I have fairly broad musical tastes – it’s why I struggle when people ask me what kind of music I’m into. A couple of weekends ago, for example, you could have found me watching the Pet Shop Boys at the Royal Opera House on Saturday night, and the next day in a field in Hertfordshire at the always excellent Folk by the Oak festival.
Amazon is famed for it’s ecommerce prowess, and I must confess that I make full use of the next day delivery that Prime offers. So I’ve bought music in plenty of genres from Amazon, still mostly preferring CD to download (let’s not even mention “rental” here).
Amazon tries to learn from my buying patterns and likes to send me suggestions of what to buy next. Having bought a few folk albums from them, they naturally like to send me a regular email entitled Best-selling folk music..
It’s awful.
Here are a few genuine emails I’ve had from them so far in 2016:
January
Featured are Jame Bay, Adele, Mumford & Sons and Eva Cassidy. Mumford & Sons, I could just about allow as folk, and Eva Cassidy has certainly sung folk, although this album would best be considered jazz. But sorry – not Adele or James Bay!
February
Wow. All of these comfortably count as folk music. What’s more, this email is actually telling me about interesting new folk music.
March
Well Bellowhead Live is a great choice to be promoting. The Gloaming and Sandy Denny are fine too. But Daniel O’Donnell? Well I suppose I’ll allow it. I mean he’s definitely not Pop and Rock.
April
Just in case you thought their algorithms were learning, then fear not, because April saw two Adele albums, a James Bay album and George Ezra. I wouldn’t count any as folk.
June (I can’t see a May email)
Again, I can just about allow Mumford & Sons, and indeed Christy Moore. I’m not familiar with Max Jury but he perhaps straddles folk and country. And yes, Simon and Garfunkel I suppose could be folk too – their version of Scarborough Fair is on it after all. Maybe the algorithm is improving?
August (Again, no July email)
Ah – we’re back to Adele and James Bay again. But there’s also a Ministry of Sound compilation album no less! An unlikely label to be releasing folk. The album is subtitled “The perfect blend of laid back & acoustic covers.” Well… okay… but… Artists featured include Justin Bieber, Sam Smith, Bruno Mars, Sia, Ella Eyre and Florence + The Machine. So I really don’t think this counts.
I think I know what’s happening here.
Amazon obviously categorises every album they get into multiple categories. They’re effectively trying to add it to lots of categories to make sure every album is eminently discoverable. But that means that the same massive selling albums appear everywhere. And that means when they send an email like this, it makes a complete nonsense of it.
But it does seem that I’m getting two very different types of emails of “best-selling folk.” And very occasionally, Amazon might actually highlight a decent new folk album.
But mostly it wants to alert me about Adele’s older work, which seems entirely unnecessary, and most irrelevant, fine singer though she undoubtedly is.