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Why Can't Streaming Services Get Classical Music Right?

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Re: Why Can't Streaming Services Get Classical Music Right?

#11

Post by fleshgolem »

sneak wrote: post #6

"The other huge issue, in terms of classical streaming, is sound quality. It stands to reason that picky, "elitist" classical music fans would also be picky about audio standards as well. And while it's entirely true that bit rates don't matter one whit when you're listening through standard-issue earbuds, most of the best-established current services don't emphasize great audio quality. Mahler's epic, sweeping Fifth…

Even if he could... maybe he should just use the paid option with enhanced quality, especially if he starts comparing the thing to Tidal

Re: Why Can't Streaming Services Get Classical Music Right?

#12

Post by rhaps0dy »

creshal wrote: post #7
sneak wrote: post #6

"The other huge issue, in terms of classical streaming, is sound quality. It stands to reason that picky, "elitist" classical music fans would also be picky about audio standards as well. And while it's entirely true that bit rates don't matter one whit when you're listening through standard-issue earbuds, most of the best-established current services don't emphasize great audio quality. Mahler's epic, sweeping Fifth…

Consistently, maybe not. But I have a few songs in my library that, despite 256kbps bitrate, have half-second encoding artefacts (i.e., maybe six seconds in some 80+ hours collection) that always made me go "whoa, why does my speaker sound funny? …oh, it's that song again" until I canned them – I had them both as MP3 and FLAC in my library due to just importing everything on my HDD. After I wasted time checking speak…

That's why I use variable bitrate.

Re: Why Can't Streaming Services Get Classical Music Right?

#13

Post by Intermernet »

Strangely, I find that most of my classical music is streamed acceptably (not perfectly, but good enough).

Try listening to Abbey Road, or Dark Side Of The Moon, or any other album that relies on zero second time gaps between tracks with a constant beat (The most recent example I can remember would be Chemical Brothers, "Further", between track 1 and 2). That is annoying, and has been throughout the history of stream-able audio.

Why can't we get canonical track timing for albums (down to the sample) and base the playlists accurately off them?

Does anyone else have this problem, or am I doing something terribly wrong? I've come across this problem on iTunes, WMP, Spotify, VLC, Google Music, Soundcloud and pretty much any other digital audio player out there that isn't designed for production (Traktor, Serato, DAWs). The fact that Traktor and Serato get this perfectly right hints that the "consumer" products just don't really care about this problem.

Re: Why Can't Streaming Services Get Classical Music Right?

#14

Post by eafkuor »

jasonkester wrote: post #8

This reads like a spec for a startup opportunity. It's so clear to any one of us what the data model needs to look like and how to make search work. The only real issue is the human labor needed to do the data entry, and the licensing. The market is huge though. Whoever steps up and attacks this with VC will do quite nicely. I wouldn't be surprised to see a startup launched from this article in the next YC round.

How would you even start a startup like this one? Where do you get the money and manpower? I'm assuming you need a couple of lawyers as well

Re: Why Can't Streaming Services Get Classical Music Right?

#15

Post by rhaps0dy »

eafkuor wrote: post #14
jasonkester wrote: post #8

This reads like a spec for a startup opportunity. It's so clear to any one of us what the data model needs to look like and how to make search work. The only real issue is the human labor needed to do the data entry, and the licensing. The market is huge though. Whoever steps up and attacks this with VC will do quite nicely. I wouldn't be surprised to see a startup launched from this article in the next YC round.

How would you even start a startup like this one? Where do you get the money and manpower? I'm assuming you need a couple of lawyers as well

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTOlrN5-UGU

Just a couple?

Apparently you should not mess with music. http://www.ycombinator.com/atyc/#n4 "a rogue state with nuclear weapons"

Re: Why Can't Streaming Services Get Classical Music Right?

#16

Post by chestnut-tree »

sneak wrote: post #6

"The other huge issue, in terms of classical streaming, is sound quality. It stands to reason that picky, "elitist" classical music fans would also be picky about audio standards as well. And while it's entirely true that bit rates don't matter one whit when you're listening through standard-issue earbuds, most of the best-established current services don't emphasize great audio quality. Mahler's epic, sweeping Fifth…

"...sound quality"

BBC Radio 3 in the UK streams classical music at 320kbs over the internet. (I'm not sure if international users get this high bitrate stream or a lower bitrate though.)

Re: Why Can't Streaming Services Get Classical Music Right?

#17

Post by masklinn »

creshal wrote: post #7
sneak wrote: post #6

"The other huge issue, in terms of classical streaming, is sound quality. It stands to reason that picky, "elitist" classical music fans would also be picky about audio standards as well. And while it's entirely true that bit rates don't matter one whit when you're listening through standard-issue earbuds, most of the best-established current services don't emphasize great audio quality. Mahler's epic, sweeping Fifth…

Consistently, maybe not. But I have a few songs in my library that, despite 256kbps bitrate, have half-second encoding artefacts (i.e., maybe six seconds in some 80+ hours collection) that always made me go "whoa, why does my speaker sound funny? …oh, it's that song again" until I canned them – I had them both as MP3 and FLAC in my library due to just importing everything on my HDD. After I wasted time checking speak…

And you've got the bonus that FLAC uses vorbis comment metadata which is completely arbitrary (the vorbis spec has a list of non-mandatory examples of fields)

Re: Why Can't Streaming Services Get Classical Music Right?

#19

Post by sisl »

jasonkester wrote: post #8

This reads like a spec for a startup opportunity. It's so clear to any one of us what the data model needs to look like and how to make search work. The only real issue is the human labor needed to do the data entry, and the licensing. The market is huge though. Whoever steps up and attacks this with VC will do quite nicely. I wouldn't be surprised to see a startup launched from this article in the next YC round.

You'd be targeting a niche market, not only because of the 3% market mentioned in the article, but because I imagine that all "serious" classical fans (i.e. serious enough to switch to consider using a dedicated streaming service) is also likely to have a big album collection. In other words, you'd likely be targeting a very fast-saturated market.

And that's besides the legal/licensing horrors.

That being said, I think there might be some promise in an add-on for spotify (web-api / browser extension) or iTunes. Just extend the interface with some more metadata. Surely there are some good databases that can be relied on.

Re: Why Can't Streaming Services Get Classical Music Right?

#20

Post by leecarraher »

i think alot of the suggesting issues is with the collaborative filtering model often used in suggesting songs in a streaming music service. The collaborative filtering model is not well suited for communities with extremely high variance within a specific genre. In other words, in the context of the model, classical, and classical sub genres are not differentiated enough, in terms of individual interest, to form a new independent cluster. The example being, I like romantic era classical, but i don't thumbs down at the first note of a classical/period classical piece. It's that openness that retrospectively is killing the model. A human curated classical playlists like on 8track, I suspect produces a better experience (of course depending on who put the list together). Crowd sourcing beats collaborative filtering here it seems.
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