Amazon Classical Music Forum's Listmania

I'm no expert on classical music, although I have been known to listen to NPR at times. As I slogged my way through a major expansion of my Classical Mania aStore, I was surprised at just how many of the featured artists I actually had heard of. I guess I should have expected that. Classical music is part of our culture, after all. Not pop-culture or counter-culture, just plain culture -- the things we all hold in common that bring us together.

Stereotypes about classical fans abound, but I discovered in glancing over Amazon's Classical Music Forum they are actually a pretty diverse group. I was encouraged to find that the forum was less opinionated and more informative than the dread pop-music boards. There was also a considerable amount of attention paid to beginning classical buffs. I guess everybody has to start somewhere.

If you're looking for E. Power Biggs definitive recording of Bach's renowned Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, it's here. (A recording I know of strictly as a stereo equipment enthusiast. I mean you could smoke-test your bass with Inna-Gadda-Da-Vida, but how prosaic that would be!)

You might be surprised how much classical music you've heard a thousand times, but just couldn't name. After all, The Lone Ranger and Beat the Clock didn't have to pay royalties to Rossini and Khachaturian! You can also give yourself a big pat on the back if you immediately realized that Arthur Sullivan is more often mentioned in conjunction with his librettist William S. Gilbert.

Here is a selection of classical music Listmania lists from the Amazon Classical Music Forum:

1. Hoshour's Guide to Definitive Symphonic Cycles
2. Listening List for Trumpet Students
3. Hoshour's Guide to World Class Violin & Cello Concertos
4. Hoshoshour's Guide to Definitive Beethoven Symphonies
5. Hoshour's Guide to Definitive Bruckner Symphonies
6. Hoshour's Guide to Definitive Brahms Symphonies
7. Hoshour's Guide to Definitive Piano Concertos
8. Hoshour's Guide to Definitive Mahler Symphonies
9. Music CDs I Listen to in 2007, and Music CDs I Recommend.
10. Sublime Beethoven recordings
11. Essential Prokofiev
12. Best Brahms Symphony Cycles according to The Penguin Guide
13. Best Beethoven Symphony Cycles according to The Penguin Guide
14. Got Scenery?
15. Wade's Piano Student Listening List #1
16. My favorite classical recordings of 2007
17. ~Handel's MESSIAH~the best recordings~
18. A Ranking of Rach 3
19. Music of Howard Hanson
20. Favorite "Messiah" Recordings
21. My 20 Desert Island Recordings
22. Essential Brahms
23. Christmas-Themed Classical Music
24. Mahler for Audiophiles
25. Great Christmas Music From Various Genres
26. CHRISTINE SCHäFER's GREATEST REALIZATIONS...
27. GLENN GOULD's GREATEST REALIZATIONS.
28. My favourite opera recordings on DVD
29. Great Classical at a Great Price!
30. Favorite Classical Music on the Philips Label
31. A Must-Have Mahler Cycle
32. A Strauss-Lover's Four Last Songs
33. My Favorite Italian Pop
34. Collecting the Deutsche Grammophon Collector's Series Classical CDs
35. Deutsche Grammophon "Archiv" Favorite Recordings
36. Building an Outstanding Classical Music Library with Box Sets
37. The World of Classical Music and the Performing Arts!
38. A Debussy Discography
39. Classical Trumpet
40. Some uncommonly beautiful recordings
41. Not Just for Longhairs: Funny Classical Music
42. Leonard Bernstein, Renaissance Man
43. Classical Entry Points
44. Musical Performance Practice Favorites
45. Classical Music starter list
46. Classical Music
47. Classic Recordings of the Rachmaninoff Piano Concertos
48. Classical pieces recorded by progressive rock groups
49. Classical Music - sophisticated structures in sound from the Masters
50. Classical Music For People who don't like Classical Music
51. Heavenly Voices

Featured Classical Music

This article really is about Classical Music, but first I'm going to "entertain" you with a brief diatribe on the semantic web and search engine optimization. People like choices, but they don't like to be overwhelmed with a very large number of choices. Amazon.com's approach to this is a logical one: They arrange their products into broad categories, which are divided into subcategories, and further into sub-subcategories for as many levels as they find appropriate, as in the familiar outline form.

This is reasonable, but it presents a problem to those searching for products. Without a key to Amazon's taxonomy (or outline), one might easily take a wrong turn in the process of "drilling down" to the specific target classification. Search engines don't adequately address this problem. Attempts to search for a specific category simply return all items containing the search keywords instead of limiting results to category headings.

Google's PageRank alogrithm (and other search engine ranking schemes that are less well-documented) only compounds this problem. Briefly, search engines assume that the more specific "lower" levels of the outline are less significant than the "higher," more general headings. In fact, we humans already have our own taxonomy in our rich and diverse languages (English, in this case). It is far more likely that we will select highly specific terms in our very first search attempt than extremely broad ones. PageRank is upside-down.

What does this have to do with classical music? Only this: Amazon's Classical Music category is a recent spin-off of their more general Music category and has relatively few subcategories. Therefore, I hope to achieve my goal of creating more useful search engine listings sooner and more directly in these top-level categories:

• Featured Classical Music
• Classical Music (All Labels)
• Classical Music Compilations
• Classical Music by Composer
• Classical Music by Performer
• Classical Music by Period
• Ballads
• Ballets & Dances
• Canons
• Concertos
• Chamber Music
• Electronic Classical
• Etudes
• Fantasies
• Fugues
• Improvisation
• Inst: Classical Brass
• Inst: Classical Keyboards
• Inst: Classical Percussion
• Inst: Classical Strings
• Inst: Classical Winds
• Inventions
• Lullabies & Berceuse
• Opera & Vocal
• Oratorio
• Preludes
• Program Music
• Requiems, Elegies & Tombeau
• Rondos
• Sacred & Religious
• Scherzo
• Serenades & Divertimentos
• Short Forms
• Sonatas
• Suites
• Symphonies
• Toccatas
• Variations

Top Listmania!(TM) Lists: All Categories

Amazon publishes a list of "Top Listmania Lists," but it's not entirely clear how these lists are rated. Ratings don't seem to be based on helpful votes or number of times read -- at least not entirely. I suspect they are rated largely according to their conversion rates -- how likely readers are to actually purchase items from the list. That would certainly make sense from Amazon's point of view, and come to think of it, mine too.

For the most part these lists supply additional information beyond just the automatic pictures, prices, and links to product pages. Whether you find this information credible or not is your call, but apparently others have found it helpful, and that is a big plus!

1. Some Cookbooks for a Creole or Cajun Kitchen
2. My favorite Bond movies!
3. Nick Hornby and Company!
4. Doctor Who - Sixth Doctor (Baker Seasons 21-23)
5. The Poetry of Ryokan
6. Cool Passions I Profess
7. Recommended Tanka Poetry Books
8. Kanshi
9. Refined Kabbalah
10. Japanese Poetry
11. Buddhism & Women - The Feminine
12. The U.S. invasion of Vietnam
13. Ryokan's poetry
14. Haiku
15. Zen Buddhism: Old-Style
16. Japanese Novels and Stories in Good English
17. Doctor Who - Third Doctor (Pertwee Seasons 7-11)
18. Koto and Shakuhachi
19. Doctor Who - Seventh Doctor (McCoy Seasons 24-26)
20. Fun books about Chickens
21. Top Ten UNIT Operations (Doctor Who)
22. Issa - Haiku Poet
23. Doctor Who - Fifth Doctor (Davison Seasons 19-21)
24. Historical Fiction set in Asia (includes India)
25. Off the Beaten Path in Historical Fiction
26. Beautiful Kyoto
27. Dharma Bum Inspiration
28. Candlemaking Mysteries by Tim Myers
29. Hanshan - Cold Mountain Poems
30. Appreciation for Sanford Goldstein
31. HK Fantasy
32. Best Books I've Read This Year
33. Buson - Haiku Poet and Painter
34. Some Great Burton Watson Books
35. Heroic Friendships
36. Wandering Through Japan
37. Basho - Haiku Master
38. Intellectual Apothecary
39. The Psychedelicon
40. Great SciFi Books Harriet Klausner has NOT reviewed!
41. Inspiring sci-fi and fantasy (yes, it does exist!)* under construction
42. Qumran Cave
43. Samurai - Origins to Warring States Part I
44. Sweet ,Romantic DVDS
45. Explorer Series - Complete*
46. The Art of Andrey Tarkovsky
47. my favorite music
48. Welcome Oscar
49. A Few Good Catholic Titles
50. Amazon Shorts: GOLD-DUSTED-GATEWAYS into Star-Studded Minds.
51. Doctor Who - Second Doctor (Thoughton Seasons 4-6)
52. A little perfume goes a long way...
53. Hemmingsonia!
54. Czech books
55. Autumn
56. Doctor Who - First Doctor (Hartnell Seasons 1-4)
57. Horror Books That Shouldn?t Be Missed
58. Faith Scrapbooking
59. Book Video Trailers!!!!!!!
60. HUMOR IN MANY LANGUAGES
61. Self, Soul & Consciousness; Physics, Philosophy & Biology of
62. Books to Read Aloud to a Kid an Adult Can Love, Too
63. Reading Films is Fun--Spanish Language Films
64. "Rockin Good Stories, Good Wine, and Great Food"
65. My Favorite Ambleside Online "Extras" List 1
66. Doctor Who on DVD -- The New Series
67. Doctor Who: The Handbooks
68. Cifford Pickover
69. Infinite Wealth of Knowledge and Networks
70. Vernon Joynson
71. I Feel Better Because of.......poems?
72. Mystery in History
73. Book clips, book videos, book trailers
74. Not Your Typical Board Games
75. 25 Mucho Fantastic Horror Stories
76. What I've read in 2007 (to be updated)
77. Stranded on a Deserted Isle With Just 5 Books
78. The most underrated Doctor Who stories
79. Third Set of The New Adventures (Virgin Doctor Who novels)
80. LOVE HAS STRANGE WAYS
81. A CLASSICAL SCHOLAR : MICHAEL GRANT (As Author&Translator)
82. The Old Testament
83. Rainbow Water
84. Space-Age Cocktail Music
85. Be a (Thinking) Conservative
86. Best Doctor Who on DVD
87. I really DO love Lucy!
88. The Thinking Man's Guide to 30 Best Japanese Films on DVD
89. Ghost Toasties Part II
90. Historical Romances I've read and loved
91. Great Music accompanied by Oscar Peterson
92. Star Trek Movies--Best to Worst
93. Not too cool for school--movies about school
94. Kojeve and the End of History; Primary &some Secondary Texts

Amazon.com's Most Popular Gifts: Music

Amazon.com publishes a series of gift guides, which change over time and may even disappear altogether. These snapshots are an excellent indication of what products are popular on any given day. While the content of the guide may vary, these music CDs should be around for a long time...

1. Raising Sand
2. Noel
3. Carnival Ride
4. As I Am
5. Magic
6. Sawdust
7. The Reminder
8. Mothership 2CD/1DVD
9. Taking Chances
10. Reba Duets
11. High School Musical 2
12. Let It Snow (EP)
13. The Ultimate Hits
14. One Chance (With Bonus Tracks)
15. Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley Cyrus
16. The Best of Andrea Bocelli: Vivere
17. Still Feels Good
18. One Man Band [CD + DVD]
19. Complete Clapton
20. Coco
21. Echoes Silence Patience & Grace
22. Across The Universe [Deluxe Edition]
23. Songs of Mass Destruction
24. Blackout
25. Exile on Mainstream
26. It Won't Be Soon Before Long
27. Back to Black
28. System
29. Daughtry
30. Kill to Get Crimson
31. The Shepherd's Dog
32. Rough Around the Edges: Live from Madison Square Garden
33. Drastic Fantastic
34. Revival
35. Icky Thump
36. Hvarf/Heim
37. American Gangster
38. Music for the Motion Picture Into the Wild
39. Just Who I Am: Poets & Pirates
40. Red Carpet Massacre
41. Chrome Dreams II
42. Not Too Late
43. I'm Not There
44. Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
45. 5th Gear
46. Some Hearts

Featured Artists

• Andrea Bocelli
• Garth Brooks
• Michael Bublé
• Colbie Caillat
• Kenny Chesney
• Eric Clapton
• Dane Cook
• Daughtry
• Celine Dion
• Duran Duran
• Feist
• Rascal Flatts
• John Fogerty
• Foo Fighters
• Josh Groban
• Iron & Wine
• Jay-Z
• Norah Jones
• Alicia Keys
• The Killers
• Mark Knopfler
• Alison Krauss
• Led Zeppelin
• Annie Lennox
• Maroon 5
• Matchbox Twenty
• Reba McEntire
• Hannah Montana (Miley Cyrus)
• Robbie Nevil
• Original Soundtrack
• Brad Paisley
• Robert Plant
• Paul Potts
• Seal
• Sigur Rós
• Britney Spears
• Spoon
• Bruce Springsteen
• James Taylor
• KT Tunstall
• Carrie Underwood
• Eddie Vedder
• The White Stripes
• Amy Winehouse
• Neil Young