Friday, July 11, 2008

SNOB-MUSAC, Technorati edition

Here is the semi-annual listing of the bløgösph¥re, only one month late! This is the version based upon Technorati. I'll post the Google version on Monday. Based on previous complaints, I have omitted Terry Teachout's blog. However, a new blog has taken his place at the top, perhaps also controversial. However, it is definitely about classical music. Much movement, and many new blogs in the list, thanks to Chris Foley's extensive list at Pageflakes. I'm including the change in Technorati authority this time, so you can see how much movement there was.

The list shows the rank, the blog, the TA and change from the last listing, the author(s), and the category: C = composer, Crit = critic, O = opera, A = academic, L = listener, AD = arts director, and the rest are self explanatory.
UPDATE: Corrections have been made, based on comments and email.

1 Music Meets Tech: 705 [new to list] Hugh Sung (piano)
2 The Rest is Noise: 497 [-153] Alex Ross (Crit)
3 Sequenza21: 151 [-632] Jerry Bowles (C)
4 Opera Chic: 147 [-34] (O)
5 PostClassic: 129 [0] Kyle Gann (C)
6 Nico Muhly: 118 [new] (C)
7 Sandow: 107 [0] Greg Sandow (Consultant)
8 Violinist.com Diaries: 106 [-52] (violin)
9 Ionarts: 103 [-30] Charles T. Downey (A)
10 La Cieca: 101 [-2] James Jorden (O)
11 Adaptistration: 98 [+30] Drew McManus (orchestra management)
12 Dial “M” for Musicology: 93 [+14] Phil Ford and Jonathan Bellman (A)
13 On an Overgrown Path: 91 [-53] Bob Shingleton (producer)
14 Classical Life: 87 [+46] Timothy Mangan (Crit)
15 Soho the Dog: 83 [-37] Matthew Guerreri (C)
16 Jason Heath's Double Bass Blog: 80 [-32] (bass)
17 Collaborative Piano: 78 [+23] Chris Foley (piano)
18 Musical Perceptions: 76 [+14] Me (A)
19 Think Denk: 73 [-33] Jeremy Denk (piano)
20 Darcy James Argue's Secret Society: 73 [new to list] (piano, C)
21 Jessica Duchen: 71 [-22] (Crit)
22 Night after Night: 70 [-52] Steve Smith (Crit)
23 Sounds and Fury: 70 [-6] AC Douglas (L)
24 Deceptively Simple: 62 [-12] Marc Geelhoed (Crit/orchestra administration)
25 The Concert: 62 [-9] Anne-Carolyn Bird (voice)
25 Mostly Opera: 62 [new] (O)
27 Oboeinsight: 59 [+1] Patty Mitchell (oboe)
28 CBC Radio 2: 58 [new] Li Robbins (radio director)
29 A Beginner's Guide to Classical Music: 57 [+41] Classical Convert (L)
30 The Standing Room: 56 [-9] Monsieur C (voice)
31 Roger Bourland: 54 [+7] Roger Bourland (C)
32 The Rambler: 53 [-7] Tim Rutherford-Johnson (A)
32 Mad Musings of Me: 53 [+23] Gertsamtkunstwerk (O)
34 Sieglinde’s Diaries: 51 [+12] Leon Dominguez (O)
35 Yankeediva: 45 [new] Joyce DiDonato (voice)
36 The Iron Tongue of Midnight: 43 [-21] Lisa Hirsch (Crit)
37 Renewable Music: 41 [+3] Daniel Wolf (C)
38 A View from the Podium: 39 [+13] Kenneth Woods (conductor)
39 My Favorite Intermissions: 38 [-4] Maury D’annato (O)
39 Daily Observations: 38 [+18] Charles Noble (viola)
39 Africlassical: 38 [new] William J. Zick (A)
42 Musical Assumptions: 37 [+2] Elaine Fine (C and viola)
43 The Metropolitan Opera Blog: 36 [new] Philipp Brieler (O)
44 CSO Bass Blog: 35 [-14] (bass)
44 Aworks: 35 [-5] Robert Gable (L)
44 Thirteen Ways: 35 [+7] eighth blackbird (ensemble)
44 The Well-Tempered Blog: 35 [+8] Bart Collins (piano)
48 Chicago Classical Music: 34 [-2] (L)
49 Arts Addict: 34 [new] Jason Heath (bass) yes, a second blog on the list
50 Brian Dickie: 34 [+1] (AD)
51 Vilaine fille: 33 [+3] (Crit)
52 Classical Music: 31 [+5] Janelle Gelfand (Crit)

At first I thought there would be a trend of all the blogs having reduced numbers of links, perhaps because I waited until the middle of July when everyone is on vacation. But then it seemed that while some big name blogs have lost links, they are balanced by others gaining in links. Finally, I did some math. Among the blogs already listed previously, there has been an average reduction of 24.1 in Technorati Authority, bigger than I thought. The median is a reduction of 2 TA, so the average is definitely influenced by the really big losses in Sequenza21 and Alex Ross. Taking those two outliers, the average is -4.7, much closer to the median, and reflects my second impression. So both thoughts were correct: some significant blogs have lost Technorati rank, but most have had minimal losses.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

nicomuhly.com has a technorati authority of 118

mostly opera... said...

Not intending to question the inclusion criteria of your list as it obviously is your blog, but I´m simply curious as to why you have not included the mostly opera blog (technorati authority 62 as of today)?

Scott said...

Mostly opera was a weird mistake on my part. I thought I had already added it, when I hadn't. Nico Muhly was just forgetfulness.

Shimmy said...

Scott said 'However, a new blog has taken his place at the top, perhaps also controversial.'
There's no perhaps about it, that new one is a dog. You need a new filter on your database search, like dbo.BLOG NOT LIKE '%POINTLESS SHILL BLOG%'

Patty said...

What is a shill blog? Is that what is linking to Hugh Sung's site so often? I have been checking out all the links other folks get and it's fun to run across new sites. But Hugh's links are mainly to one very weird site that just quotes his entire blog entry and then has hi name as a link a ton of times. I'm a computer idiot, so I don't fully understand what's up with that. Surely Hugh Sung wouldn't have set that up, so why would someone else do that? Weird.

I've noticed that folks rarely link to me any more. Guess that what happens to us oboe players, eh? We kind of get left ... wallflowers that we are. ;-)

Thanks for putting this together again, Scott. It'll be interesting to see how google compares!

Anonymous said...

Hugh Sung's number is grossly inflated by a sock puppet blog. His blog only rates 439 backward links on Google.

A.C. Douglas said...

Hugh Sung's number is grossly inflated by a sock puppet blog. His blog only rates 439 backward links on Google.

More telling than that low Backward Links number (which reflects April's numbers, and so is a stale statistic) is the fact that hughsung.com has a Google Page Rank of 0! That means Google knows there's something wrong with the links to that site. And notice, please, I said site. hughsung.com is NOT a blog. It's an entire website with about a dozen sub-sections.

This site does NOT belong on this list at all.

ACD

Patty said...

What constitutes a blog? I have a lot more than the main page, where I put up blog entries. So would you nix my site as well? I'm not looking to argue or whine about my site; I'm honestly curious!

I have to admit that I'm seeing a number of blogs turn into something more about making money. Those don't appeal to me. Seems as if the mega-ads change the entire feel of things.

But maybe that's just me!

A.C. Douglas said...

What constitutes a blog? I have a lot more than the main page, where I put up blog entries. So would you nix my site as well? I'm not looking to argue or whine about my site; I'm honestly curious!

You know for a fact I wouldn't "nix [your] site" as your blog was included in the last S&F Top 50 rankings.

Your blog is not a subsection of your site. Your site, oboeinsight.com, IS your blog. The rest of it is merely additional pages of information. The Hugh Sung case is different. The blog is merely a subsection of his website, hughsung.com, and what he's done is to redirect links to ALL the subsections of that website to its blog subsection thereby making it appear to indiscriminate spiders (web crawlers) such as Technorati as if ALL those subsection links were links to his blog subsection exclusively. That indiscriminate spidering is one of the several reasons Technorati Authority numbers are mostly nonsense.

In answer to your first question, I quote from the S&F Top 50 Eligibility requirements:

The Sounds & Fury Top 50 Classical Music Blogs quarterly rankings include only currently active English language blogs (at least six posts made over the last quarter, at least two of which date from the last month of that quarter), each written primarily by a single individual and devoted principally to classical music including opera (blogs written by the same duo will be considered a blog written by a single individual for the purpose of the S&F Top 50 rankings). The rankings do NOT include institutional, promotional, or group blogs; online magazines; or so-called "index" blogs (i.e., blogs that are principally a listing of links to articles elsewhere).

ACD

Patty said...

Heh ... well, I know for a fact now, anyway ... I had a bit of a brain freeze and had forgotten about my inclusion at your site (thanks, btw). It's amazing what can drift in and right back out of this old brain. Sigh.

Or maybe I could blame this all on the double reed?

Or ... most likely, to be honest ... I'm just forgetful (along with being lazy).

But thanks, ACD, for the explanation. I saw another blog that appeared to have some rather odd links when I looked at google. I suppose some people are just dying for hits.

Sometimes I do feel as if I'm back in junior high, hoping for a wee bit of popularity. :-/

Anonymous said...

Although I completely disagree with ACD's assertion that Music Meets Tech is not a blog, the main issue at hand is that its Technorati authority has been successfuly gamed, either by Mr. Sung or someone else with the use of at least several dozen splogs, mirror sites, sock puppet blogs, or whatever you want to call them. What is stopping anyone else from gaming their own Technorat authority in order to rise to the top of this (or ACD's) list?

Anonymous said...

Hi Scott: Always fascinating, this, and truthfully I've been a poor blogger of late, so I'm not surprised to see my ranking drop.

May I ask, however, if the drop had anything at all to do with having mapped my blog to a new domain during the sampling period, from nightafternight.blogs.com to www.nightafternight.com?

Hope this doesn't look like a desperate bid for status -- I'm just genuinely curious as to the potential impact (if any) of my migration.

Scott said...

Steve, right now Technorati lists blog reactions to your new domain, but hasn't given it an Authority number yet. I'm not sure why. But in general switching URLs will cause a drop in rank, as it takes a while for the blogging world to update to the new URL. Bob Shingleton has the same issue with his new URL, which thus far has a TA of 0!

Scott said...

One correction, I was typing in the wrong URL for Bob's blog. It has been rectified, with an impressive TA of 91.