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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?

#31

Post by bryanlarsen »

What makes listening to anything other than entire albums (radio, streaming, etc) unpleasant for me is the volume settings.

Most people listen to classical way too quietly. Most classical music has a very wide dynamic range. Your volume should be adjusted so that the very quietest parts are loud enough to hear every subtlety and so that the loudest parts shake your bones.

A single trumpet playing at full volume is loud enough to cause hearing damage. An orchestra has several of them, along with 50+ other instruments.

Loud orchestras are loud enough that freaking cannons do not necessarily overpower them.

So next time you're listening to classical music (or jazz), crank it up, and discover how much more you enjoy it.

Unfortunately, you'll ruin streaming and radio, though. They're often compressed, ruining that huge dynamic range. Each piece will have a different level, so you'll constantly be playing with your volume knob to get it set correctly. Which is really hard if you've never heard the piece before -- is it supposed to be loud or quiet?

And if you're listening to the radio with the volume set correctly, the announcer will start screaming at you. I love the CBC's Julie Nesrallah's voice, but I can't listen to her program because they have her voice turned up way too loud. If they turned it down the program would be much more enjoyable, and people would enjoy the music more because they'd turn their radio up to hear her properly.

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

#32

Post by panglott »

Is classical music distribution a problem that streaming can easily solve? In pop music, you have people singing in different national languages in perhaps hundreds of commercially viable genres. Classical music certainly has genres (opera, early music, modern), but it's a coherent tradition, so switching between subgenres is more like switching between classic rock and contemporary rock than between rap and country. Moreover, classical music is in wide supply, as many mid-sized American cities have a quality classical radio channel (say, on NPR), regular amateur performances, and even professional orchestras and other companies. Besides, good-quality classical recordings are cheap and widely available in a wide variety of formats.

EDIT: My point was that perhaps the benefits of a good streaming service are lower to classical consumers (than pop music, which focuses more on unique individual performances). If the costs are higher and the benefits lower, that could be a sufficient explanation.

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

#33

Post by panglott »

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.

> The only real issue is the human labor needed to do the data entry

Well there's your problem right there.

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

#35

Post by dhowden »

I've been frustrated about this for quite a while. About a year ago, I decided that I should just try to roll my own (just for me, using my music collection).

I've since open sourced my effort here:

https://github.com/tchaik/tchaik

What it does (so far):

- prefix grouping (so that Symphonies/Concertos etc are automatically grouped together, and the groupings transfer into playlists etc - so you can queue a whole symphony at once). - enumeration detection. - splitting multiple artists into separate fields (common where you have Conductors and Orchestras as the artist). - reads iTunes XML Music Library files, or will extract metadata from supported audio files in a directory tree (see https://github.com/dhowden/tag for supported formats!). - store your music in the cloud (Amazon S3 supported), locally (on the same machine that hosts the UI server), or on a remote file store. - web UI (using ReactJS), music played through HTML5 audio.

Amongst the things that are still in the "plan": - gapless playback (HTML5 makes this a bit tricky/messy). - Opus codec support (for streaming to mobile devices). - many more things!

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

#36

Post by dhowden »

I've been frustrated about this for quite a while. About a year ago, I decided that I should just try to roll my own (just for me, using my music collection).

I've since open sourced my effort here:

https://github.com/tchaik/tchaik

What it does (so far):

- prefix grouping (so that Symphonies/Concertos etc are automatically grouped together, and the groupings transfer into playlists etc - so you can queue a whole symphony at once). - enumeration detection. - splitting multiple artists into separate fields (common where you have Conductors and Orchestras as the artist). - reads iTunes XML Music Library files, or will extract metadata from supported audio files in a directory tree (see https://github.com/dhowden/tag for supported formats!). - store your music in the cloud (Amazon S3 supported), locally (on the same machine that hosts the UI server), or on a remote file store. - web UI (using ReactJS), music played through HTML5 audio.

Amongst the things that are still in the "plan": - gapless playback (HTML5 makes this a bit tricky/messy). - Opus codec support (for streaming to mobile devices). - many more things!

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

#37

Post by vermooten »

I had exactly this prblem when I signed up to Qobuz yesterday. Just as the author did, I typed in 'Mozart magic Flute' and got all kind of crap back in no specific order. They did however allow me to select a specific CD and sort of 'save' that.

'Brahms Clarinet' didnt do well at all.

Metatdata designed for pop / rock doesn't work for classical.

I cancelled my Qobuz sub after a few hours on the basis that they didn't even TRY to solve this problem.

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

#39

Post by andybak »

birdsbolt wrote: post #10
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.

http://musicbrainz.org/ already has this data available.

Yep. And I was participating many years ago when we figured out a pragmatic way to handle the mapping between simple ID3 style fields and the complex needs of classical - so that non-classical aware media players were at least usable. I wrote the first draft of this: https://wiki.musicbrainz.org/Style/Classical

but I haven't looked at Musicbrainz for many years to see how the rules and tools have changed.

However - no-one else since has even tried to tackle this problem.

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