AllMusic

It's the most comprehensive site out there. Essential for tagging, release dates and versions, album art, etc. More usable than discogs. I really like the genres & influences section, the music focused bios and the ability to traverse from one artist to another in multiple places (hyperlinks in biographies, member names, influences). I find it more useful than Wiki. It is not as extensive ex-US unless acts make it to at least medium sized international labels. Don't use it to listen to clips, though. I use streaming sites to actually listen to things. But I agree with the others about the horrible pop up ads and commercialization. I just don't know how it could stay free otherwise.

Best place on the Net to browse for hours about music.

A particularly nice feature is the "influenced / influenced by" and "similar acts" that allows you to, as it were, "ripple outwards" from a single source to discover other artistes in the genre, some of which may be new to you. (It's almost as much fun to disagree whether the acts mentioned really *are* that similar.)

Weak in some areas, coverage-wise - world music, for example, has better sites to explore. But for an all-round music overview with some nifty features, and great "starter portraits" of thousands of bands, it's hard to beat.

In the country of my residence (not MY country) it's renown for decades with local clones dragging feet in its wake. As a pro reviewer, for almost any information and in every instance I revert to Allmusic.com with no contender around, on the web. There are simply no apt album reviews and artist profiles like in this space. True, there are occasional minor mistakes but what's worrisome is the American leaning with European non-English and well deserving acts ignored or scarce covered. No Polish Breakout entry, for instance.

I used to visit AllMusic frequently from 2003-2010 for music reviews and discovering new artists. The website between those years was highly functional, clean, and a deep source of information. Today, in 2020, the site however is nearly unusable with ads covering almost half of the screen - a large banner at the bottom, a large banner at the top, and 1-2 ads that will pop up from the right - and almost always at the same time. I understand that times are changing but this makes the site a horrible experience to navigate now. It's a shame because the journalism, reviews, and music critique is still valuable as of today. It's just not possible to experience those things without ugly and intrusive ads.

Being a hardcore music fan and musician, I have been reading record reviews all my life, and I know a good music critic from a bad one. I've followed Allmusic from the very beginning, 1995 when it first came on the web. I even own one of their pre-internet reference books. They were really good when they started. In the course of the 2000s, a bunch of bad decisions must have been made, because the quality of the reviews has gone way, way down. I've actually witnessed several instances of reviews CHANGING for the very same album, to a much less qualified and informed review. Even worse, the website went from fast, simple and user friendly to very sluggish and annoying. I now avoid Allmusic altogether and go to sites like discogs.com and wikipedia for information.

A Love/Hate Relationship. A lot of valuable information is available here but a pain in the butt to get. Very slow servers and frequent crashes to the site. I hate their "roll over" adds that keep on popping up when you drag your mouse over a certain area of the screen. There is a lot of music that is not on this site that can be found on others. It used to be a lot better than it is today. GONE COMMERCIAL!. Gracepoint used to be the place to go but they no longer have their database available online. I do everything possible not to use Allmusic unless I have to!

I get it, it's for free and they need ads to survive. But the way it's done, a slow wait and pops up on every screen refresh makes for rough navigating.
Some reviewers are professional, like its resident lead critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine. Some writes like fanboys. Some goes on and on and on. And in some cases the stars awarded do not fit what's written, like a 2-star album gets a rave review. Release information is rubbish, usually uses rerelease as master, Discogs is a way better site for that. Having said all that, still a good source for a quick (and rough) guideline to music.