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Apple Music Classical

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Re: Apple Music Classical

#151

Post by tinus_hn »

lynx23 wrote: post #97
highhedgehog wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It means that the audio is sampled at 192khz and each sample is 24bit, not that the audio is recorded with hardware capable of recording sounds up to 192KHz

I know about nyquest, do you? 192kHz sampling rate means the highest tone representable is 96kHz, which is roughly 80kHz more then what the average human can actually (still) perceive. For audio-postprocessing, I might be convinced that there is a benefit of raising the sampling frequency that high, but for pure hi-fi consumers? No way. This is snakeoil.

If the average human can’t hear these sounds, that’ll just make the audiophiles think they have above average hearing.

Re: Apple Music Classical

#152

Post by lelag »

tgv wrote: post #37
lelag wrote: post #24

Strange feelings looking at this... This is almost exactly the product I failed to get into YC with back in 2017... All the same ideas as far as the UX goes with one main difference: the business model. I wanted to apply the Steam business model where people would actually buy album again (and not tracks a la iTunes). The issue is that while it's nice to have a UX tailored for classical, this won't likely help the cl…

I've used Idagio for 6 months. They have a reasonable interface, good performances and sound quality, but their catalog is indeed limited. There are hundreds of performances of the same well-known works, but there's not (very) much beyond it. I've discovered about 100 fairly unknown composers through YouTube that I consider quite good, but many of them are missing from Idagio, or are listed with one or two works. The…

> That could never change.

Trying to revert that situtation was my bet.

The 20th century was a golden age for recorded music. Maybe there is no coming back but I don't think (or I didn't think then) that streaming services are in a very strong position in the long run: consumers like them because the current deal is that you pay a single subscription and you have access to basically all the music (a very nice proposition indeed). But the streaming services own no content, the day the content owners find a more lucrative way to sell music they will move part of their catalog out of the streaming services and at the same time, make the product less and less attractive. At least, that was the theory.

Now, I think Spotify in particular, has built a strong moat due to their ubiquity (all devices support Spotify). It's getting late for pop music. For Classical, I don't know but 6 years ago, I was convinced there was still a strong possibility to save the old model since it was still making money on the traditional channels.

> Streaming will make it worse, though.

It has been the case for a while now.

Paul Baxter from Delphian Records said it best years ago:

"There's no way that a record company could operate on the fees from streaming alone. It's absolutely impossible. There are too many zeros in front of the amount-per-stream figure."

Re: Apple Music Classical

#153

Post by lelag »

adolph wrote: post #143
lelag wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly what pell said. The idea was to make the product "the album" again. In the past, the buying experience of a physical product was important to make it a powerful and personal experience: you had nice artwork, leaflet with information about the music you bought, bio of the performers etc. I wanted to try to recover some of that.

Given the enduring niche of physical media, why would a person choose non physical media for the artwork and leaflet experience? Would there be a UI that afforded the user thumbing through stacks, sliding the carton out, admiring the art as it is opened and an artifact unsleeved to be mated to a player? I suppose something like that would be possible with NFC (with write durability improvements). The NFC holds a toke…

One of the plan was to offer a bundled experience to the labels: you sell a physical media and the customer gets a code to add the album to their streaming library so they can also consume it digitally.

Edit/PS: It really feels strange arguing for an idea, I've given up on so long ago...

Re: Apple Music Classical

#154

Post by bowsamic »

BurningFrog wrote: post #107
bowsamic wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people are so starved of any kind of creative education that they see art in purely a utilitarian point of view. It doesn't matter to them if a human made it, the outcome is the same. To them, yeah pretty much all art is like a screensaver

If utilitarian means "I enjoy listening to it", I proudly am one.

Well naturally if your relation to art is that shallow then to you it is a genuine risk that it might be replaced by an AI version.

Re: Apple Music Classical

#155

Post by wwalexander »

gregwebs wrote: post #91
lynx23 wrote: post #80

192kHz/24 bit, what a wonderful piece of snakeoil... What do they actually record with this frequency, bats talking to each other about classical music?

It’s not that high- some music streams with higher sampling frequencies and bit depths. The main snake oil phenomenon that goes on is up sampling cd quality recordings to these levels. That doesn’t accomplish much other than confusion. Certainly the majority of systems out there are not high end enough to appreciate higher quality recordings unless they are wired headphones (a quality setup there doesn’t cost too muc…

There is no system high-end enough to allow your ears to magically hear 96kHz, or even 48kHz. Unless you’re very young with golden ears it’s extremely doubtful that you can hear a 24kHz tone. It is absolutely snake oil.

https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html is an overview by the creator of Ogg and Vorbis explaining exactly, scientifically, why these inflated sampling rates are snake oil.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cIQ9IXSUzuM is a longer video by the same person that debunks a lot of digital audio myths.

Re: Apple Music Classical

#156

Post by tinus_hn »

bouke wrote: post #51
activitypea wrote: post #50

...why not just music.apple?

Probably because they're branding it as "Apple Music", not "Music (by) Apple".

Also there is a record company called Apple Records that has a litigious history with Apple, it could be not worth the potential trouble.

Re: Apple Music Classical

#157

Post by bowsamic »

easyThrowaway wrote: post #145
csw-001 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would anyone want to listen to it then? what would be the point? The acoustic equivalent of a screensaver? I would think they would want to listen to it for the same reason they listen to human generated music. Is your thought here that AI generated art is not art? Is it the nature of the creator that determines the listeners enjoyment? If the music generated by a computer is indistinguishable from human made m…

It's way less complicated than that. Music and art in general belong to the social context that produced them. A lot of our appreciation doesn't really come from the technical prowess of the artist or the music theory behind that, but from the cultural hooks we can find in it. If you want a quick example of what I'm saying, look online for Music for Installations by Brian Eno. It's a "almost-generative-but-not-really…

Brian Eno was 100% right about ambient music, but he was just wrong about what form it would take. Basically, his music is so unintrusive to the point of being sleep-inducing for many, thus at least a little more intensity is needed. What really became the ambient music was 24/7 lofi hiphop streams. That kind of music is still very abstracted from a human composer, it just happens to have slightly different sonic qualities and sociocultural context than Eno, so it appeals to a wider audience.

EDIT: Should note that Eno's music is still very influential for a lot of people doing work. He composed Neroli after a lot of people doing intellectual work asked him for a new piece geared specifically towards it. Also, Discreet Music was historically used on many maternity wards. In general it is not as if he failed in the popular sphere, Eno is an extremely popular musician

Re: Apple Music Classical

#158

Post by microtherion »

MavisBacon wrote: post #140
Aidevah wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why would anyone want to listen to it then? what would be the point? The acoustic equivalent of a screensaver? Isn't that exactly how music is consumed nowadays by most people? They put something when driving, cooking, doing homework, etc. It's used mainly for mood/focus and they're not exactly paying close attention to it the same way one would to a audiobook of, say, an abstract algebra textbook. Especially consid…

>I suspect focused, attentive listening only makes up a small minority of the total streams The inverse is likely true with the classical audience. Just like with jazz, although there will be a portion of users seeking “vibey jazz” sort of playlists to use in the background while working, the majority of jazz fans consume jazz as albums and are still concerned with things like personnel and liner notes, perhaps even…

It might be useful, in both cases, to distinguish "fans" and "consumers" of those styles. Yes, the people who most consciously identify as fans of the styles are picky, but I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of classical play counts by volume are consumed for muzakish purposes. Mozart for babies, Vivaldi for malls, etc.

The same may be true for Jazz, though in that genre there may be a bit more of a separation between jazzy background mood music and jazz as consumed by fans. There are some overlaps ("The Girl from Ipanema", "Take Five", etc), but they may not be quite as central to the canon as their classical counterparts.

Re: Apple Music Classical

#159

Post by bowsamic »

Aidevah wrote: post #113
easyThrowaway wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would anyone want to listen to it then? what would be the point? The acoustic equivalent of a screensaver?

>Why would anyone want to listen to it then? what would be the point? The acoustic equivalent of a screensaver? Isn't that exactly how music is consumed nowadays by most people? They put something when driving, cooking, doing homework, etc. It's used mainly for mood/focus and they're not exactly paying close attention to it the same way one would to a audiobook of, say, an abstract algebra textbook. Especially consid…

> I suspect focused, attentive listening only makes up a small minority of the total streams.

You haven't justified your assertion of the dichotomy between pure blind consumption and active, focussed listening. You must actually argue that the negation of one implies the other. Your comment is totally meaningless as it stands

Re: Apple Music Classical

#160

Post by JasonFruit »

gumby wrote: post #136
nordsieck wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suspect that purchasing music files to own will seem increasingly strange and inconvenient to younger people, though. It'll be interesting to see what happens. As a fan of blues, I've noticed that there are a lot of grey songs in my Spotify playlists. There's just no practical way to be able to listen to the music I want to hear besides owning it (Youtube is hit-or-miss as well). For people who want to listen to…

> For people who want to listen to pop, they're probably fine. But anything that's even a little niche is trouble. Or that's my experience, anyhow. O what happened to the idea of the “long tail”, eh?

I guess the idea is, why would you long tail when you can Pareto Principle?
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