I must say that I find the idea of how much machines are intruding into our lives a little unsettling, not least because they cannot always be relied upon to give correct results.
Looking back over past purchases at Amazon I find I have made a total of 31 for Debussy, 48 for Tchaikovsky (although some are spurious like a cd of Khrennikov concertos in which the Tchaikovsky orchestra figures) and 36 for Prokofiev. Set against these my purchases of 160 for Mozart, 120 for Beethoven and 80 for Haydn and we can see that the machine hasn't analysed the trends in my tastes very accurately. I suppose the factor of period must have been taken into account due to the fact that Stravinsky is closer to those who appeared in the search-list than the others who I mentioned.
I can only conclude that the Beecham box was thrown-in in the hope that I might find something there to appeal to me.
The whole thing reminds me of the amusing (if too-close-for-comfort) comedy sketch - I think it was in Little Britain - where a vacuous, disinterested office worker responds to every question with "The computer says 'No.' "
At the heart of the debate about consumer data and the web is the fact that Amazon and other firms customize their responses and communications based on our previous activities. So in essence, if the machine did not find enough direct answers to your request its suggestions will reflect what it perceives as your taste in music, in its efforts to entice you to buy something else. Someone else asking the identical question may get another response. How these search algorithms work is their secret, and essentially a constantly evolving exercise in predicting what will lead to increased sales.
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