The great popularity contest of classical music blogs

I’m a week or two behind the blogoshere, but gosh. I don’t believe my eyes.

In high school, classical musicians were never the ones who were into popularity contests. We were too above that. (Or maybe we just weren't popular.)

Popularity contests are so 1989. So junior high (or high school). I hated it back then and now, I mostly don’t pay attention or care. But popularity contests are back with a vengeance in classical music blogs. (Or were a week or two ago. I just haven’t had a chance to write about this.)

Like the popularity contests of yore, they result in bickering children. Or grown ups bickering like children over things like, omg, criteria, or who deserves to be more popular than who. Or counter-popularity lists. (And for real bickering, check out all of the comments in all of these posts. It’s amazing how much energy people have vested into this Great Popularity Contest.)

I am so glad I am too below such a contest—not that with the few hits I get I would be considered for such a list.

But classical music blogs (well, for the most part) talk about classical music. This is usually interesting, whether it be about a rehearsal experience, or a new recording of x, or a critique of a concert, or just random musings about classical music.

However, once you start going into the business of ranking classical music blogs, now you have a blog post that talks about blogs that talk about classical music. (Make sure you get that straight, because we’ll keep adding layers of obscurity.)

This is not quite as interesting as reading directly about one’s insights about classical music.

And then when bloggers go back and forth about rankings-this and criteria-that, now we have blogs that talk about the blog post that talks about blogs that talk about classical music.

(And yes yes. I know. I’ve just added another layer of obscurity by writing about blogs that talk about blogs that. . .etc. etc. However, I never claimed that mine was exclusively a classical music blog.)

So now we are 4-layers-of-obscurity removed from the subject that these blogs are “supposed to” discuss. I mean, people can write whatever they want in their own blogs, but a meta-meta-meta discussion about classical music is just not interesting.

Also, what exactly does it mean that your blog is one of the top-50 “popular” blogs? That it is well-written? That the blog provides useful information? That the blog is a high-quality blog?

Alex Ross’s blog, which is well-written, provides interesting information, is a high-quality blog, and deserves to be number one.

But as for the others, the top-50 designation is not necessarily an indication of quality or good writing or caliber level. This is not meant as an insult. Not all blogs need to be “intellectual” or “high quality”, etc. And I certainly don’t write an intellectual or high quality blog myself.

Nor am I saying that none of these other blogs have these aforementioned qualities. I haven’t read all 50 of these top-50s, so won’t make such blanket statements. But of the ones that I have visited a few times, or have started to semi-regularly visit, the quality levels vary greatly. I visit, not necessarily because a blog is well-written, intellectually stimulating, high-quality, etc., but for various other reasons.

Some blogs I visit, because they are easily consumable. Short entries, interesting quips, and don't demand much of me. Nothing wrong with that. If I return and if enough people return that you are in the top 50, who cares that it’s not necessarily as “intellectual as Alex Ross’s blog”?

Other blogs, I visit, because their ranty tone might be funny (or annoying).

Yet others, I visit, b/c they are linked from another post I was reading.

Sometimes I just read to procrastinate.

Other times I visit a particular critic's blog, b/c I expect that xyz critic who works for the ________ News might have something insightful to say. But some of these critics who work for ______ News and made it into the top 50 have added 6 entries in 3 months, which again makes me wonder what the induction to the top-50 proves. Maybe in the case of this critic, it proves that she is established enough that even though the blog has barely been updated, she has enough of a reputation that people will keep flocking to her blog.

To an extent, popularity might correlate with the quality of a blog, but not necessarily so. In fact, one of my favorite “classical music” blogs is not even on this list. Then again, it would never be in the running, since it is a restricted blog.

Instead of a popularity contest, which invariably pits blogs against each other, and is really mostly an unproductive endeavor (except, I guess you find out that your blog is popular? Again, this would mean something if it indicates the caliber of the blog, but aside from a few blogs, this isn’t the case.), how about a blog carnival instead? This is what most of the other blog subjects seem to do.

In addition to classical music blogs, I also like reading history and food blogs. In both blog genres, there are friendly and informative blog carnivals instead of popularity lists.

In the food category, there’s the fresh farmer’s market carnival, a pancake recipe carnival, a vegetarian carnival, etc. In the history category, there's the general history carnival, the Asian history carnival, and others. Admittedly, these take work and willing volunteers, so more have died off than survived. But the veggie carnival and history ones have been going on for quite a while. They are fun to read, and give an overview of the x-subject blogosphere landscape. They are not always interesting, and it's rare that I click on every single blog, but if the tag line interests me, I will read the actual blog entry. I've discovered many a new blogs this way.

The history folks also have a Cliopatria award which recognizes the best individual blog, best group blog, best post, best new blog, best writer, etc. every year. It's actually a serious production, run by the American Historical Association.

Being recognized in this way seems much more meaningful than winning a popularity contest, whose signficance is at best, nebulous.