Sooo this hits the nail on the head. I use Spotify myself, just because the student pricing is better than Idagio or Primephonic, even though the structure of their database makes searching for specific recordings frustrating.
But what about Spotify's power to introduce classical music to the masses??
- Those playlists “are exposing new, young audiences to classical music without them realizing initially that they are listening to classical music — they just know that they like what they are listening to,” Mark Mulligan of Midia said in an interview.
I heard through the grapevine a while back that Spotify was going to roll out a beta feature that improved search by opus number and composer. Does anyone have experience with that?
I tend to favor classical music by orchestra and conductor. Some spaces have much better acoustics than others and some conductors have a better grasp of how to make the music sing. I use Google Play Music (through iTunes and other stuff) and I've pretty much resorted to album title to get what I want. The tragedy is that the ID3 tag on an MP3 is plaintext. Both GPM and iTunes are basically XML parsers. The data is there; the major services could add searching for it super-easy but they don't.
I am strongly suspicious that this is a covert PR piece for the two new services linked in the article. I'm not saying the point they make is wrong, or that the products don't deserve attention, just that it seems like a covert PR piece.
I have to agree with Costanzo here. I can see how better classical music searching/filtering would significantly improve existing streaming services, but I have huge doubts about Primephonic and Idagio's viability over the long term. I know plenty of people who feel frustrated by Spotify's handling of classical music, but most of them just embrace the suck and construct personalized playlists of renditions they enjoy (or, in some cases, renditions they can tolerate). I think most casual listeners opt to deal with the pain of their existing streaming service, but I can't think of anyone who might want to buy a brand new streaming service just for the classics. If Spotify bought out Primephonic/Idagio, I could see people really enjoying their services on a more versatile platform.Such serendipity may be possible only if classical music exists on services alongside pop, hop-hop, country, Latin and the rest...“The segregation of classical music would be a shame,” [Anthony Roth Costanzo] said. Mr. Steffens and Mr. Janczukowicz, of Primephonic and Idagio, argued that the major services’ algorithms would always nudge listeners toward pop.
Guilty! Spotify also makes it really easy to share playlists; that "social media" aspect is good for sharing recommendations of favorite recordings, etc. with friends. I also totally agree that that separation would be a huge loss for everyone, even though my spotify statistics tell me that roughly 92% of my listening is classical and I might fall into that category of people who seriously consider a new streaming service.I know plenty of people who feel frustrated by Spotify's handling of classical music, but most of them just embrace the suck and construct personalized playlists of renditions they enjoy (or, in some cases, renditions they can tolerate).