Top Classical Blogs, brought to you by Invesp.com

Technorati has gone haywire, leading me to not use it anymore for ranking, and AC Douglas had troubles with Google that led him to shut down his rankings of classical music blogs. Fortunately some pros, Invesp.com, have stepped in with a comprehensive ranking system based on a variety of stats, such as Feedburner RSS subscriptions, Yahoo links, Google PageRank, Alexa/Compete/Technorati ranks, # of visitors, etc. Invesp is an e-commerce consulting business. You may not like their results, and can complain to them about it, such as the inclusion of a photography site on the Classical Music Blog list (#19, Out of Focus). Plus I know some statistics are missing from my blog, apparently because it isn't listed on Compete.com, the main source of monthly visitors for Invesp.com. Frankly, I'm happy I won't get the complaints anymore. Unfortunately they only list the top 25, rather than the top 50, though others are listed in the single statistic categories. And Invesp.com only lists blogs they know about. So if you know of a classical music blog that you think should be in the list, let them know. They also maintain ranks of many other topics, such as science fiction and philosophy.

Here are the top 25 Classical Blogs as of today (they recalculate the statistics every day), with the change from my last Technorati ranking in parentheses. I don't have the links to the blogs, out of deference to Invesp.com. Follow the link to their ranking and then click through to the blogs of interest.

1. The Rest is Noise: Alex Ross, music critic (no change in rank from my last ranking)
2. Sequenza21: Jerry Bowles, new music and composers (+2)
3. La Cieca, James Jorden, opera (+6)
4. Wolf Trap Opera (never been on my lists)
5. NewMusicBox (the e-magazine, I've never included this because it has non-blog elements)
6. Opera Chic (-4)
7. Ionarts: Charles T. Downey, musicologist and critic (no change)
8. On An Overgrown Path: Bob Shingleton, producer (+3)
9. Jessica Duchen's classical music blog, critic and author (+1)
10. slipped disc, Norman Lebrecht, music critic (didn't make the list last time)
11. Mind the Gap: Molly Sheridan, music critic (was too new for my previous rankings)
12. Jason Heath's Double Bass Blog: (+19)
13. Opera Today (another e-magazine, even harder to call this a blog than NewMusicBox)
14. Dial "M" for Musicology, Phil Ford and Jonathan Bellman, musicologists (-1)
15. aworks: "new" american classical music, Robert Gable, enthusiast (-2)
16. The Collaborative Piano Blog: Chris Foley (+10)
17. mostly opera...: (-2)
18. BIS New Releases (not really a blog, the listing of Naxos new releases)
19. Out of Focus (not a music blog)
20. Musical Perceptions: me (+1)
21. Adaptistration, Drew McManus, consultant to the stars orchestras (-5)
22. finding my singing voice: Catherine K. Brown, vocalist (new to me)
23. The Rambler: Tim Rutherford-Johnson, musicologist and critic (and British!) (-6)
24. Jason Weinberger's blog: conductor and clarinetist (new to me)
25. The Omniscient Mussel: Marcia Adair, music critic (didn't make my last list)

There are some heavy hitters from my previous rankings who Invesp.com clearly don't know about, like Kyle Gann (PostClassic), and Greg Sandow. Some of the other highly ranked blogs from my previous lists are found in subcategories, like the number of pages indexed by Google and the number of incoming links. I don't know how Invesp.com weights the stats that kept them out of the top 25, especially AC Douglas (Sounds & Fury), Steve Smith (Night after Night), and Lisa Hirsch (the Iron Tongue of Midnight).