Reviews on CD Baby completely useless

No negative reviews on CD baby!!

According to CD Baby, they are "a little online record store that sells CDs by independent musicians." Their basic process is "We only sell CDs that come directly from the musicians. No distributors. Musicians send us CDs. We warehouse them, sell them to you, and pay the musicians directly." Sounds awesome, no?

You can browse tons of CDs and hopefully find one you like. You write reviews of CDs as well, giving them a rating and posting a comment. Sounds good, right? Well, it's all good as long as your review is positive. Otherwise, forget it. I reviewed a CD as mediocre and my review never went through. Here is my e-mail exchange with CD Baby as I'm trying to figure out why my review wasn't being posted.

My initial inquiry:
Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2005 19:57:15 -0800 [01/07/2005 19:57:15 PDT]
From: xxxx@tentacle.net
To: cdbaby@cdbaby.com
Subject: reviews?

hi;
who decides which reviews go up? you or the artist?

thanks,
xxxxx

Their respose:
Date: Sun, 09 Jan 2005 09:21:57 -0800 [01/09/2005 09:21:57 PDT]
From: CD Baby
To: xxxxx@tentacle.net
Subject: Re: reviews?
Hey there xxxxx-
We have editors that look over them before posting. If the artist ever wants one taken down, though, they can just let us know and we'll delete it :)

After further questioning they sent me this:
Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2005 11:52:37 -0800 [01/14/2005 11:52:37 PDT]
From: CD Baby
To: nef23
Subject: Re: reviews?

Hi xxxxx-

We do not leave a spot for your email, because we do not want to post your info.

We do have to check the reviews before they are posted.
Really the reason we wouldn't post a review is if you were really mean, or it was not a
real review.

It does take some time for these to be posted as we get hundreds everyday.
:-)
TyKona
*************************

So if a review is "mean" or the artist wants it taken down, it's gone. This effectively makes reviews pointless because you can only make positive reviews not negative ones. How is this a review system at all? If someone honestly thinks an album is not good, why can't they articulate that AND manage to get that on an artist's CD Baby page?

Rooted

This blog is just getting going and so far has little content. The directions it may take are many...

Manifesting, manifesting, manifesting.

Do you know what a pearl is and what an opal is? My soul when you came sauntering to me first through those sweet summer evenings was beautiful but with the pale passionless beauty of a pearl. Your love passed through me and now I feel very much something like an opal, that is, full of strange uncertain lines and colors, warm lights and quick shadows and broken music.

(james joyce in a letter to his wife)