I have gathered links to various lists of "best" musical recordings.
If you'd like to simplify things, I suggest starting with the Digital
Dream Door link below, which will lead you to a remarkable collection
of lists in many musical genres. There's something here for just about
every musical taste. Happy hunting!
Digital Dream Door: The Music Lists
http://www.digitaldreamdoor.com/pages/music0.html
Here's National Public Radio's list of "The 100 most important
American musical works of the 20th century":
NPR: The 100 most important American musical works of the 20th century
http://www.npr.org/programs/specials/vote/list100.html
National Public Radio's "Master List of Top 300 Songs":
NPR: Master List of top 300 Songs
http://www.npr.org/programs/specials/vote/300list.html
Grammy "Album of the Year" winners:
Lists of Bests: "Album of the Year" Grammy Award Winners
http://listsofbests.com/list/8/
Acclaimed Music: The All Time Top 2000 Songs
http://www.acclaimedmusic.net/1948-02s.htm
PatMedia: Ultimate Top 500 Rock Songs
http://www.patmedia.net/classicrock/TheUltimateTop500-2004.html
Rolling Stone: The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/5938174
Rolling Stone: The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/6596661
VH1: 100 Greatest Rock Songs
http://www.rockonthenet.com/archive/2000/vh1rocksongs.htm
Q Magazine's Greatest 100 Albums of All Time
http://listsofbests.com/list/13/
About Country: Top 500 Country Music Songs
http://countrymusic.about.com/library/top500/ptop500.htm
ChatZone: Top 500 Country Music Songs
http://www.chatzonenewsletter.com/cds/country500.html
Ron's World: The Top 100 Country Songs of the 20th Century
http://www.qsl.net/w5www/topcountry.html
Jazz 100: Top 100 Jazz CDs
http://home.austarnet.com.au/petersykes/jazz100/top100.html
Edge Inc: Top 100 R&B Songs
http://www.edge-inc.net/music/index.cfm/page/top/list/Rb.htm
Richmond Times Dispatch: Collection of the best classical recordings
http://www.timesdispatch.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=RTD/MGArticle/RTD_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031779578988
One last goodie: LivePlasma (formerly MusicPlasma) is an incredible
Macromedia Flash tool which helps you to find artists you might enjoy,
based upon your entry of the name of an artist you like. The graphic
interface is fascinating in its own right, and the database which
underlies the recommendations is very sophisticated. I cannot praise
this site too highly. Its only drawback is that it can be a time-sink.
I have spent hours here when I should have been working.
LivePlasma
http://www.liveplasma.com
======================================================================
My Google search strategy:
Google Web Search: "top OR best * musical OR music OR recordings OR songs"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22top+OR+best+*+musical+OR+music+OR+recordings+OR+songs%22
Google Web Search: "top OR best OR greatest music list OR lists"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22top+OR+best+OR+greatest+music+list+OR+lists%22
======================================================================
Judging the merits of artistic works is, of course, a highly
subjective thing. As they say in the rock 'n' roll world, one man's
Meatloaf is another man's Poison. ;-)
Thanks for an interesting research project. If anything is unclear or
incomplete, or if a link doesn't work for you, please request
clarification; I'll gladly offer further assistance before you rate my
answer.
Best regards,
pinkfreud |
Request for Answer Clarification by
chadbourne-ga
on
04 Apr 2005 10:38 PDT
Before I give you a rating, I have 2 follow-up multi-part questions.
First, when I enter the searches that you provided me into Google, I
am returned, as you are aware, hundreds of pages of results. What is
the default method of ordering all the individual websites that fit
the search criteria, for example - relevance, date, or some quality
rating method and can I set a method for prioritizing the listing of
sites on my own, either in Google, or some other search engine,say, by
the ranking it may have by number of visits of each site daily,
monthly or by some other method of popularity ranking similar to the
site ramking that Alexa provides? Secondly, after I enter the same
search terms you gave me a second and third time, will the list of
sites remain in the same order, so that I can go directly to the last
page and exact site reference and proceed on from their beeing assured
that all previous sites I have already covered remain mostly in the
same order; and if it is subject to change, what causes it and would
their be many changes to the list and its ordering in a week or so
that I do not have to retrace my steps?
|
Clarification of Answer by
pinkfreud-ga
on
04 Apr 2005 11:26 PDT
Google has assigned a "pagerank" to each site that it lists. The sites
with higher pagerank numbers appear first when you do a search. This
is not equivalent to Alexa's rankings, however, since it is not based
upon site traffic. Google's algorithms attempt to place the most
"relevant" sites first. Relevancy is determined by various factors,
including the appearance of keywords and/or metatags on the site and
the number of inbound links the site is known to have. The exact
method of determining pagerank is a closely-guarded secret that is
always in flux, since Google does not want unscrupulous site owners to
be able to trick their way to the top of the listings.
Google's listings are subject to change; there is no guarantee that a
search string will continue to bring up the same list in the same
order. Google is constantly updating its records, and there is a
certain amount of churning at unpredictable intervals (unpredictable,
that is, to all but Google's programmers). Usually the change is
gradual and almost imperceptible to the casual user, but when there
are major adjustments to the algorithms, search results may be greatly
affected.
The search string that I posted above is, as you have noticed, very
broad. My style of searching is to start with broad searches like this
one, and scan rapidly through hundreds of search results, page after
page, looking for the gold amid the dross. If you prefer a narrower
search that will bring up fewer results, you can add keywords. You'll
find a brief discussion of search-narrowing techniques here:
441,000 HITS? HOW TO NARROW YOUR SEARCH
http://www.phoenix5.org/resources/rvynet/RVYnet06.html
As an example:
This search string brings more than 5 million hits:
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22top+OR+best+*+musical+OR+music+OR+recordings+OR+songs%22
But this one (which replaces the "wildcard" with the number 100)
brings up fewer than half a million:
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22top+OR+best+100+musical+OR+music+OR+recordings+OR+songs%22
To narrow it further, I've added a musical genre, "classical":
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22top+OR+best+100+classical+musical+OR+music+OR+recordings+OR+songs%22
And, even narrower, "classical recordings":
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22top+OR+best+100+classical+recordings%22
We are now down to 13 listings, which is probably too few to be
useful, but I'm sure you get the idea.
Google's "Advanced Search" techniques are useful. You can tailor your
search string quite precisely here:
://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en
Info on using "Advanced Search":
://www.google.com/help/refinesearch.html
I hope I'm clarifying rather than muddying things. Please let me know
if there's anything more I can do for you.
~pinkfreud
|
Clarification of Answer by
pinkfreud-ga
on
04 Apr 2005 12:40 PDT
I just came across another online list that may interest you. This is
Double Time Records' list of top 100 historically important jazz
recordings:
Double Time Top 100 Historically Significant Recordings
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=15805
|
Request for Answer Clarification by
chadbourne-ga
on
05 Apr 2005 11:00 PDT
One quick thing - I can no longer sign onto digitaldreamdoor, neither
the link, nor the home page, removing all folowing .com in the link.
I am getting a 404 server not found error. Have too many people read
your answer and overwhelmed their capacity or can you suggest some
solution, short or mid-term?
|
Clarification of Answer by
pinkfreud-ga
on
05 Apr 2005 11:37 PDT
Oh, dear. I hope the popularity of Google Answers hasn't caused a
great site like DigitalDreamDoor to crash.
Until DDD is up and running again, you can find a ghostly image of the
site in the archives of the Wayback Machine. Here's the cached copy of
the lists-of-lists page. Not all of the links are functional, but many
are:
http://web.archive.org/web/20041127050941/http://www.digitaldreamdoor.com/pages/music0.html
Other caches of the site, also from the wonderful Wayback Machine:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.digitaldreamdoor.com/pages/music0.html
~pinkfreud
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