So, I notice Technorati, the popular blog search engine, has started listing what they call "Popular Music - The music people are talking about right now." Now, how do you suppose they come up with this popularity list? By simply aggregating the number of mentions an artist/band has gotten from blogs, then ranking them? Nope.

They're ranked in order by links to a specific album's Amazon page.

Big deal, right? Why should you care? Because this isn't the most accurate way of doing things and it leaves the system open to all kinds of abuse. How so? Let's do a little experiment.

#1 on this list currently is this piece of poop. Let's say I'm one of those insane bloggers who wants to shamelessly whore out his site, but I'm also the world's biggest Belle Stars fan (go with me here). I suppose I could just make as many links to this CD as I could until it was number one on the list.

Or, if I was the record label, or heaven forbid, a new artist wanting to promote my first release, I'd just create a bunch of faux blogs and do the same thing.

This goes for Technorati's new Movies, Games & DVD rankings, too. Not the most scientific or relevant way of ranking things. Let's see what happens with that music ranking in the next few days, hmm? Now, it may discount multiple links coming from the same blog. That's where I need your help. Wouldn't it be fun to manipulate this doohickey and make the Belle Stars the "most talked about music" on blogs everywhere? You can make this dream a reality. Just post a link to the Belle Stars Greatest Hits CD on your blog and stick it to the man! Revolution!

Right now I have to bleach Lindsay Lohan off my brain. Ick.