Best Classical Music Blog?

As regular readers know from my rantings a couple of years back when Spring For Music foolishly held a contest to find out the arts blog in the English-speaking world, I am skeptical of the entire concept of the best of anything. So I am duly skeptical about the news I received today: this blog is among a number that have been nominated by the staff at Forte - which makes a music notation software program - for the title of best classical music web site.

It's just silly. The nominees are all excellent in their own ways and I encourage you to read them all!

There's also the big problem of some of these things are not like the others. The nominated bloggers include critics and general music writers (me, Alex Ross, Jessica Duchen), group reviewing sites (Ionarts, I Care If You Listen), music business writers (Drew McManus, Greg Sandow), composer/critic/academics (Kyle Gann), general culture bloggers (Terry Teachout), opera sites (Parterre Box, Opera Today), and NPR Music.

Really, we are not all comparable, and an awful lot of great writers were omitted: Mark Berry (Boulezian), Jon Silpayamanant (Mae Mai, one of the best business-of-classical-music blogs around), Kenneth Woods, Likely Impossibilities, C.K. Dexter Haven, Dial "M" for Musicology, etc., etc.

So my thought is that you should vote for whomever you like, or not. Apparently the winner will get some software licenses to give out to friends and fans. I know nothing about this software and assume the contest is primarily an attention-getter.