remember the corresponding scenes in the story quite well; Music=9 means that I must at least have tried to get the OST (if only to get two or three outstanding tracks).
If I didn't notice the music then I'll give it a 6 or 7, depending on the OP & ED songs (but KGNE earned its 10 by these two songs alone); besides those I usually rate the music of the action/suspense sequences and the lead characters' instrumental themes (Dark Chii!) which are likely to end up in my "Best of Anime MP3 Selection" when they're really good.
Anime movies tend to get high ratings for their music even when I don't particularly like the style or remember individual tracks but consider it very suitable for the story (thus Jin-Roh should actually get an 11 from me...).

I spent a whole section of my reviewer page to list a number of animes with outstanding music. Despite Shin Seiki Evangelion being #3 on my all-time anime series list I don't particularly like this series' music, with a few exceptions such as "Decisive Battle" or "Rei I", and of course the OP; the jazz-heavy tracks just aren't my cup of tea, I'm more into melodic/bombastic rock and orchestral music. Then again, Love Hina Christmas Special has a few wonderful, simple instrumental themes that emotionally match the corresponding situation perfectly and are easy to remember. My latest musical discovery has been Uta Kata with no fewer than 8 (mostly beautiful but sad/gloomy) tracks that made it into my selection, which earned it a 9 for music but not a 10 as none of these tracks would be outstanding on its own.

So what I'm getting from this is that as long as it fits a situation/scene well, something that stands out, or even if the op/ed seems to catch an earful, then music would should be credited. Of course I don't mean just these standards alone. There's always other factors to consider but the ones I'm picking up from this seem to be a little more obvious. Yes/No?

Not everyone here is making use of these numerical scores in the first place - I just told you why I don't consider them meaningless.

If the music did nothing for me one way or the other, I'll give it a 7. A higher or lower number for me then means I noticed the music.

I've given up assigning numbers to any element of a review, but I'm a lot like AstroNerdBoy in that I hardly notice the background music at all unless it's either extremely good or extremely bad--or just extremely unusual. Sometimes I read somebody else's review and when they comment on the music I find myself asking "what, there was music playing during that scene"? On the other hand, I'm paying a good deal more attention to OP and ED music, partly to determine if it would be worth ripping and burning onto a homemade CD. But I'm not confident that my tastes are anything like mainstream and the only reviewing of music I do is when I write something about it. After all, how many people besides me would consider the OP song to KoiKoi 7 a great work of art?

I'm an audiophile so music is one of the first things I'll notice when watching a series. Although most is hardly worth mentioning, I still weigh in on them. Very few are worth noting for more than a few lines.... i.e. both the EF (tale of melodies, memories) series as an example.

To each his own I suppose.