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Apple Music Classical

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Re: Apple Music Classical

#301

Post by highhedgehog »

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.

I think I misunderstood your first message. Yes, you are right.

For simple listening there is no benefit. As you pointed out it ca be beneficial if the audio is processed (for instance, slowed down).

Re: Apple Music Classical

#302

Post by lelag »

Miraste wrote: post #197
lelag wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 proposi…

Spotify's power comes from more than its ubiquity. Pop music, the kind that charts (and the only kind labels care about), is way more commodified than TV shows. If Sony were to make a streaming service with just their music and leave Spotify/Apple Music/Amazon/etc, their artists would simply fail to chart ever again. The advantage of a single streaming service with all the songs is also much greater than one with all…

I mostly agree with you there. If you look at pop music as a whole, it's impossible to attack them directly.

But I don't think that the moat could never be broken. You have many people that consume music as background noises. But you also have many people that are passionate about the music they listen to and would like to have another way to support their artist of choices other than going to concerts (see vinyl revival etc).

My recipe to break the moat:

- choose a genre some people care strongly about (for me, that was classical)

- make a platform that offer a better UX for that genre, and have them pay for their music (those consumer are happy because better UX and they feel they actually support the artist they like)

- progressively signup labels by showing there is more money on your platform than on streaming services, they will progressively remove more and more of their catalog from streaming services if they were on them.

- once the model is proven on that genre, move to another (jazz, serious pop etc)

- as time goes by, the value of your service increase and while the value of the streaming services is lowered due to their catalog shrinking.

While this might be a fantasy, the truth is that today system continue to reward popular artists only, niche genre artists can't make a living from streaming. If a solution arises for them, they will come progressively, and over time it will weaken the streaming service moat.

Re: Apple Music Classical

#303

Post by shadowtree »

This is great - it being a separate app solves some core problems!

It's a hard firewall between my "normal" music library and classical, which means risk free shuffle play. I never want Bach and Slayer in sequence.

They can optimize the UI, recommendations, etc. based on music that is all about reproduction, rather than being performed by the original artists.

Going against the grain and honing in on a total niche is so awesome and hopefully a sign of things to come.

I enjoy this split with movies too, the Criterion Apple TV app is such a nice break from the noisy HBO Max, etc. stuff.

And yes, I agree, Jazz would be an obvious next niche to target with a dedicated app!

Re: Apple Music Classical

#304

Post by disposition2 »

lifefeed wrote: post #226

I would love to see something like this for jazz, which has musicians constantly moving through groups and albums as musicians and composers and writers. Like take "Take Five", one of my favorites. It was written by Paul Desmond for the Dave Brubeck Quartet, with solos by Desmond on alto sax and Joe Morello on drums. Those are all fun pieces of information that I wish I could click through to see more of. Just like c…

Maybe it's just rose colored glasses but I want to say Rdio had support for things like this back in the early 2010s. I know it was the best music streaming service I've ever used for music discovery. I definitely recall it supporting things like music labels (i.e. Deutsche Grammophon) and want to say it got so granular that it provided the information (performers, conductors, etc) you are looking for. Alas, Rdio is no more :(

Re: Apple Music Classical

#305

Post by earthnail »

Oh my, 192kHz/24bit. One would expect Apple would not need snake oil to sell their product.

To those not so familiar with audio DSP: 192kHz and 24bit make perfect sense if you intend to mangle the audio a LOT afterwards. At 192kHz, you can pitch shift your audio down by two octaves and still have frequency content in the entire CD spectrum. Very useful, and common, for movie effects. And 24bit, or better even 32bit, basically eliminates any floating point errors when you have a DSP chain with lots of multiplications.

But for playback, you need around 32-40kHz sample rate and 10 or 11bits. Even 16bit is already overkill.

Re: Apple Music Classical

#306

Post by antiviral »

Sounds tempting, but Apple Music has been a terrible experience for me.

I recently signed up for the Apple Music subscription and was asked to 'sync my music with the Cloud Music Library" before I could create any playlists.

Shortly afterwards, I noticed that most of my music, which I had bought for over 10 years, just disappeared from iTunes with no explanation. I am still trying to figure out how to get it back, and regretting I just didn't stick with Spotify.

I'm glad that Apple is working on these new features, but I'm going to have a hard time trusting them with any new music related products until this gets fixed.

I am most probably going to cancel my Apple Music subscription, although I have no idea how I'm going to get my music back.

Re: Apple Music Classical

#307

Post by mariodiana »

perceptronas wrote: post #257

>Which devices is Apple Music Classical available on? >Apple Music Classical was built exclusively for mobile and is available on iOS with Android coming soon. I wish they made an app specifically for MacBook as well

I'd like to see them make an app for Apple TV, as well. The sound system setup with my television is the main one in my apartment.

Re: Apple Music Classical

#308

Post by cschmidt »

rsfinn wrote: post #299
cschmidt wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hadn't looked at Primephonic in a while, but their site is now just a letter on how they're working with Apple: https://www.primephonic.com/

As of just now, that link redirects to the "Apple Music Classical" press release page.

You're right, it has changed since this morning.

Re: Apple Music Classical

#309

Post by crazygringo »

lifefeed wrote: post #226

I would love to see something like this for jazz, which has musicians constantly moving through groups and albums as musicians and composers and writers. Like take "Take Five", one of my favorites. It was written by Paul Desmond for the Dave Brubeck Quartet, with solos by Desmond on alto sax and Joe Morello on drums. Those are all fun pieces of information that I wish I could click through to see more of. Just like c…

I think the problem with separating jazz is that its boundaries are far more porous than classical.

There's virtually never a question as to whether a piece is classical or not. (Except maybe soundtrack scores which are a weird category of their own.)

But jazz tends to fuse with every other genre out there. You can find an artist at every point on the spectrum between jazz and hip-hop.

Another way of looking at it is, I never want classical tracks in a non-classical playlist. But I want jazz tracks mixed with non-jazz in my shuffle all the time.

And just one more point -- composers matter in classical just as much as artists, hence the need for special UX. But composers mostly aren't prominent that way in jazz. There are lots of standards but most people aren't aware of who actually wrote most of them.

Re: Apple Music Classical

#310

Post by adriand »

lelag wrote: post #288
pwinnski wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can definitely see why they passed. In 2017, it was already clear that streaming options render any music-purchasing platform niche at best, and a shrinking niche at that. Sad, but true.

It's only true as long as the content owner play with it. The day the content owner stop wanting to license their catalog, the platforms die. The majors let themselves go into that trap because they failed at finding a viable digital model and the streaming platform showed them a way to keep making some money. Show them a better model that works and they will follow the money. In 2017, the classical music market was…

I wonder if a key element is direct connections with fans. My 13-yo daughter is obsessed with classical music and her favourite performers seem to have strong YouTube presences.

Outside the classical world, if you look at a site like Bandcamp, that idea seems core. The business model also seems exactly like what you are talking about, both for performers and for the site. I see a lot of very obscure, niche electronic stuff that is supported by hundreds of people. That may only be thousands of dollars, not tens of thousands. However, it’s an economy. And compare earning $10 for the sale of a single album to the number of streams you need to earn that much revenue. We are talking orders of magnitude difference.

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