[HN Gopher] Apple Music Classical
___________________________________________________________________
Apple Music Classical
Author : tosh
Score : 469 points
Date : 2023-03-28 08:03 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (learn.applemusic.apple)
(TXT) w3m dump (learn.applemusic.apple)
| tiffanyh wrote:
| When did Apple start using the .apple TLD?
|
| This seems confusing, and something out of the norm for their
| marketing strategy.
| dharma1 wrote:
| why the serif headline font tho? Because it's classical?
| nicky0 wrote:
| The curlicues and flourishes on those serifs add an extra layer
| of warmth and richness to the sound.
| john-doe wrote:
| Anyone not on a recent macOS gets 'serif', Times New Roman in
| most cases. Classy!
| mrkwse wrote:
| I'm really keen to dive into this however as someone knee deep in
| the ecosystem it's baffling that it doesn't have proper native
| integration with Apple TV/HomePod. You can Airplay with your
| phone as the source, but not with the receiving device being the
| source (which is typically a nicer and more reliable approach as
| some phone applications can interrupt the streamed audio).
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| Atmos doesn't carry over on airplay either.
| jon-wood wrote:
| I was also really excited for this, coming from the angle of
| someone who's never really got into classical music. It seemed
| like a nice opportunity to dig into it a bit with some
| (hopefully) good curation. The lack of a macOS app is baffling
| to me, most of my music listening is done while working, using
| the nice pair of wired headphones I have connected to the dock
| on my desk, but apparently Apple think I'll only want to listen
| to classical music on a pair of AirPods, which while alright
| are not the best.
|
| At the very least make a slight nod to the fact you _own the
| entire stack from hardware to app_ and allow me to install the
| iPad app on my laptop.
| asmor wrote:
| There is no iPad app. It runs in iPhone compatability mode.
| [deleted]
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| > applemusic.apple
|
| > not music.apple
|
| Good Lord! You had _one job_.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Oh it's even worse than that:
|
| learn.APPLEmusic.APPLE/APPLE-music-classical
|
| Three repetitions of "apple"! And the learn subdomain is
| meaningless. I like that they're using their .brand TLD but
| their URL strategy still needs some work.
| HeavyFeather wrote:
| Give them time, it's not like they can afford to hire capable
| people.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Just want to point out that the human hearing range goes up to
| 28khz, not 20khz as is commonly claimed.
|
| I can still notice a very subtle difference when I downsample
| 96khz to 48khz. It used to be more pronounced when I was younger,
| but I always thought that was the placebo effect. It wasn't until
| I went and read the Wikipedia article on the human hearing range
| that I realized that I wasn't imagining it.
|
| Basically, music that correctly reproduces up to 28khz has a
| sparkle effect that's also very noticeable in a live concert
| hall.
| jshaqaw wrote:
| I've been on the app all morning and loving it but it's not even
| full size on my iPad. Come on Apple you can do better than that!
| vjulian wrote:
| Have TV and cinema solved the cataloging issue or at least the
| categorization issue? If so, why can't music adapt it and serve
| all genres? We can easily analogize to studios, seasons,
| episodes, years, directors, actors and so forth.
| EricE wrote:
| Cool - I have been looking forward to this since the first rumors
| of it possibly being a thing started to circulate.
| AJRF wrote:
| Anyone noticing there is _serious_ view caching issues with this
| app? Every menu I click into will briefly show me a previously
| navigated to screen.
|
| Say root is View A which has two sub views B and C
|
| I go into B, then back to A, then into C - it will show me B for
| a second.
| nishad_g wrote:
| Now make one for Indian classical music. Indian classical is as
| rich as European, with it's ragas and talas and so many
| instruments (tabla, sitar, sarangi... )
| thewebcount wrote:
| As mentioned up-thread: https://www.apple.com/feedback/apple-
| music.html
| ot wrote:
| This might be the thing that makes me jump ship from Spotify.
| Catalog there is not great and the track listings are all
| useless, you need to wait 30 second for the text to scroll before
| you get to the useful piece of information.
| throwanem wrote:
| They actually haven't really improved on that, but I don't
| mind, because search and discovery are excellently done.
| jen729w wrote:
| Err... downloaded on my iPad.
|
| It launches as a scaled iPhone app. You must be f'ing kidding me?
| pasc1878 wrote:
| It does say it is iPhone only and in the FAQ
|
| "Classical fans who want to listen on their MacBook, iPad, or
| in their car can open Apple Music to enjoy the tracks, albums,
| and playlists they saved in Apple Music Classical, thanks to
| the shared music library."
|
| Which does not help me as I share from my mac - so hoiw do you
| do this?
| bippingchip wrote:
| Yes I ran into the same thing - It's disappointing, though
| maybe understandable as this is an iteration on the
| Primephonic app they acquired a while ago. And though I
| cannot find any reference to it anymore, if memory serves
| right, that was mobile only too?
|
| I hope that over time Classical will make it onto the Mac as
| well. I listen to a lot of classical music while I work and
| it's more than a bit annoying that the play/volume controls
| on my Mac don't work...
| meghan_rain wrote:
| lmao
| EntrePrescott wrote:
| > "For example, from the formal Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 14
| to the popular byname of Moonlight Sonata, or in multiple
| languages, such as Mondschein Sonata in German."
|
| "Mondschein Sonata"? WTF Apple? Not only is that factually wrong,
| but... that's not even German - neither as a whole, nor the
| "Sonata" nor the space (Deppenleerzeichen). Maybe Apple should
| ask someone else than Siri or a marketing intern to write texts
| with factual claims outside of their fields. The actual popular
| German sobriquet for that Sonata is "Mondscheinsonate". As for
| "Sonata", that's part of the (Italian) title of its first
| published edition: "Sonata quasi una Fantasia".
| anecdotal1 wrote:
| Apple didn't write this, the company they bought this app from
| did
| HeavyFeather wrote:
| So Apple wrote this. Worse yet, their _specialists_ in
| classical music wrote this. The page is littered with Apple
| logos and it lives on a .Apple TLD, no need to be an
| apologist for 2.5 trillion dollar company.
| d35007 wrote:
| I mean, there's also no need to freak the fuck out over a
| minor issue in German text on a predominantly English page.
| Ok, so "Mondschein Sonata" isn't exactly the same as
| "mondscheinsonate", but it's damn close and it gets the
| point across: Some works have different names in different
| languages.
|
| Guess what happens when I search Apple Classical for
| "mondscheinsonate". In fact, don't guess. Try it.
| CE02 wrote:
| I understand the concern about this being rather useless fluff
| with no real differentiation beyond a cute and UX. However, as
| someone who grew up playing music, I truly believe that listening
| to "difficult" music exercises the brain in a way similar to
| reading a good book. Because of that, I am all for any lipstick
| on a pig that might bring the general public deeper into
| classical music.
| amacbride wrote:
| It's definitely not perfect, but I'm enjoying it, as someone who
| has been unhappy with Spotify's haphazard approach to classical
| music.
|
| I was exploring the "Harpsichord" category and Bach's Toccata No.
| 6 in G Minor, and saw a performance by Glenn Gould: "Glen Gould
| on the harpsichord? Oh, how interesting! [listens] How...not a
| harpsichord."
|
| So there are still a few bugs to be worked out.
| betagam wrote:
| Same on YouTube. Even when I'm searching specifically for
| harpsichord music, the first result is harpsichord music played
| on piano. That's not the instrument the music was composed for.
|
| It's surely interesting to hear what a piece sounds like when
| played on an other instrument, but it should't be the norm in
| my opinion.
| tw600040 wrote:
| Please if someone from Apple is listening: Please pay some
| attention to Indian music as well. I mostly only listen to Tamil
| songs and when Apple came out with iTunes Match or something
| where they analyze your library and match it to what they have in
| cloud, they just incorrectly matched songs with the Telugu
| version and ones from other languages and totally messed up my
| collection. And, this day and age, why should all Indian music be
| clubbed under "Foreign" genre by default?
| _venkatasg wrote:
| I've noticed that soundtracks show up in this Classical music
| app, so some (not all) of my Tamil songs (which are songs from
| movies because that's how most pop/commercial music in India is
| released) are listed there now.
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| It's a licensing issue. There are a whole bunch of albums
| missing in one language but available in another. All the
| latest ones are decently organised. Then there's the nightmare
| where a single song is uploaded with its own album title (From
| XYZ...). It's unusable. I think it's there to tick a box.
| thewebcount wrote:
| You can file your feedback for Apple Music here:
|
| https://www.apple.com/feedback/apple-music.html
|
| That's the only way your voice will get heard.
| pradn wrote:
| Even JioSaavn, which is focused on Indian popular film music,
| doesn't do anything special. It's a bit more similar to
| classical music than American-style pop in terms of
| organization. Music directors are responsible for the entire
| album of a film, with singers being brought on for a track or
| two. So one might want to slice by music director, just like
| looking at all Bach pieces. It's not quite the case with pop
| producers, who are usually behind-the-scenes. Fans of Indian
| popular music often follow their favorite music directors, even
| if they have little interest in the films the music is a part
| of.
|
| However, even then, this slight difference is well papered-over
| by just including the music director in the list of artists who
| made a song.
|
| Indian classical music, however, has a wholly separate and more
| intricate form of organization. You'd at least need raga and
| the properties of the raga (like the dominant rasa & associated
| time of day), along with the various singers and
| instrumentalists in the ensemble and their instruments. It
| would be great to search for "morning"-raga-based Carnatic
| vocal concerts with the lead singer being Sudha Ragunathan.
| joemi wrote:
| This touches on one of my least favorite things about Apple
| Music: They don't have different versions of a lot of stuff.
| I've seen many cases where a particular track they have with an
| album is actually a single version (or vice versa), and
| somewhat like your Tamil/Telugu issue, single and album
| versions can be quite different.
| substation13 wrote:
| I get it, but I also wish they could make one app that gets all
| of this stuff right. They could start by improving on the data
| model. "Unknown Artist" would never pass code review!
| timeimp wrote:
| >Available worldwide, wherever Apple Music is offered, excluding
| China, Japan, Korea, Russia, Taiwan, and Turkey.
|
| Err... why?
| mrtksn wrote:
| Interestingly, the enforcement is through App Store and not
| through Apple Music account or ip address locality.
|
| So, users from these countries can simply sign in with an Apple
| account from any other country, install the app, switch back to
| the actual account and use it just fine.
|
| On any other service, including Apple TV plus, it's the other
| way around: You can access the app or the website but the
| content will be limited to your current physical location(ip
| address actually).
|
| Which makes me believe that it's not about licensing. I haven't
| checked but probably the same songs are available on Apple
| Music anyway.
|
| It's a mystery why Apple wouldn't release the UI for classical
| music in countries where they do offer the music catalog
| already.
| gillygize wrote:
| Maybe they haven't finished localizing the content for those
| countries yet?
| mrtksn wrote:
| Maybe, but some of those countries are quite big markets.
| Why would Apple miss out on those?
| pwinnski wrote:
| It's always rights.
|
| The composers may be largely long-dead, but the
| recordings are controlled by labels, so there are rights
| involved.
| egeozcan wrote:
| Probably licensing, if I have to make a guess.
| comprev wrote:
| Most likely licensing and not technical - we were one of the
| only classical music apps which streamed high quality audio
| through The Great Firewall of China, and as such was praised
| by a few magazines. That was back in 2018/19 though and the
| delivery infrastructure may have changed since being
| acqhired.
| snickmy wrote:
| I salut a major company focusing on classical music. That said,
| how many small startup / scale up will be dead in 1 year because
| of that ?
| jzb wrote:
| Are there start ups that you're thinking of this competes with
| directly?
| tempodox wrote:
| This has to be a joke, right? Given Apple's enmity towards
| headphone cables, I don't see the point. Their Bluetooth EarPods
| can never ever render the necessary sound quality.
| mihaaly wrote:
| Those who want and appreciate the sound quality already using
| better than Apple speakers or headphones. If you read carefully
| the footnotes referenced state the need of proper external DAC.
| They know it is not for everyone and not forcing it on everyone
| unnecessarily, still allowing those in need to have it.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| Why would it be a joke?
|
| First, surely you grasp that many people use these things
| called "speakers" to listen to music. Not all consumption is
| done with headphones.
|
| Second, even if we narrow the question to headphone listening,
| the "failure" or "unsuitability" of Bluetooth for headphones is
| profoundly overblown. In 2023, gGood headphones, wired or
| wireless, sound fine if given a decent source.
|
| I was definitely a skeptic, and while I couldn't set up
| anything like ABX testing, I have spent time trying to honestly
| compare my AirPods MAX to my price-peer wired Sennheisers run
| through a FiiO headphone amp.
|
| The tl;dr is that it's POSSIBLE the traditional wired setup
| might sound a tiny bit better, but both sound REALLY REALLY
| GREAT. Any edge possibly enjoyed by the traditional setup was
| thin, and only evident in fairly narrow cases.
|
| I was pretty surprised given my original bias against wireless
| headphones for critical listening, but here we are.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| You can plug a DAC in to an iPhone. And AppleTV can output
| 24bit 192khz PCM, or Dolby Atmos over HDMI to a receiver.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| Am the only person who finds it completely ridiculous that not
| even _APPLE_ can launch the iPad version of this app at the same
| time as their iOS one?
|
| I launch it on my iPad (which is hooked to my external dac/amp
| setup via usb-c) and I see.. This: https://imgur.com/a/cAX0zZA
| twobitshifter wrote:
| I agree, this is another indication that the app may say Apple
| but it's really not developed inside Apple. Steve Jobs would
| have fired someone in 2023 if he saw a tiny screen on his
| gigantic iPad. If they're okay with doing this then why isn't
| there a phone-sized calculator available to install on iPad?
| lolsal wrote:
| They are being pretty agile and releasing something for iOS and
| will iterate to release a custom iPad version later, relying on
| the fallback mechanism that has existed for years for app
| scaling. Why does this upset you so much? Just because they are
| big doesn't mean they have to do everything all at once, all
| the time. They are dog-fooding their own multi-device app tech.
| I think it's great.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| I mean I'm not really upset or anything -- I will live with
| it of course.
|
| I only mentioned it as.. Well. Don't you find a crappy
| experience from a company that obsessives so much over user
| experience a little surprising?
|
| You'd have thought if anyone could nail an iDevice software
| release it would be Apple..
| Aeolun wrote:
| Of course... "This app is not available in your country or
| region."
|
| Silly me, why would I ever think something like that spplies to
| me.
|
| > Available worldwide, wherever Apple Music is offered, excluding
| China, Japan, Korea, Russia, Taiwan, and Turkey.
|
| ??? Why are Japan and Taiwan listed together with a bunch of
| terrorist states?
| aikinai wrote:
| Not sure about Taiwan, but maybe because Japan is like a
| terrorist state in regards to music licensing?
| make2 wrote:
| where are you? in Croatia it's available, but icloud one or
| books, or tv+ isn't
| shadowtree wrote:
| 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!
| mylons wrote:
| _you_ may never want Bach and Slayer in sequence, but Randy
| Rhoads, Eddie Van Halen, and I would. I do love this app,
| though. It presents everything in such a way that makes
| classical music more interesting, organizable, and accessible.
| basisword wrote:
| >> 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.
|
| It's actually not. The library is shared so your classical
| music will still appear in Apple Music. It's just that your
| pop/rock etc. music will not appear in the Classical app. e.g.
| add a playlist or album to your Classical library then check
| recently added in the standard Music app - you should also see
| it there.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| > I never want Bach and Slayer in sequence.
|
| I've found interesting, creative serendipity in sequences like
| that.
|
| With dynamics controlling tools such as ReplayGain (and Apple
| Music has something similar built-in today though less well
| documented) to avoid massive "loudness war" shifts it doesn't
| even break a flow state for me sometimes and can be really
| interesting _to my flow_.
| danhau wrote:
| > and Apple Music has something similar built-in today though
| less well documented
|
| Can I enable that somehow, or is it enabled by default?
| WorldMaker wrote:
| My understanding is that it is enabled by default. I wish
| it were better documented.
|
| Apparently, the official feature name is "Sound Check":
| https://www.cultofmac.com/622492/apple-music-volume-sound-
| ch...
| 015a wrote:
| On the one hand: Apple has released (at least) two new "major"
| consumer "apps" over the past year (Freeform and this). This
| gives me positive echos of "old Apple"; a company that took the
| software as seriously as the hardware, that apps like Aperture
| and Logic were _critical_ to the Mac becoming what it is, and
| that they should have a hand in creating not just the platform
| and technologies, but the actual experiences that drive
| productivity (and now entertainment) for the people who join
| their platforms. This can solve a real problem for a lot of
| customers; I am not one of them, so I 'm unqualified to say if it
| actually does solve those problems, but I'm really happy that it
| exists.
|
| On the other hand; release is step 1, and given this is based on
| an acquisition I think its totally fair to be skeptical. I shared
| this with my dad this morning, who is an old classical music nerd
| and pianist for the symphony orchestra in town. His first
| reaction: Does it have a Mac app? (It doesn't). And see, that gap
| is actually really significant when you think about it, because
| people like him, in that niche; they are appreciators, for better
| or worse, of audio quality. Hi-Res lossless, awesome, that's
| table stakes. He has a Mac Mini wired up to a Schiit Yggdrassil
| and some amp that weighs 50 pounds and a set of speakers that he
| drove 300 miles away to "get a deal" on (he paid $18,000 for
| them. that was a "deal". my mother was not happy about it). Using
| an iPhone is a complete non-starter. He uses Qobuz primarily,
| alongside an obscene collection of SA-CDs, and despite this app
| being 90% there toward being something awesome he could use; he
| won't.
|
| So I think that's what I mean by Step 1; developing "niche"
| software like Freeform or Apple Music Classical isn't an obvious
| step for Apple. They won't get insane metrics for these apps.
| They won't drive measurable revenue. But I really deeply believe
| that this kind of niche investment is what separates companies
| like Microsoft and Apple from companies like Google; as they say
| about Google, if its not a billion dollar business it won't even
| get a team. Microsoft and Apple do understand the insane power of
| network effects, and the power that solving one niche really
| freakin well can have on bringing customers into the fold of
| their platforms, and keeping them there. Microsoft for M365 and
| Apple for their consumer software.
|
| I think that's the era we're entering in software; we've solved a
| ton of the problems that have "100M users" as their TAM. As an
| example: note taking. Its solved. It can be iteratively improved,
| but everyone has their favorite app, we switch every once in a
| while, and its best for me that that improvement happens within
| the context of a platform I've already adopted. Large software
| companies should really be open to moving down the TAM ladder;
| what problems do 10M people have? 1M? Freeform is one stab at
| that: diagramming and flowcharts. But we also can't accept these
| apps having 10x fewer features or 10x less quality just because
| they have a 10x smaller TAM; software is multiplicative, and
| potentially exponential now that we have generative AI capable of
| helping out.
| wmeredith wrote:
| Freeform kicks ass
| dcdevito wrote:
| [dead]
| vachina wrote:
| Wished there is an option to control the dynamic range.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| My main hope for this was that it would be as wide and deep as
| possible. We can then apply our own Dolby compression filter if
| we want to, in our listening hardware.
| lelag wrote:
| 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 classical industry to
| thrive again.
|
| To simplify a bit, the classical music industry is composed of:
|
| - the majors labels (Universal Music, Sony, Warner and EMI)
|
| - A dozen large independent labels (Naxos being the largest)
|
| - hundreds of small labels
|
| The majors mostly care about promoting a few star performers and
| milking their huge existing catalog. They have no problem with
| putting everything on subscription services for pennies. This
| what you find on all subscription services.
|
| The larger independent labels also have significant catalog and
| some will also put part of it on subscription services but mostly
| won't.
|
| However, it is totally financially impossible for the smaller
| labels which are actually recording most of the interesting new
| records to survive on the pennies they would get from
| subscription services. Most of them have rejected that model and
| caters to the increasingly niche market of audiophile still ready
| to buy new high quality music.
|
| As a classical music fan, I'm happy to see that there will
| finally be an offering offering a good experience and massively
| increasing discoverability (which is terrible in mainstream
| services).
|
| But unfortunately, this wont change the fact that the classical
| recording industry is dying and that the sector is only surviving
| thanks to public and private subsidies.
| ar9av wrote:
| I love how patient classical music fans are when people ask THE
| SAME QUESTION over and over and over again on forums as to why
| there's a need for a separate classical music app. You
| classical music fans rock...
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| I would say the classical music fans deeply tremolo instead
| of "rock".
| nordsieck wrote:
| > I wanted to apply the Steam business model where people would
| actually buy album again (and not tracks a la iTunes).
|
| Could you expand on this a bit?
|
| I am very much a track oriented person. Why do you think it
| would be better to force/encourage people to buy albums?
| pell wrote:
| I don't know what OP's business model looked like exactly.
| However, classical music is often composed and performed as
| full works, such as symphonies, operas, and concertos, rather
| than individual songs or tracks. These works are often
| intended to be listened to in their entirety and are
| structured in a way that builds upon and develops themes
| throughout the piece.
|
| Another problem is that the way classical music is divided
| into tracks is sometimes not universal. For example, there
| are some recordings of Mahler's Symphony No. 5 that are
| divided into five separate tracks (one for each movement)
| while others divide it into just two tracks (one for the
| first three movements and another for the final two
| movements).
|
| While there are many modern music albums that were intended
| to be listened to as full albums (e.g. "The Wall", "American
| Idiot" or "To Pimp a Butterfly"), I guess the track-based
| listening experience just won over in that part of the music
| world. That said, people often also just listen to a single
| sonata, aria, etc. in classical music too, of course, instead
| of always going for the 2 hour experience.
| wiredfool wrote:
| Listening to a Missa Solemnis that's broken up into about 5
| tracks per movement.
|
| There are gaps between the tracks.
|
| Sigh. Gapless playback should be a hard default.
|
| (edit, and it's not a stylistic choice, some of the gaps
| are within words)
| justincormack wrote:
| Although in many cases the album experience is annoying, eg
| a violin concerto followed by a couple of short pieces to
| fill time. I don't usually want to listen to all of them
| and end up making playlists to separate them again.
| lelag wrote:
| 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.
| adolph wrote:
| 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 token
| allowing for the play of a particular album. For each non-
| cached play, a new token is generated and sent to the NFC.
| The album represented by the NFC can then be loaned or
| resold like the old way of physical media. Maybe even let
| the NFCs go bad after a few thousand token rewrites just
| like how vinyl and tapes wear out. It would have no
| improvement over old media other than having a large and
| fragile IT infrastructure.
|
| _Vinyl record sales outperformed CDs in the US for the
| first time since 1987, according to a new report. Just over
| 41 million vinyl records were sold in 2022, to the tune of
| $1.2bn (PS.99bn). Only 33 million CDs were sold, amounting
| to $483m._
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/64919126.amp
| lelag wrote:
| 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...
| nemomarx wrote:
| Honestly, this is a lot of what I like about bandcamp. (I
| really hope that epic buying them isn't a bad sign, on
| that note...)
|
| It's nice to get a cd or a cassette, with some fancy
| holofoil cover on it, a little artifact of a band I like,
| and still have it on my phone, in my browser, whenever I
| want to listen to it. I could dig out the actual
| equipment to play those things directly, but usually
| that's a pain, and I just want to have them as a totem or
| something.
| adolph wrote:
| To think of a totally different possible trajectory of a
| technology is a bit like reading counterhistorical
| fiction. The interesting part isn't just the assertion of
| something different but in considering the various second
| order effects.
| nine_k wrote:
| Classical works very often come as a whole, with 3-4
| particular "tracks" marking parts of that whole. It would be
| like selling a books by chapter.
|
| OTOH maybe it would work. The Moonlight sonata underwent
| this, and the first track of the album is well-known and
| iconic, the third track is also widely recognized, but the
| second track is much more obscure.
| waboremo wrote:
| It's interesting how despite classical music having such a
| surge of listenership (thanks largely in part due to video
| games), they've been unable to do much about it. You contrast
| this with the likes of the vinyl industry, which has
| capitalized on its revival through packaging and branding to
| the point of outpacing CDs... it's a pure shock that this step
| by Apple is really the only thing being done.
|
| Just like vinyl, I don't think the solution is digital!
| echelon wrote:
| > But unfortunately, this wont change the fact that the
| classical recording industry is dying and that the sector is
| only surviving thanks to public and private subsidies.
|
| Bet $100 that all classical music will be AI generated
| (synthesized and composed) in just three years. Supply side
| will be infinite.
| johndill wrote:
| I'd have to disagree. Classical music would be the LAST thing
| AI could do well. Hard to but technique, nuance, opinion,
| interpretation, style and the greatest utterances of our
| troubled civilization into an algorithm. Pop, dance, rap,
| blaalads....maybe. Classical and Jazz? Never going to happen.
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| Lmao, classical and jazz are the two simplest forms of
| music. Without any lyrics to generate its basically just
| generating some simple patterns in basic instruments.
|
| There's no way you'd be able to tell.
| jen20 wrote:
| > jazz > Without any lyrics
|
| Have you ever heard of Ella Fitzgerald?
| wizofaus wrote:
| > classical and jazz are the two simplest forms of music
|
| Uh, have you actually listened to any of it? At all?
|
| There are some non-Western traditional types of music I'd
| agree can have a level of complexity not usually
| encountered within the Western classical or jazz genres,
| but it's fair to say all over forms of Western music are
| vastly simpler in terms of harmonic language, tonality,
| form/ structure, instrumentation etc. None of which I
| believe would make it harder for AIs to generate, as
| computers can manage complexity rather well. What I
| expect AIs to not be good at is to conjure a truly
| original and distinct sound world significantly different
| to anything that's come before, but that still captivates
| audiences. Which is arguably what the greatest human
| composers & musicians have generally achieved, in any
| genre.
| jshaqaw wrote:
| Which music forms are you referring to?
| wizofaus wrote:
| The "over" was a typo for "other" (hope that was
| obvious!). But that primarily refers to the pop/rock/folk
| genres. One point I'd agree on is that it will take
| longer for AI technology to produce a satisfying
| simulation of the human singing voice than it will for
| purely instrumental music. In fact despite the leaps and
| bounds in speech synthesis I've yet to hear any sort of
| convincing demonstration of synthesized singing. But I
| can't see why there's any real reason it won't happen
| sooner or later.
| ckolkey wrote:
| You.. you're joking, right?
| t12049 wrote:
| Classical and jazz are actually the primary Western music
| genres where you encounter some deep music theory.
|
| EG: Read something like George Russell's "The Lydian
| Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization" (the basis from
| which modal jazz sprung, which includes one of the most
| famous jazz albums of all time, Miles Davis's "Kind of
| Blue"). Now add to the theory the ability to improvise
| around it as good as a Miles Davis level jazz performer
| can. It's not technically easy at all.
|
| Even if other music genres are much technically easier,
| so much of music is the social experience anyways.
|
| Take punk music. Though some parts got more technical
| later, much of it (particularly the late 1970s / early
| 1980s stuff) is, in my opinion, very technically easy;
| not too challenging to play, with very basic music
| structure (which was half the point, a return to rock's
| garage roots).
|
| I'm guessing an AI can probably be developed (especially
| with today's fairly realistic sounding guitar VSTs) to
| make some "technically correct" old school punk rock,
| certainly much easier than it can be programmed to make
| "technically correct" modal jazz. An AI, however, cannot
| replicate the human parts, eg the social or community
| aspects of a music scene. Which with a lot of music is a
| huge portion of the point (certainly for punk it was).
| MavisBacon wrote:
| I personally would love to see some AI model imitate
| Thelonious Monk compositions and solos. The result would
| probably be hysterical
| johndill wrote:
| I have think you have defined the terms of battle. An
| improvisational jazz solo from a master vs one that is AI
| generated. I don't know this but I suspect that Monk had
| no idea where his solos were going when he started to
| play them. I like where they went, I'm just saying there
| were no directions.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| You probably will be able to get imitation in the not too
| distant future. But a world where we just listen to
| imitations of 50s and 60s derivatives of bebop is a sad
| one. The most loved musicians are ones who are pushing
| things forward and don't just imitate Trane endlessly or
| whatever.
|
| AI would need to be able to do something like create The
| Bad Plus in 1995. That's an even bigger mountain to
| climb.
| MavisBacon wrote:
| What about imitating Coltrane's Classic Quartet? That
| would be INSANE
| easyThrowaway wrote:
| Why would anyone want to listen to it then? what would be the
| point? The acoustic equivalent of a screensaver?
| bowsamic wrote:
| 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
| BurningFrog wrote:
| If utilitarian means "I enjoy listening to it", I proudly
| am one.
| bowsamic wrote:
| 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.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I don't think we'll end up agreeing, but I'm curious what
| "deeper" ways to enjoy music than listening to it you
| favor?
| bowsamic wrote:
| Relating to it as a creative process. Connecting directly
| with the artist, mind to mind, through the art. Being
| liberated from my current perspective. Story telling.
| Revolutionary mental states. New synergistic paradigms.
| All the actual reasons why people have been making art
| for many 1000s of years.
|
| Or, just keep your pacifier, baby ;)
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Thanks.
|
| I've chosen to think of art in terms of products I
| consume, and less as admiration of artists, though of
| course I do some of the latter too.
| bowsamic wrote:
| You should not admire artists, but I'm sad for you that
| art is just a product for you, and not a source of your
| own expression. Some people naturally gravitate to a
| subservient, non-creative position.
| oriolid wrote:
| > The acoustic equivalent of a screensaver?
|
| It already exists, and is known as elevator music or muzak.
| I can certainly see the value in generating endless
| copyright-free background music, because so many human
| effort has been put into composing it already.
| easyThrowaway wrote:
| Sure, but the OP point was specifically about Classic
| Music, not incidental soundscapes.
| oriolid wrote:
| I know, I wasn't the one who brought up the "acoustic
| equivalent of a screensaver".
| easyThrowaway wrote:
| Alright, but why would I actually spend time to actively
| listen to it? Op was specifically talking about Classic
| music being replaced by AI in listening events, not about
| staying on hold on a phone calls or waiting on a parking
| spot.
| oriolid wrote:
| You wouldn't actively listening, and that's why generated
| muzak would be okay. "The acoustic equivalent of a
| screensaver", as someone in the thread called it. The
| idea that classical performances would be replace human
| composers in concert context is quite ridiculous. Maybe
| as a novelty, once, but that's all.
| Aidevah wrote:
| >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 considering how cheap and easy it is to steam
| music nowadays. I suspect focused, attentive listening only
| makes up a small minority of the total streams.
| MavisBacon wrote:
| >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 who
| mastered this recording. Classical fans are similar
| except I would say even more picky IME (worked in a jazz
| and classical CD store/venue for a number of years)
| caddemon wrote:
| I wouldn't call myself a classical music fan, but if
| we're looking at Spotify stream numbers I wouldn't be
| surprised if a big chunk of classical is background noise
| too. Whenever I'm trying to get work done in a noisy
| environment I go for classical playlists - unless I'm
| doing something mindless like cleaning I find it very
| hard to focus with most music. Might just be that lyrics
| (especially in English) distract me, but classical is an
| easy go to for studying time IMO.
| rejectfinite wrote:
| There is 45k streaming the lofi girl on youtube now.
| Maybe not jazz but simmilar typ, also mostly background
| music.
| microtherion wrote:
| 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.
| MavisBacon wrote:
| these are fair points, I suppose I was more addressing
| this with the "classical fan" user in mind given the
| context of the discussion, idea of a platform that serves
| these users. It definitely is true though that a huge
| portion of music listeners in general would rather throw
| a random playlist on than select an album and it would be
| interesting to somehow see how many classical listeners
| on say Spotify are doing so through playlists vs selected
| albums.
| bowsamic wrote:
| > 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
| csw-001 wrote:
| > 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 music, how can this be
| possible? Moreover, at what point would the computer
| generation be sufficient to shift it from art to
| "screensaver"? Would it be one simulated member of an
| otherwise human orchestra? Would it take 50%. If you can't
| draw a line, doesn't that further indicate it's irrelevant?
| easyThrowaway wrote:
| 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" music album made for
| audiovisual installations. It's... kinda nice but it's 6
| hours long and literally gets boring after less than 30
| minutes.
|
| I can't imagine listening to something even more
| abstracted from a human composer for more than 20
| minutes. I mean, I'm pretty sure you can generate
| something even quite pleasant with AIs. Most people will
| just listen for 15 min, say "uh, cool", and go back to
| regular music.
| bowsamic wrote:
| 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
| Gatsky wrote:
| I would have disagreed with you 5 years ago but actually I
| think you could be right. There are adjacent examples of
| transcendent human experiences being synthesized - eg people
| falling in love with that Replika chatbot.
|
| I feel grateful that I heard the Mahler symphonies before the
| great flood of AI content, at least I will always have that.
| But perhaps AI could complete his 10th symphony...
| risyachka wrote:
| Bet $200 practically no one will care for AI generated
| classical music.
| throwanem wrote:
| I'd remind you J. S. Bach exists, and ask if you want to
| think this one over.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| J. S. Bach ceased existing in 1750.
| easyThrowaway wrote:
| The idea that Bach composed the Well tempered clavier and
| similar works merely in a mechanical process is basically
| a fairy tale, and it's kind obvious once you read the
| music sheets.
| throwanem wrote:
| I might've been clearer I was making a joke, I suppose.
| easyThrowaway wrote:
| Oh. Sorry, I've heard that so many times with no hints of
| irony that it flew quite over my head.
| throwanem wrote:
| No harm done. Chalk it up to appreciating the music in
| near perfect ignorance of its contemporary social context
| - I had no idea that'd been a controversial point until I
| went looking for why something I'd thought a harmless
| joke had crossed people.
| wildrhythms wrote:
| What does this mean?
| throwanem wrote:
| Bach's _oeuvre_ is practically inexhaustible and after a
| while gets to feel a bit samey in places. This led me to
| make a joke that, judging by a sibling comment of yours,
| has not landed well among Bach fans, who seem to have a
| history [1] of being annoyed by such badinage.
|
| Apparently there's something about his work that's seen
| [2] as uniquely susceptible to automation, and I suppose
| I can see where the irritation would come from. Doesn't
| bother me any, but then I've always preferred Beethoven
| anyway.
|
| [1] https://slate.com/technology/2019/03/google-doodle-
| bach-ai-m...
|
| [2]
| https://www.nytimes.com/1997/11/11/science/undiscovered-
| bach...
| lelag wrote:
| I would bet heavily against that any such generated music to
| become popular (except maybe as bad filler music for video
| games music etc).
|
| The truth is that classical music fan are very very picky
| about what they like.
|
| Computers have been "better" musician than human for a long
| time: a midi file is always played "perfectly". Yet it's
| sounds horrible, mechanised to our ears. The controlled
| imperfection of a real human musician is what makes the music
| beautiful.
|
| I don't see any computer composing anything worth listening
| to in the foreseeable future (and I'm bullish on generative
| ai).
| crtasm wrote:
| Can't speak for generated compositions but midi data is
| played however your software is programmed to do so, which
| could include adding imperfections.
| lelag wrote:
| What I'm saying: take a classical score as is and input
| it perfectly as a midi file and you are guaranteed to
| have a terrible output. Yet on paper, it's perfectly
| rendered as the composer wrote it.
|
| This is why the act of playing music by a human is called
| a "performance", an "interpretation" in some languages.
| The musician is not just playing a score exactly as it is
| written, the musician gives a part of his/her into the
| act and make the music his/her own to make art.
| EricE wrote:
| And you don't think AI can't be programmed to "interpret"
| too? You haven't been paying attention much, in the last
| few weeks in particular
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yX9J4RIsvOA
| crtasm wrote:
| So the performers are following some learned patterns of
| what they need to do with the written score to make it
| sound not-terrible to you. I disagree that's only
| possible for a human to achieve.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| !remind me 3 years
|
| You could make the argument that charting pop music will be
| AI generated, or Spotify will be pushing AI generated music
| through all their popular playlists to avoid paying music
| royalties - these don't seem to be too far from what happens
| currently.
|
| But to bet that some of the fussiest and most discerning
| music listeners would prefer this seems foolish.
| throwanem wrote:
| I'll take that bet at 5:1 against.
| zokier wrote:
| It's trivial bet anyways, you just need one human-composed
| piece as counter-evidence. You can even compose it
| yourself!
| throwanem wrote:
| Perhaps I should. An infinite future of the Berlin
| Philharmonic under Karajan, producing performances only
| slightly more perfectly machined, needs _some_ antidote.
| float4 wrote:
| > Bet $100 that all classical music
|
| ALL classical music, in just 3 years. I'm perfectly willing
| to put my entire net worth on the line for this one.
| throwanem wrote:
| Be serious.
|
| No one with enough bored capital to patronize the arts is
| going to go to see and be seen at a performance of a
| synthetic symphony - or not more than once or twice,
| anyway, for the sake of the thing. Philharmonics need not
| fear for their concert halls, or not at least for this
| reason.
| stouset wrote:
| I think GP was betting against, not for.
| jen20 wrote:
| > No one with enough bored capital to patronize the arts
| is going to go to see and be seen at a performance of a
| synthetic symphony
|
| I'd pay good money to see Antheil's "Ballet Mecanique",
| which requires 16 synchronized player pianos...
|
| But yes, I'm not sure I'd be interested in whatever
| ChatGPT threw out.
| planb wrote:
| This is not how art or human appreciation for it works...
| krapp wrote:
| It's how commerce works. As soon as AI can generate a
| commercially viable product, in less time and for less
| cost, human content ceases to have any commercial value,
| and as AI becomes ubiquitous it becomes normalized in pop
| culture. Appreciation comes with the inevitable cycle of
| one generation being born native to a paradigm shift
| rejecting the standards of the old guard.
|
| And it won't just be classical, it will be all genres and
| all creative media. And it will probably take longer than
| three years. But it will happen.
| MrGilbert wrote:
| We have machines that can produce clothing, yet there are
| people out there that buy custom tailored clothing. AI
| can generate images, yet people will go out there and buy
| something custom made. I think manufactories will become
| much more important and expand into more areas. Which
| means that hand-made music will just be much more
| expensive, and your "off-the-shelf"-production will be
| way cheaper.
| wizofaus wrote:
| Exactly - in fact, once AIs/automation are capable of
| achieving all the _necessary_ production of goods
| /services for a universally high material standard of
| living, then I'd imagine choosing to handcraft works of
| art and share them with others (potentially in exchange
| for money) will become as popular as it's ever been, if
| not more so.
| ModernMech wrote:
| > As soon as AI can generate a commercially viable
| product, in less time and for less cost, human content
| ceases to have any commercial value
|
| Ever been to a craft show? An artist can sell a handmade
| bowl for $100 even though you can find an identical
| manufactured one at Target for $1.
|
| Other examples: Chick-Fil-A markets their milkshakes as
| "hand spun". Or when Dreamweaver started automating the
| layout of webpages, web devs started calling their
| websites "handmade". It's been possible to automate call
| centers for a long time now, but companies advertise the
| ability to speak to a human representative as a
| differentiating feature of their business.
|
| There is value in having humans in the loop, despite
| automation. People just don't trust robots.
| wwalexander wrote:
| Given that you're "building the future AI cloud production
| studio", it seems you have a business interest in this coming
| true.
|
| Maybe there's more to art than business though. I bet there
| will still be a market for unique and novel interpretations
| of classical works played by real humans capable of being
| moved by the compositions they're playing.
| pwinnski wrote:
| 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.
| lelag wrote:
| 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 shrinking but still
| worth half a billion a year with 50% of that still being
| physical sales. I'm still convinced there was a market to
| capture.
|
| For classical, streaming is not an option: most content on
| streaming services are old (albeit often great) records from
| the past coming from the majors catalog (which they don't
| care much about). That's 4 or 5 catalog. All the independents
| rejected the model because they can't make any money there.
|
| Streaming is the death of the classical recording industry.
| Simply. There is no money in streaming. The sad part is that
| the average classical music consumer has generally a lot of
| disposable income available but no way to spend it on a good
| modern product, in a way that support that industry.
|
| I don't know much about it, but it's probably true of Jazz
| too.
| adriand wrote:
| 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.
| pwinnski wrote:
| > For classical, streaming is not an option
|
| > Streaming is the death of the classical recording
| industry.
|
| Apple seems to disagree, so I guess we'll see. It clear
| that the _best_ days are behind us, at any rate.
|
| Bottom line: you might have been right that there was still
| a market to capture in 2017, but YC was also right to see
| that it was a shrinking market, not exactly the sort of
| thing in which they're most interested. It's hard to
| imagine a world in which the market for classical music is
| bigger today than it was in 2017, regardless of how well
| you--or anyone else--executed.
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| What are your thoughts on apps like the Berlin Phil's
| Digital Concert Hall, or DG's Stage+? Those are streaming
| services at a more premium price, with smaller catalogs,
| but featuring new works and newly recorded works and
| generally high quality recordings.
|
| As an end consumer of classical music, a streaming app like
| this one or the two I named make discoverability much
| easier in a way that is very appealing compared to direct
| sales. Even if there is a smaller total library available
| to me, I am much more easily able to explore that library
| and build my tastes. I think ideally, I would want an app
| that allows me to explore the streaming catalog of
| classical music in a discoverable, personalizable way, but
| that offers a way to buy these direct sale-exclusive
| recordings you're talking about once I'm confident about
| what I might enjoy. My Berlin Phil membership completely
| changed my understanding of classical, because it was so
| easy to just give something a try and the performances are
| so well-curated, often with a spoken introduction for
| context.
|
| I'm a big jazz fan, and I know that Blue Note for instance
| seems to have done very well selling a lot of physical
| media with their vinyl series, including newly recorded
| albums. I've probably heard as much recently recorded jazz
| music on vinyl as on digital - and now that I think of it,
| there's a discoverability element there: if Blue Note
| bothers to press it to wax, it's probably pretty good. Most
| of the newly composed jazz I hear is performed live,
| though, and that seems to be the best way for most
| performers in the genre to make some income from it.
| lelag wrote:
| > What are your thoughts on apps like the Berlin Phil's
| Digital Concert Hall, or DG's Stage+?
|
| I can't comment too much on their content as I haven't
| tried any of them. You make want to check them out
| though.
|
| But commercially, it's mostly about 2 of the most
| recognizable names in the classical industry leveraging
| their notoriety. It's good for them but it won't really
| help the industry thrive again. The Berliner
| Philharmoniker or DG would be the last ones to struggle,
| premium subscription service or not.
|
| I don't think a service will make a dent in the industry
| woes unless it becomes an industry standard. That's why
| my target business model was Steam and video games and
| not any music service.
| slaymaker1907 wrote:
| For actual classical musicians, I'm not sure how much they
| would ever realistically make off of album sales. Most are
| funded through donations AFAIK and then through ticket sales.
| There's a reason why almost no one in the classical scene cares
| about piracy aside from maybe sheet music (even then, the
| photocopier is used pretty heavily).
| tgv wrote:
| 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.
| Their catalog also lacks discoverability. There's nothing to
| relate Karl Goldmark to Brahms. I also dislike the subscription
| model, heavily.
|
| So, I still buy albums (mostly from prestomusic, in case
| someone wants to know).
|
| > the sector is only surviving thanks to public and private
| subsidies.
|
| That could never change. Streaming will make it worse, though.
| Donckele wrote:
| Any youtube recommendations?
| lelag wrote:
| > 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."
| Miraste wrote:
| 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 the shows or
| movies. Nobody puts Netflix on "shuffle" or lets it play
| random episodes based on what they've watched in the past,
| but those are some of Spotify's biggest features. Its user
| shareable playlists also increase lock-in, along with other
| network effects. It's such a huge advantage to be able to
| play anything (or almost anything), I don't see how a
| service with a limited selection could compete.
|
| I don't see any way for the labels to get out of the
| streaming age beyond serious anticompetitive collusion, and
| even then people would go back to piracy. Frankly, it
| couldn't happen to a nicer group of folks.
| pwinnski wrote:
| I also lack the vision to see what could ultimately
| replace streaming as the primary delivery mechanism for
| music. It delivers an ongoing revenue stream, the monthly
| nature of which beats the old "put it out in a new format
| every few years so everyone has to rebuy everything" in
| terms of cash flow, although obviously not in overall
| revenue.
|
| I could definitely see streaming wars in music happening
| like they are in video, although so far the music labels
| are content to watch the video labels hurt each other.
| But consider: Spotify's payouts are infamously low, lower
| than Google's or Apple's and I can imagine some labels
| deciding they can do better by providing their own
| streaming app. Since it's only a few labels, each will
| believe they have enough of a library to draw
| subscribers, and away we'll go.
|
| But still: aside from the margins and market share
| concerns, what delivers a steadier income than streaming?
|
| Streaming doesn't mean they can't experiment with
| additional revenue streams, including physical media
| sales and licensing opportunities, but it's hard to
| imagine something _displacing_ streaming as a concept to
| the degree which streaming has displaced physical media
| sales.
| lelag wrote:
| 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.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| > 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)
|
| Why would consumers not just pay for physical media like
| CDs/Vinyl/etc. if they prefer owning things?
| EricE wrote:
| >The 20th century was a golden age for recorded music.
| Maybe there is no coming back
|
| With AI generated music on the horizon I think we have
| definitely peaked.
| sammalloy wrote:
| That's been said about almost every style and genre of
| art. What's so funny, is that it's never happened; quite
| the opposite. Look at the renaissance of early music, as
| only one example. Sadly, 99% of all music that has ever
| been made was not written down or recorded. I think
| there's a lot of opportunities to hunt down and discover
| lost, unrecognized, or forgotten music and bring it back
| to forefront. I was just listening to Indian classical
| bansuri (bamboo flute) music by Ronu Majumdar and Ajeet
| Pathak on Naxos. The album features 12th century ragas in
| the Hindustani tradition. What's amazing about it, is you
| can hear how this style greatly influenced rock and roll
| from the mid-1960s to the mid 1970s, particularly the
| long and winding guitar solos that were famous during
| that era. And if you read about that time, it turns out
| that rock musicians were indeed listening to this music
| and getting ideas from it. There isn't any AI around that
| is going to make deep connections like this. We are still
| very much in human-driven territory. What will certainly
| become common, however, is for human musicians to augment
| their compositional skills with the help of AI, not to
| replace it altogether.
| tkgally wrote:
| > I still buy albums (mostly from prestomusic, in case
| someone wants to know)
|
| I buy my classical music from Presto Music, too. The purchase
| process is easy, and maybe the performers get a bit more than
| from streaming.
|
| I suspect that purchasing music files to own will seem
| increasingly strange and inconvenient to younger people,
| though.
| lelag wrote:
| Yes, that's what I wanted to address and in the same way
| Steam address it with video games. You buy albums but you
| get the convenience of streaming services with no
| additional fees forever. Same as with Steam, I expected
| users to keep buying album regularity even if they didn't
| listen to them much. (cue seasonal sales etc...)
| mmcdermott wrote:
| Just of of curiosity, how did your approach differ from
| Amazon's MP3 store?
| lelag wrote:
| Mostly because the goal was to offer a premium experience
| targeted at the classical music enthusiast. UX was close
| to what you can see with Apple Classical or Idagio. On
| the business side, the model was really Steam and not any
| music store, seasonal sales included. Anyway, I only had
| a few month to try to raise some capital and I failed, so
| it's history now.
| nordsieck wrote:
| > 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 pop, they're probably
| fine. But anything that's even a little niche is trouble.
| Or that's my experience, anyhow.
| gumby wrote:
| > 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?
| JasonFruit wrote:
| I guess the idea is, why would you long tail when you can
| Pareto Principle?
| gumby wrote:
| Yeah, the theory of the long tail was that the marginal
| cost of that old, low volume stuff was nil.
|
| I guess the truth was that it didn't scale.
| nordsieck wrote:
| > I guess the idea is, why would you long tail when you
| can Pareto Principle?
|
| IMO, that's not a great point. The music is already made
| - that's the hard part. It just needs to be licensed.
|
| Maybe there are other channels that are more profitable
| than streaming, but I'm guessing that a lot of
| older/niche music is just locked away for no good reason.
|
| At a certain point, I have to imagine that most artists
| would prefer their music be listened to if they aren't
| going to make money either way.
| [deleted]
| bookofjoe wrote:
| "The test of whether you own something is if you can sell
| it."--Anonymous
| User23 wrote:
| Has the sector ever survived other than thanks to public and
| private subsidies? Even in its heyday it was funded by Princes
| and Bishops and so on. Maybe the right approach is to lean into
| that. There are a lot of very wealthy people in China for
| example and many of them love classical music.
|
| It is sadly true however that the West increasingly appears to
| have no interest in maintaining its own culture.
| lwhi wrote:
| So a band camp for classical music is required?
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Bandcamp isn't nearly as well organized as this new service,
| but its feed of new releases sorted by genre exposes me to
| lots of indie classical music recordings.
| leviathant wrote:
| My wife composes choral music and "new music". (what many
| here would consider classical) and has been using Bandcamp
| since 2009 with pretty good success.
|
| But even that gets tricky, as she is not the performer for
| any of the recordings.
|
| It's a strange world though, when so many people focus on
| centuries-old music by dead German men, that's going to be
| harder to market. My first glance at Apple Classical a few
| weeks ago suggests that it's trying to cater to that crowd.
|
| Bandcamp is better for living composers (and preforming
| musicians) than a lot of other traditional options. For
| example, if you have a successful performance is a piece,
| Parma Records will reach out to you and offer to do a
| "professional" recording. They'll ask for $20,000 and you'll
| get a box of CDs (not sure if they do that last part anymore
| but I would not be surprised). A surprising amount of
| musicians go this route, because they don't know any better.
|
| Anyway, point is, Bandcamp is awesome.
| vjulian wrote:
| Is Bandcamp oriented towards performers?
|
| I think I see what you mean in relation to what audiences
| Apple is presumably trying to cater to, though I have no
| market knowledge as to how "classical" music audiences
| truly segment. Apple Classical becomes similar to Apple
| Music a way to (re-) discover both old catalog and new
| releases. Listening to Toscanini this morning, the
| performance and music sounds as fresh in 2022 as it always
| did.
| TylerE wrote:
| Orchestral music has always depended largely on essentially
| donations, back to the patronage that kept many of the great
| composers at least fed, if not rich.
| jancsika wrote:
| You missed the word "dying" in the OP. The popularity of
| orchestral music has waned to the point where what you are
| loosely calling "essentially donations" gets a lot less bang
| for the buck these days.
|
| Just for a single example-- the count who funded the Mannheim
| school got musical rockets in return, ones that became the
| envy of all of Europe. Of course orchestral developments were
| happening in other locations as well; in general this set off
| a kind of orchestral space race. You can track it through
| history all the way to Bayreuth and beyond.
|
| Hell, there's probably a line from those orchestral
| crescendos to the "orchestra hit" General MIDI instrument.
|
| At the height of all that orchestral fervor you've got, for
| example, an opera composer as a member of Italy's first
| parliament. How many people on HN can even _name_ a living
| composer?
|
| Now imagine $living_orchestral_composer at the helm of a
| nationalist movement in the U.S.
|
| I've read the preceding sentence three times and brain just
| outright refuses to come up with imagery for that.
|
| So while I guess you can squint and see the historical
| funding of orchestras as "essentially donations," there's a
| big difference between donating to a historical society and
| donating to the red cross. The 19th century funding of
| orchestras was much more like the latter-- funding for
| something that is _essential_ to living (or at least in the
| U.S., essentially to being taken seriously by Europe). Today
| it 's like building model trains for your ears.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Not always, though. You had church funding and then patronage
| from the state.
|
| Beethoven famously ushered in a new era with his 5th symphony
| when he secured am advance from the bank to produce it, being
| the first large work to be produced through commercial
| investment.
|
| Individual patronage continued through the 19th century with
| notable examples like Tchaikovsky, though increasingly
| commercial aspects were present.
|
| Coming the 20th century funding for academia became the norm.
| Older composers became teachers and younger composers secured
| funding for their thesis compositions.
|
| At the same time the recording industry exploded. Even avant
| garde cumposers could make good money by starting their own
| companies to press and publish their records.
|
| Over time interest in orchestral music has plummeted. I guess
| there's a mix of reasons for this. But today it will prove
| very difficult to gather the funds for a large scale
| composition, preformance or recording, never mind all three.
| throwanem wrote:
| There are a few composers I support on Patreon who also do
| their own production via extensive combinations of plugins
| and soundfonts in applications I've barely ever heard of
| before. The result is hard to distinguish from a human
| orchestra, save in the nature of the occasional errors,
| which are always of composition rather than execution.
|
| This would I think be a lot more common were it not such a
| niche interest. Even the composers I mention support
| themselves primarily through orchestration of video game
| music and the like, using that to subsidize their original
| work.
|
| I'm not too proud to admit I enjoy the video game stuff,
| too; I'm no less susceptible to nostalgia than anyone, or
| maybe somewhat more so. But my point is that, while the
| technical bar appears fairly high, it is currently within
| the possible for a composer also to provide the orchestra.
| It seems likely the technical bar could be lowered, or for
| that matter that a new production industry could develop in
| support of those not able to access the more traditional
| one.
| slaymaker1907 wrote:
| Where I think orchestras will continue to win out is for
| live performances. What amplification can do is complete
| crap compared to pure acoustic much less trying to record
| and reproduce something without a million dollar sound
| system.
|
| This is also a case of good old AI automating things that
| a great many humans enjoy doing saving us from the
| drudgery of human expression.
| chongli wrote:
| _I 'm not too proud to admit I enjoy the video game
| stuff_
|
| The stigma against video game music can't go away soon
| enough! Composers are creating some really amazing stuff
| for video games and gamers themselves are an enormous
| audience for the wider classical music industry to draw
| upon.
|
| To their credit, a lot of orchestras have recognized this
| and have been performing video game music for years.
| Along with film scores (a trend started by John
| Williams), video game music has breathed an incredible
| amount of new life into an industry that might otherwise
| be in far worse shape now.
| chrisfinazzo wrote:
| 1. Go find any of the text commentaries that Austin
| Wintory has done about the Journey soundtrack.
|
| 2. Clear an hour off your schedule, close your eyes and
| _listen_.
|
| _Edit_ : On second thought, keep your eyes open and
| enjoy the beautiful artwork by Matt Nava (taken from his
| book on Journey) as well as a selection of fan art which
| is equally stunning considering most of the people are
| probably not professional graphic designers.
|
| _Fuck_...it 's so good it makes me emotional just typing
| this sentence.
|
| Also worthy of note: Tan Dun and Yo Yo Ma's recording of
| the Crouching Tiger soundtrack and his recordings of the
| Bach solos.
|
| Alas, I must end with the complaint that the current
| recordings of the original Star Wars soundtracks use
| track listings that are out of order with their
| "appearances" in the films.
|
| This is not accceptable.
| chongli wrote:
| Thanks so much for sharing this with me! Austin's score
| is deeply moving. Now I can't stop thinking about it.
|
| I think I played the game a long time ago but I believe I
| was visiting a friend (who had already played through it)
| at the time and I wasn't in the right frame of mind to
| experience it. Now I want to track down a PS4 and play it
| again.
|
| This reminded me of another score I love: Endless Legend
| by Arnaud Roy. Similar instrumentation to Journey (albeit
| with lots of human voices). It has a different feel
| though, for a radically different game (a turn-based
| strategy game).
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Film scores are so completely in the shitter and have
| been for going on two decades, that maybe they could
| stand to take some cues from video games. I miss films
| having memorable, distinctive music. At least for title
| themes. Even mid-budget films often had that, in the
| Olden Times of 2+ decades ago. It's one of my kids'
| favorite things about older movies--they noticed, without
| prompting, and they love it. Marvel managed, what, a
| single run of a half-dozen kinda-almost-memorable notes,
| over 40+ films? What a joke. It's so bad that their
| deciding halfway in to simply score everything with pop
| music was kinda an improvement, but is still a form of
| just _giving up_.
| wmeredith wrote:
| This is basically all art.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| This looks ok, but I can't be the only person suffering Content
| Fatigue.
|
| Between access to infinite music, infinite movies and TV,
| infinite gaming, and infinite news - and that's just leisure -
| I'm not sure how much time I have left for a finite life.
| bowsamic wrote:
| That's really your responsibility
| ChatGTP wrote:
| Selecting a movie on streaming...
| LegitShady wrote:
| how much time dk you soend actively listening to new music? not
| having music on while youre doing something else but actively
| listening as your primary activity?
|
| most streaming music use is background noise. having somr music
| on, classical or otherwise, while im something else, doesnt
| lead to anu sort of content fatigue.
| rwl4 wrote:
| To make things worse, they flood you with constant new content
| while you browse. It feels overwhelming to me. It's sort of an
| ADHD nightmare.
|
| With Apple Music, at least, I keep a clear distinction between
| my personal library and the rest of their offerings. That at
| least gives me a sense of shape and dimension to my library. To
| be clear, my personal library is a mixture of music I have
| bought and music I added from the AM library.
|
| To do this, I unchecked "Add songs to library when adding to
| playlists." This makes Apple Music not add every single song in
| every playlist you follow to your library.
|
| Now, I can browse my curated selection of music and playlists,
| OR I can play music from Apple's playlists, etc. When I
| discover an artist I like, I can then purposely add it to my
| library.
|
| I wish I could do this type of curation with Apple News and
| Apple TV.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I'm enjoying it in moderation; the danger of all this is FOMO,
| thinking you have to keep on top on watching all the latest TV
| shows and whatnot. But for me personally, this has reduced by a
| lot in recent years, I'm like, I'll watch something when
| inspiration strikes me.
|
| Especially in recent years, it feels like the market is being
| flooded with content (especially TV shows) that SHOULD be hits,
| but just fall flat; a recent example is the LotR TV show,
| which, while pretty, doesn't seem to be the runaway success
| they were hoping for.
| cpach wrote:
| I wouldn't reduce classical music to just leisure. It's art,
| without which life would become meaningless.
|
| The enormous supply means that the act of curation becomes very
| important in today's world.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| You don't have to listen to infinite music, watch infinite
| movies and tv, play infinite games, watch infinite news.
| imwithstoopid wrote:
| well good news...you can actually listen to pretty much "all"
| of symphonic music!
|
| yeah there is new stuff, but when we speak of "classical
| music", we're really talking about long-dead people
|
| Dvorak isn't going to be composing any new works, you can
| actually listen to everything Dvorak ever created and then
| you're "done"
| pwinnski wrote:
| There are 1,182 recordings of Mozart's "Don Giovanni" alone,
| each running close to three hours. If you listen for 16 hours
| every day, you can cover this one in under a year, on to work
| number two! :D
| newaccount74 wrote:
| But people make new recordings all the time!
|
| I could listen to different recordings of Canto Ostinato all
| day, it sounds like a completely different piece if someone
| else plays it.
| troad wrote:
| Run with the assumption that everything is always infinitely
| available, and become judicious with your attention. Boring
| podcast? Don't think twice, delete it. Good TV show, but not
| amazing? Move on, there's better out there. You won't even
| remember its name in a year. Book dragging on in the middle?
| Skip ahead.
|
| Every now and again you'll find something you want to give a
| chance to, and for those things do slow down, take it in. But
| don't waste that on any random thing just because it's new and
| being pushed hard by some giant media conglomerate.
|
| Or alternatively give it five-ten years before you engage with
| any cultural product. Time is a very effective filter for
| quality.
| falcolas wrote:
| This is the way.
|
| It's perfectly acceptable to bounce off a book after five
| pages. Off a podcast with poor production quality. Off a song
| after the first measure.
|
| Tastes differ, so don't feel bad if you dislike something the
| zeitgeist adores.
| ninkendo wrote:
| Back when scarcity was a thing, the act of powering through
| with media you didn't initially like was one of the primary
| ways of maturing your taste and learning to like new
| things.
|
| Only consuming media which hooks you instantly is a good
| way to achieve the media equivalent of a sugar-only diet.
|
| I don't have an answer for this to be honest, it's just an
| observation.
| cpach wrote:
| IMHO this is especially true for classical music, which
| is generally less approachable than pop music.
| thewebcount wrote:
| That's certainly one way to look at it. I see it a little
| differently. With video games, for example, when I had to
| buy a game to see if I liked it, I'd mostly just buy the
| big hits that a lot of people liked or smaller games that
| got wide critical acclaim. But with a subscription gaming
| service, I can try out any game on the service without
| paying an additional fee, so I'm trying a wider range of
| games in genres I don't normally play. I've found some
| real gems I wouldn't have even considered previously if
| I'd had to buy them first to really get to know them.
|
| The radio was like that before streaming services. Don't
| know if you like country music? Just pop on the country
| station when you're alone in your car and try it out. If
| it doesn't work out, switch to hip hop or classical, or
| alternative. Worst case, you wasted 5 minutes of your
| time while you were driving anyway. Best case, you have a
| new genre of music to explore!
|
| That said, I'm don't have ADHD and am heavily skeptical
| of anything coming from big corps, so I already
| aggressively tune out most things, so maybe it's not that
| easy for others.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| As a child, I did the same thing with my family because video
| games were much more entertaining. As an adult, this hasn't
| changed all that much.
| fundad wrote:
| not parents
| visarga wrote:
| Here come the infinite AI contents to top it off.
| [deleted]
| joelfried wrote:
| I've noticed this feeling myself in the last year, and,
| honestly I've found it somewhat freeing by following this
| logic:
|
| 1. There is infinite content for me to consume.
|
| 2. I have a finite life.
|
| 3. Even if I spend my entire life trying, I cannot consume all
| content.
|
| 4. Since I cannot consume all content, there will be content
| that I will not consume that I would have enjoyed.
|
| 5. I want to spend my life doing some things other than
| consuming media.
|
| 6. Given 4 & 5, "I would enjoy it" is no longer a sufficient
| condition for me to consume some media.
|
| 7. Given 6, my feelings of FOMO have gone down considerably.
| What's to be afraid of, when there's always another product to
| fill the same "mild enjoyment" void?
| mosburger wrote:
| I worked on a project for Sony Music called "Ariama" a little
| over ten years ago that addressed this very problem w/ metadata,
| and organizing classical music differently than the
| artist/album/track way. I worked on the search piece! We also
| offered FLAC downloads.
|
| Looks like we were just ahead of our time. :-/
| lynx23 wrote:
| 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?
| [deleted]
| d3nj4l wrote:
| You're mixing up sampling rate/depth and sound frequency.
| lynx23 wrote:
| Am I? They say 192kHz/24 bit, followed by the word
| lossless... Trust me, I am not confusing things, but they do.
| Here is the quote:
|
| > up to 192kHz/24-bit Hi-Res Lossless
|
| If this makes sense in your world, kudos!
| fetzu wrote:
| By lossless they mean "losslessly compressed from source"
| (FLAC, or likely in Apple's case ALAC) as opposed to "lossy
| compressed" like MP3 or AAC streaming services usually use.
|
| Wether or not the original recording was done/mastered in
| 24/192 or higher/lower is a whole other question. In the
| grand scheme of things all ADC involves "compression" in
| the form of quantization.
| highhedgehog wrote:
| 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
| lynx23 wrote:
| 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.
| highhedgehog wrote:
| 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).
| tinus_hn wrote:
| If the average human can't hear these sounds, that'll
| just make the audiophiles think they have above average
| hearing.
| tzs wrote:
| That's an unconvincing argument because the presence of
| ultrasonic sounds can affect human perception. It is just
| not perceptible via the exact same mechanism that
| ordinary sound is.
|
| The argument you should be going with is that the
| speakers and headphones that people will be playing the
| music on doesn't do ultrasonic sound.
| jevgeni wrote:
| This is a good point. Also, I don't see the economic
| incentives for this to be snakeoil.
| bjornlouser wrote:
| "ultrasonic sounds can affect human perception. It is
| just not perceptible via the exact same mechanism..."
|
| talk about unconvincing
| rossy wrote:
| The idea that there's a noticeable benefit to having a sample
| rate higher than twice the highest frequency is the snake oil
| here. Many audiophiles seem to believe this but it's not
| supported by the mainstream understanding of digital signal
| processing.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _192kHz /24 bit, what a wonderful piece of snakeoil..._
|
| I agree, it really hertz to see Apple pandering to non-
| technical audiophiles like this. I blame Neil Young.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pono_(digital_music_service)
|
| > _What do they actually record with this frequency, bats
| talking to each other about classical music?_
|
| I lol'd.
| HeavyFeather wrote:
| That number is common in professional contexts, Apple is just
| publishing the highest "quality" available. Whether this is
| useful is up to the listener, who can just as well decide to
| listen to 192kbps AAC instead.
|
| In a world where videos and photos are still shared at
| laughable resolutions, let's not scorn decisions to preserve
| media in the highest possible quality.
| biftek wrote:
| A higher bit rate lets you digitally process audio without
| introducing artifacts. It's very common to record, mix, and
| master audio at 192/24 and even oversample well above 192k.
|
| It has nothing to do with snake oil or hearing things above 22k
| it's about not introducing aliasing and other digital
| artifacts, and on highly dynamic content like classical can
| definitely be heard in the audible spectrum.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Wouldn't you get more artifacts downsampling a 192k mix to
| AAC as opposed to just using an AAC-optimised file from the
| start?
| gregwebs wrote:
| 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 much).
| wwalexander wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| web3-is-a-scam wrote:
| This actually sounds pretty cool, I was actually thinking of this
| the other day: classical music is an entirely different beast of
| finding things to listen to, you can't just "pick a band and
| album in a genre".
|
| For example: if I want to listen to Mozart, and I've never listen
| to any of his compositions before where do I even start to look
| to find a "good interpretation". You can't just search for
| Album/Artist.
|
| Weird how Apple can read my mind.
| CrlNvl wrote:
| Qobuz won't be too happy about this I guess
| [deleted]
| narenkeshav wrote:
| So... it would be my go to music app to get wired in.
| butlertronica wrote:
| This treatment would also be very welcome for Jazz - I want to
| hear My Favourite Things but I don't want Julie Andrews
| repler wrote:
| Exactly! I'm so glad you posted this. It's "covers" all the way
| down.
| cschmidt wrote:
| I'd like that as well. For a while I thought
| https://jazzed.com/ would eventually be this, even thought it
| was just available in the UK. But now they seem like they've
| moved to focusing on live performances.
| [deleted]
| can16358p wrote:
| Felt excited to see Fazil Say (from Turkey), just to see that the
| app is not available in Turkey _facepalm_.
| geff82 wrote:
| Wow. I will try this product today as I am exactly in the target
| group. I often listen to different recordings of the same music
| to find the best one, I want to dive into certain artists or
| genres and indeed - with Apple Music and Spotify, this is not
| easy.
| throwanem wrote:
| I'm finding that very easy so far. This is the best discovery
| tool I've yet used, which is almost frustrating given that if
| I'd found anything like it in the last decade, I wouldn't
| _need_ it.
| FredPret wrote:
| Brilliant. I kept my classical music in a separate playlist
| because it's so unwieldy. This is the perfect solution for me.
|
| By the way, I love the serifed font - hope those make a comeback.
| perceptronas wrote:
| >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
| CharlesW wrote:
| I'd expect that one of their next steps is a "larger screen"
| user experience that should work for both iPads and Macs.
| mariodiana wrote:
| 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.
| eDameXxX wrote:
| Actually, I think it's a good thing they've built a separate app
| for that. We used to think that one app that rules all of them is
| a good idea. Not always.
|
| Classical music has a lot of nuances (some of which are listed on
| the announcement page) and from UI/UX perspective it would be
| quite difficult to mixed all these details in the standard Apple
| Music app.
|
| I'm now wondering what Spotify thinks about this matter. Do they
| plan to highlight classical music like Apple did. I don't know.
| throwanem wrote:
| It'd be foolish of them, I think, because we're a small, weird,
| and highly demanding audience. But they've done plenty of
| foolish things before in their apparent quest to own and
| monetize every imaginable audio waveform.
| behnamoh wrote:
| Ok, but why do they desperately repeat the link to their app
| SEVEN TIMES on this page? It doesn't feel "Appley".
| pwinnski wrote:
| Spotify has been busy shoehorning their "podcasts" (on-demand
| audio shows) into every nook and cranny of the app people use
| to listen to music. If they notice or think of classical music,
| one can only imagine how they'll try to "highlight" it.
| graphcolorer wrote:
| [flagged]
| LegitShady wrote:
| They probably have their own names for their own music and
| fewer people demanding they change it because its too centered
| on their culture.
| vixen99 wrote:
| Yes but it hasn't traveled all that well for whatever reason
| while Western Classical music (WCM) has been adopted on a
| massive scale by China, Korea and other countries in Asia, to
| such an extent that considering the numerous cutbacks for
| orchestras and classical music generally in the West, WCM
| itself is being kept alive by these communities. Some argue
| that Lang Lang lit a fuse.
|
| "Today China is experiencing piano frenzy with an estimated 40m
| children now learning to play. The instrument is increasingly
| in vogue among China's burgeoning middle classes, who have the
| money to splurge on steep lessons and expensive fixtures.
| Spurring them on is the phenomenal success of the Chinese
| superstar concert pianists Lang Lang and Li Yundi"
|
| https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20131022-piano-mania-gri...
| https://www.ludwig-van.com/toronto/2019/08/13/feature-the-pi...
|
| "With direct government involvement, the Chinese strategy to
| conquer the world of classical music includes a coherent
| strategy that operates from the ground up, including building
| the infrastructure for their booming classical musical sector.
| There are stunning new concert halls in Shanghai, Beijing, and
| Harbin to showcase classical music."
|
| Perhaps no need to say that I am here referring only to the
| relative extent of the universal appeal of very different
| musical genres not to their intrinsic aesthetic rewards for
| fans.
| 50 wrote:
| I recently discovered the Anthology Of Indian Classical Music
| (UNESCO, 1955)[1], you might enjoy it.
|
| 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3r8LpSp6bM
| Veen wrote:
| It's perfectly reasonable for Western people to use "Classical"
| as a shorthand for "Western Classical". It's easy enough to
| apply a modifier if we want to talk about Indian Classical or
| Persian Classical or whatever. It doesn't mean we don't care
| about music from other areas, just that the default is to refer
| to our own musical traditions. The same is true of people from
| India and Iran--Indians are usually India-centric etc.
| asmor wrote:
| US culture is exported everywhere, so it is only fair to ask
| for accuracy.
| ibz wrote:
| What does western classical music have to do with the US?
| imwithstoopid wrote:
| well to be pedantic, "classical" isn't even a style, its a
| time-period
|
| if you want to be nitpicky, this app should be called Apple
| Symphonic
|
| most of the symphonic music I prefer (late 19th century) would
| be considered from the romantic era
|
| i.e. I don't consider Wagner to be "classical"
|
| like...Philip Glass is not "classical" music...but he's a
| symphonic composer
| augustl wrote:
| Maybe we'll finally get a music app where classical music isn't
| categorized by Album/Artist :)
|
| Classical doesn't really fit that well into a schema, since you
| have composers, performers, and then under performers there's
| soloist, or multiple soloists, which orchestra, which conductor,
| and so on.
|
| And it would also be nice to have things like "show most popular
| recordings of Beethoven's 5th".
| afandian wrote:
| It fits perfectly well into a schema, it's just been ignored
| for some reason since the dawn of ID3.
|
| It's crazy Apple considered it better to write a completely new
| app rather than improve their existing product.
| [deleted]
| dewey wrote:
| > It's crazy Apple considered it better to write a completely
| new app rather than improve their existing product.
|
| That's why they didn't, they bought a service and rebranded
| it.
|
| https://www.apple.com/hk/en/newsroom/2021/08/apple-
| acquires-...
| treerunner wrote:
| That's even more crazy.
|
| Patching one app into another for improved UX and
| categorization is bonkers.
|
| Also, my kid wanted to use Apple Music classical first
| thing this morning (he's a big classical music nut), you
| literally have to be logged in to regular Apple Music
| before Classical will allow you to play anything. Weird.
| pwinnski wrote:
| You have to be logged into Apple Music before you can
| play Apple Music, regardless of whether you're using the
| Music app, the Classical app, or the web app. I'm not
| sure what's weird about that?
|
| Oh, are you saying you can't _log in_ using the Classical
| app, but have to use the other one? That _would_ be
| weird.
| dewey wrote:
| I don't think they ,,patched" stuff. Without knowing much
| about it I'd guess they just took the backend, put it
| behind an Apple API and then built a new app based on
| that. The frontend there is probably the easier part and
| likely the reason it's only available on iOS at this
| point.
| spokeroni wrote:
| > And it would also be nice to have things like "show most
| popular recordings of Beethoven's 5th".
|
| This app has that. You can browse composer's works and view
| popular/all recordings.
| masklinn wrote:
| > Classical doesn't really fit that well into a schema, since
| you have composers, performers, and then under performers
| there's soloist, or multiple soloists, which orchestra, which
| conductor, and so on.
|
| That sounds like a schema to me. Hell, even popular music can
| have such complexities, it's just that they're usually ignored
| e.g. if you want to correctly tag a cover featuring a rapper,
| that's basically a performer (cover band), composer (the
| original band, or the actual composer as that's often not the
| band), the soloist (the guest), there's also the backing band
| and vocals which may have their own identity, and the venue may
| or may need a mention (e.g. a tiny desk live usually has a
| different feel than a concert live).
|
| Obviously it's not quite as bad as classical where as you
| mentioned there are eve more roles plus you might have hundreds
| or even thousands of interpretations of the same piece versus a
| handful.
| pwinnski wrote:
| I mentioned some of these numbers in another comment already,
| but for example: Search for "Don Giovanni" in the new app,
| and there are 1,182 "Works" that match. That's a lot of
| covers! The "Editor's Choice" is 79 tracks, while the five
| popular works listed under that one are 63, 64, 70, 38, and
| 59 tracks, all for the same composition.
|
| It is true that there are complexities in pop music,
| especially in the modern age of "featuring" artists, but:
|
| 1. There are complexities and _complexities_ , and classical
| music involves the latter.
|
| 2. If anything, much pop music seems designed to _hide_
| things like composers and session musicians as often as not.
| The fear seems to be that if people realized how few pop
| artists write their own music, they 'd think less of them.
| I'm not sure I agree, but the point is that improved metadata
| is not what everybody involved in pop is looking for. Since
| the metadata would need be supplied by the labels, I don't
| think the uptake would be as high as one might hope.
|
| The best example of non-classical music that might rise to a
| similar level of complexity and care is touring bands like
| Phish or the Grateful Dead, if all of their live recordings
| were available officially.
| superduperuser wrote:
| I get your point but rap was a bad example. Rappers don't
| "cover" songs and artists who cover rap songs are usually
| bedroom artists posting on YouTube.
| masklinn wrote:
| You may want to re-read my comment. In my example there was
| no rap artist covering a piece, or a rap song being
| covered, there was a rapper guesting on a cover. Rap is not
| just a genre on the side.
| dagw wrote:
| _Maybe we 'll finally get a music app where classical_
|
| There have been plenty of third party apps built on top of
| Spotify that have offered this.
| cannam wrote:
| There is the slightly awkwardly-named idagio
| (https://www.idagio.com/), which has been doing the same kind
| of thing for a while.
|
| (I'm not well placed to compare them, since I let my own idagio
| subscription lapse a couple of years ago due to lack of income,
| I never tried Primephonic before Apple bought it, and I don't
| have an iPhone so can't try the Apple service... aside from all
| that, I'm right in the target market!)
| rodelrod wrote:
| I was going to chime in with "also Primephonic" and learned
| that Apple bought them a couple of years ago and this
| basically _is_ Primephonic.
| coldtea wrote:
| Waiting for the destined to be equally popular "Apple Music
| Polka"
| 876978095789789 wrote:
| Did you read the announcement:
|
| > Why a separate classical app?
|
| > Classical music often involves multiple musicians recording
| works that have been recorded many times before and are
| referred to by different names. For example, from the formal
| Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 14 to the popular byname of
| Moonlight Sonata, or in multiple languages, such as Mondschein
| Sonata in German. Such complexities mean that classical music
| fans have been ill-served by streaming platforms. Until now. A
| distinct app, included with an Apple Music subscription, gives
| these classical music lovers the editorial and catalog content
| they've been missing.
|
| > Only a brand-new app -- with specialized features and a
| beautiful interface designed for the genre -- could remove the
| complexity and make classical music easily searchable,
| browsable, and accessible for beginners and experts alike.
| mihaaly wrote:
| "Why a separate polka app?
|
| Polka music often involves multiple musicians recording works
| that have been recorded many times before and are referred to
| by different names. For example, from the formal The Buffalo
| Touch's Pani Mloda Polka to the popular byname of Bridal
| Dance, or in multiple languages, such as Sakkijarven polkka
| in Finnish. Such complexities mean that polka fans have been
| ill-served by streaming platforms. Until now. A distinct app,
| included with an Apple Music subscription, gives these polka
| music lovers the editorial and catalog content they've been
| missing.
|
| Only a brand-new app -- with specialized features and a
| beautiful interface designed for the genre -- could remove
| the complexity and make polka music easily searchable,
| browsable, and accessible for beginners and experts alike."
| xdavidliu wrote:
| Off topic but the careful choice of rationale here kinda
| reminds me of the choices the Rust language designers made;
| addressing actual issues that have caused inconvenience. I
| love it. Something about an honest desire and attempt to fix
| a demonstrated issue; not sure if I'm articulating it
| properly.
|
| This would be the opposite of what is often referred to as
| "user hostility", but which I think is more aptly described
| as "user indifference": stuff like a programming language
| silently allowing you to crash while accessing null pointers,
| or every single music app UI showing stuff like
|
| 1. Tchaikovsky Symphonies and Concertos - London Symphony
| Orchestra - I. S ...
|
| 2. Tchaikovsky Symphonies and Concertos - London Symphony
| Orchestra - II. S ...
|
| 3. Tchaikovsky Symphonies and Concertos - London Symphony
| Orchestra - III. S ...
|
| 4. Tchaikovsky Symphonies and Concertos - London Symphony
| Orchestra - I. C ...
| egeozcan wrote:
| Classical music isn't the only category that is not well
| served by a library of audio files though. Many types of
| folkloric music and rap has similar problems. Actually,
| pushing many audio files to clients with just album context
| only serves the pop music well, perhaps.
|
| On the other hand, limiting it to classical music hits that
| "do one thing well" spot, and would be hopefully a good
| testing ground for more such individualized apps.
| TylerE wrote:
| Even in pop it could be a lot better. Like, for instance it
| would be neat when listening to a song to have easy access
| to cover versions by other bands.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Classical music often involves multiple musicians
| recording works that have been recorded many times before and
| are referred to by different names._
|
| All of those things are true in the Polka world.
|
| And of course all of those things could be a mode in a
| "classical genre section" of the standard music app (and
| similar for polka, latin, folk, and other cases where the
| same things hold).
|
| Though my comment wasn't about the implementation, but about
| the niche-ness of it. Meanwhile major features awaited by
| huge customer bases still play the sound of crickets...
| tjpnz wrote:
| >a beautiful interface
|
| We'll be the judge of that.
| m348e912 wrote:
| >>Only a brand-new app -- with specialized features and a
| beautiful interface designed for the genre -- could remove the
| complexity and make classical music easily searchable, browsable,
| and accessible for beginners and experts alike.
|
| Just thinking out loud. Was there a need for a separate app
| music? Instead add a "classical mode" to the traditional apple
| music app that enables features for classical music lovers.
| deanCommie wrote:
| Companies ship org charts. It's just what they do.
|
| But typically it's a benefit to customers - it means you get
| MORE features faster.
|
| At the cost of inconsistency.
| mbo wrote:
| > There's no separate subscription for Apple Music Classical.
| It's included at no extra cost with all Apple Music subscriptions
| except the Apple Music Voice Plan.
|
| Bit of a missed opportunity here to provide a cheaper
| subscription just for Classical. Apple could have captured
| Spotify users who would be willing to pay a small premium for a
| nicer classical UX, but would be unwilling to take out an
| additional full-priced music subscription. Inevitably some
| Classical only users would end up migrating entirely to Apple
| Music to amalgamate their subscription costs.
| troutwine wrote:
| It got me to abandon Spotify entirely and switch over to Apple
| Music. I've become more and more discontented with Spotify's
| in-app experience and this was the last little nudge I needed
| apparently.
| cush wrote:
| Missed opportunity....
|
| Cheaper...
|
| You know we're talking about Apple right?
|
| In all seriousness, they don't like creating multiple SKUs for
| things. For simplicity and user friendliness sake.
| pwinnski wrote:
| People who care deeply about classical music will use this even
| at the same or higher cost than Spotify's now-inferior product.
|
| People who don't care at all about classical music won't use
| this at any price.
|
| People who like classical sometimes but don't listen to it
| exclusively should be happy that neither costs extra, both are
| included in the normal price.
|
| I'm not seeing any market opportunity for charging a lower
| amount for this service separately.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _People who care deeply about classical music will use this
| even at the same or higher cost than Spotify 's now-inferior
| product_
|
| I care deeply about classical music. But I'm already in
| Spotify's ecosystem, and don't want to bother with the
| switching cost. I would absolutely pay an add-on for
| Classical only, but don't want to pay for the whole Apple
| Music bundle.
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| Switching cost is trivial with apps like SongShift. In any
| case, Apple want you whole not just bits and pieces. Before
| you know it you'll upgrade to Apple One.
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| I used soundiiz to migrate from Spotify to YouTube music
| (since it's included in YT premium). Cost 5$ and was
| painless.
| bmmayer1 wrote:
| Beyond pricing, what's their strategy here trying to unbundle
| music? Are they going to release a different music app for
| every genre? If it's just a classical app, does that mean I now
| have to use two apps to switch between music based on genre?
| What benefit is there other than slightly better UX which
| presumably could be bundled in an existing app.
| netrus wrote:
| Wildly different meta data and needs for search. With
| classical music, it's a standard use case to search music
| composed by X. For most other genres, no one ever searches
| for a composer. On the other hand, there will hundreds of
| performances of the same piece, and listeners will want to
| scroll though them, instead of just seeing the 1-3 most
| famous renditions of a song. Or you want songs from a
| specific conductor or with a specific solist. All of this
| makes classical music very distinct, while search pattern for
| most other genres are kind of similar.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| You can still listen to classical in the regular music app,
| all of these tracks and albums are in the main app. But if
| you find a recording you really like and want to check out
| more stuff by that composer or the conductor, or the
| performers... Well conventional streaming app UI and search
| kind of sucks for that.
|
| For example one of my most played artists on Apple music is
| "Various Artists" ;p
| herodotus wrote:
| > What benefit is there other than slightly better UX
|
| The way people (like me) listen to classical music is
| different from the way they listen to other kinds of music.
| For example, I might want to listen to Beethoven's String
| Quartet No. 12. This has four movements, and I want the
| player to play from movement 1 through movement 4 once I
| touch the play button. This is very different from wanting to
| play (say) Price Tag by Jessie J which is one track.
|
| Furthermore, the meta data standards for music do not work
| that well for classical music. It requires some thoughtful
| manipulation to present the meta data correctly for this
| genre. For example, if you search for Mozart's Don Giovanni
| on Apple Music, and you are looking for a particular track,
| you may see something like this:
|
| "1. Mozart, Don Giovanni Act ....." "2. Mozart, Don Giovanni
| Act ....." "3. Mozart, Don Giovanni Act ....."
|
| Now the "Track Title" meta data field for track 2 probably
| has something like this:
|
| "2. Mozart, Don Giovanni Act 1: Notte e giorno faticar"
|
| If the programmers of Apple Music had read the spec
| carefully, they would have learned that the part of the track
| title after the colon is the actual track title, so they
| should show that first.
|
| There are other issues with the meta data, but I tried the
| Apple Classical music player last night, and it is good.
| Finally a music player that works for me, not against me.
| dexterdog wrote:
| > The way people (like me) listen to classical music is
| different from the way they listen to other kinds of music.
| For example, I might want to listen to Beethoven's String
| Quartet No. 12. This has four movements, and I want the
| player to play from movement 1 through movement 4 once I
| touch the play button. This is very different from wanting
| to play (say) Price Tag by Jessie J which is one track.
|
| How is this any different from listening to an album or any
| other logical grouping of tracks with an order?
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| It's more than a track but less than an album. If I just
| want to play Vivaldi's "Summer" that's typically done as
| 3 tracks for the 1 song. But the album it is on will
| almost always be the full 4 seasons suite, consisting of
| 4 songs / 12 movements (tracks). I can also see all the
| hundreds of different recordings of just those 3
| movements in Summer.
|
| Sure you could just go to the album and play track 4, and
| pause when track 6 finishes. But this makes that a little
| easier to play and easier to add to playlists and such.
|
| There's also all the other metadata differences. Maybe I
| really like this composer, but apple music has it listed
| under the performing orchestra. Maybe I really like this
| conductor. This breaks all those out into different
| options.
| pwinnski wrote:
| I decided to check this out. I searched for "Don giovanni"
| and my first match was under "Works", telling me that "Don
| Giovanni" by W. A. Mozart (little pic of him), K. 527, is
| available in 1,182 tracks. Second match, amusingly, was
| "Don Juan" by "C. W. Gluck," Wq. 52, available in 17
| tracks.
|
| Choosing Don Giovanni, I get a link to see more by Wolgang
| Amadeus Mozart, and a detailed description of Don Giovanni,
| K. 527, KV527. There's an Editor's Choice recording by
| Teodor Currentzis from 2016 (79 tracks, 2 hr 50 min), or
| five (with See All) Popular Recordings from 1960, 1986,
| 1991, 1960 again, and 1966, ranging from 2 hr 38 min
| (Herbert von Karajan, Vienna Philharmonic) to 3 hr
| (Philharmonia Orchestra). I'll choose the Editor's Choice.
|
| Album art up top, I see (in dim gray) "Wolfgang Amadeus
| Mozart," (in large white type) "Don Giovanni, K. 527," and
| (in gray, but larger than the composer) "Teodor
| Currentzis," along with tiny type tell me that this was
| released in 2016 and is in Hi-Res Lossless. Then a large
| Play button, no Shuffle button as the normal Music app has.
|
| The tracks are "Ouvertura" (5:12), Notte e giorno faticar
| (No. 1, Introduzione: Leporello) (1:30), Non sperar... you
| know what? You get the idea. The metadata is presented
| perfectly.
|
| Last night I was listening to Rachmaninoff Symphony No. 2
| by the London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Simon Rattle
| conducting, and it was presented perfectly as well.[0] And
| it sounded wonderful!
|
| 0. https://i.imgur.com/XEZn2My.jpg
| natdempk wrote:
| I think if you really care about a great classical streaming
| experience, that probably outranks a small extra monthly fee. I
| sort of doubt the category of people who care about a few extra
| dollars a month yet really love classical music to the point of
| wanting a very tailored experience exists.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Bit of a missed opportunity here to provide a cheaper
| subscription just for Classical._
|
| I don't think the people this app is for are all that price-
| sensitive.
|
| I look at Apple Music as a classical music subscription, with
| 90 million other tracks included for free.
| [deleted]
| n0tahacker wrote:
| I am a student with not a lot of money and I really love
| classical music. I don't have to pay for Spotify due to Spotify
| family. Also, I really don't like the cliche that classical
| music is mostly for the well-earning elite. Classical music is
| just great music. Totally agree with you. Like the idea of a
| seperate app; when I am streaming my favorite music on Spotify,
| it's sometimes weird to listen to some piece of contemporary
| music and then a classical piece.
| sseagull wrote:
| While not exactly the same, your school (college?) may have
| access to the Naxos library, which may allow you to stream
| that for free (requiring login through your school library).
| pwinnski wrote:
| If your family had Apple Music Family rather than Spotify
| Family, you would have this option for free.
| activitypea wrote:
| ...why not just music.apple?
| pwinnski wrote:
| That redirects to the non-classical music app page already.
| bouke wrote:
| Probably because they're branding it as "Apple Music", not
| "Music (by) Apple".
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Also there is a record company called Apple Records that has
| a litigious history with Apple, it could be not worth the
| potential trouble.
| _thisdot wrote:
| On an iPhone the app is just called Music (similarly Google
| Maps is labelled just Maps on Android). This is exactly as
| weird as google maps domain being googlemaps.google.com
| bouke wrote:
| The iPhone Music app can play music from Apple Music,
| amongst others. It is not synonymous for Apple Music. You
| can still have your local library without subscribing to
| Apple Music.
| _thisdot wrote:
| On checking further, this is because music.apple.com
| redirects you to the Music app on iPhone. So they use a
| different domain for blogs.
| dbbk wrote:
| I've never seen googlemaps.google.com?
| _thisdot wrote:
| Sorry. Should've been clear. It's not the case, it
| would've been weird if it was
| kashunstva wrote:
| I was skeptical of the idea when it was announced a few weeks ago
| but I like what I see. Music discovery on the classical side is
| different from popular genres. Often I'm trying to discover
| new/different recordings of works I'm already familiar with.
| Different players, conductors, etc. Here, it's a success.
|
| For example I'm playing the Beethoven Op. 97 at a festival this
| summer. I have my go-to recordings but I'm curious what's out
| there. The search here yields complete works; rather than a
| movement here and a movement there, album here and and album
| there. This is priceless compared to the classically-oriented
| search elsewhere.
| meerita wrote:
| Why this and not using Music App?
| [deleted]
| rwalle wrote:
| Did you even open the web page before posting this comment? The
| answer is very clearly written in the page.
| nanidin wrote:
| Pretty irritating that for the last week or so, when I search
| classical music on my iPhone, the first result was an empty
| playlist that told me there is a classical music app coming.
|
| Great. I have an app for listening to music from Apple called
| Music. I don't really want yet another app and the mental
| overhead that comes with it.
| kieckerjan wrote:
| If the app is only half as good as the Primephonic service that
| Apple acquired and shuttered and on which it is probably based,
| it will already be an asset for classical music lovers worldwide.
| Apps like Spotify are hugely inadequate for browsing classical
| music. Hell, in those you often even cannot read the entire title
| of a track because it is overstuffed with (meta) info.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| For a while a long time ago, I had a Naxos subscription ($20 a
| year) where I could listen to anything in their catalog. It was
| great for headphones at work. This might be, too.
| tzs wrote:
| How is Apple Music playback on Amazon Echo devices? Does Apple
| have anything as nice as Spotify Connect?
|
| My current setup is that I have an Echo Dot connected by the line
| out to my A/V receiver, with the microphone turned off. With
| Spotify Connect the Spotify on my computer or phone can tell the
| Spotify on the Dot to play a song, album, or playlist. The
| Spotify on the Dot then streams that music from Spotify. I can
| turn the computer or phone off and the music keeps playing.
| Spotify on my computer or phone will show what is playing on the
| Dot and let me control it.
|
| This works really well. (In fact, it works way better than Amazon
| Music from my computer or phone works with the Dot. I just
| finished a 90 day free trial of Amazon Music and one of the
| reasons I did not subscribe was how poorly Amazon Music works
| with Echo devices. Spotify completely blows Amazon out of the
| water there).
|
| What I really like with this is that once I start playback the
| computer or phone no longer needs to be involved.
|
| I know that there is an Apple Music app for Echo that lets Apple
| Music be a source for Echo, so that I could say "Play Foo on
| Apple Music" and Alexa would use Apple Music do do that, but I
| don't want to choose my music by voice. I want to do the choosing
| on my Mac or phone/tablet.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _I know that there is an Apple Music app for Echo that lets
| Apple Music be a source for Echo, so that I could say "Play Foo
| on Apple Music" and Alexa would use Apple Music [to] do
| that..._
|
| Yes, this works great.
|
| > _...but I don 't want to choose my music by voice. I want to
| do the choosing on my Mac or phone/tablet._
|
| This also works but requires using Bluetooth. There's no way to
| "hand off" from an iPhone/iPad to Alexa as you can with a
| HomePod.
| fckgw wrote:
| This is a very niche and very specific workflow you have.
| Spotify is the only thing that can do what you want as far as I
| know.
|
| Ironically Apple used to offer a product to do this more than a
| decade ago, the Apple Airport Express. It's a wifi access point
| with a line out. You can still pick one up for ~$20 on eBay and
| I believe it will still work with Apple music as a target
| device.
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| >Does Apple have anything as nice as Spotify Connect
|
| It sure doesn't. I generally love Apple Music, but you can
| really feel the neglect Apple pays to its non-preferred
| platforms once you attempt to use it on 3rd party hardware.
|
| Listening to Apple Music on the PS5 while playing a videogame
| is way more kludgy than it needs to be. The little pop-up card
| in the dashboard never seems to completely match the recently
| played on my phone, and only provides about a dozen shortcuts
| to recent plays and albums apparently randomly selected from my
| library. Launching the full app will often close the game or
| disconnect it from the internet and send it back to the
| homescreen. Attempting to use Airplay will, of course,
| completely exit the game and take over the entire PS5 with
| Apple TV.
|
| By comparison, the Spotify experience was: Start game. Open
| spotify, tap Connect. Tap PS5. Play whatever I want, done. This
| feature was the single biggest factor keeping me on Spotify but
| after getting an AVR with Atmos support I just couldn't stay on
| that platform, which seems to get less investment into music
| related features relative to everything else every year.
| Aissen wrote:
| It's good that they finally released something on the back of the
| Primephonic acquisition:
| https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/08/apple-acquires-classi...
| lesterchixi wrote:
| [dead]
| romeovs wrote:
| This might be off topic but has anyone else noticed the
| sloppiness in Apples' websites lately?
|
| On both Safari and Firefox on my machine the titles on this page
| appear without the correct fonts (falling back to Times).
|
| On apple.com a lot of buttons (eg. the buy button on
| https://www.apple.com/mac/) lead to 404 pages.
|
| Trying to report these issues seems impossible, of course.
| pivo wrote:
| The buy button and titles work for me on Safari and Firefox
| earthnail wrote:
| 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.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Apple was one of the last streaming providers to adopt lossless
| audio. Even then, the "high res" part is optional. You can
| disable it and stream normal 44.1/16
| mihaaly wrote:
| 192kHz is overkill of the overkill, but 10bit, seriously?! That
| is 1024 levels for the whole dynamic range, you are cutting it
| down to its 64th fraction man! With classical music where it is
| not filled up to the level of clipping but silent parts contain
| plenty of details you really must be joking with 10 bits or
| perhaps rely on listening experience of rap with through the
| roof bass and inarticulate jabber, there even 6bits may be too
| much, I give you that.
|
| Also the standard 44.1kHz is good to have so the waves could be
| followed with little deviation and for the sake of
| reproduction. 192kHz is really snake oil but please do not jump
| over the horse to the other side in the frenzy of compensating.
|
| Please study https://www.headphonesty.com/2019/07/sample-rate-
| bit-depth-b... or others.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| Even in "loud" music 10 or 12 bit is definitely noticeable.
| Many modern samplers include a legacy mode meant to mimic the
| grungy sound of old 10 or 12 bit sampling hardware. It might
| not be noticeable to non-musicians, but anyone who makes
| music will hear the difference. Even if you turn off other
| features that are usually included in tandem, like dac
| emulators.
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| >perhaps rely on listening experience of rap with through the
| roof bass and inarticulate jabber, there even 6bits may be
| too much, I give you that.
|
| Always disappointing to see exhibited this apparent
| compulsion by audiophiles discussing the merit of a certain
| medium to denigrate rap specifically as valueless or
| inherently "low quality" audio.
|
| Nobody who would benefit to learn about what you are saying
| is going to be more likely to listen to you after you tell
| them their preferred music is "inarticulate jabber" not
| worthy of 6 bits of dynamic range.
|
| I think you made a great recap on why this is good and
| especially good for classical music listeners. But I can't
| fathom why so many music lovers online are only able to
| communicate about their love of music while trashing a
| specific genre. I think more people should be exposed to high
| quality audio and know how to appreciate it, theorizing to
| the ignorant that their tastes are wrong because their
| preferred genres are bad probably doesn't move the needle in
| that direction.
| throw0101b wrote:
| > _With classical music where it is not filled up to the
| level of clipping but silent parts contain plenty of details_
| [...]
|
| And just because the music is silent doesn't mean the
| recording is: there's one album I have where there is a short
| rest in the musical work, but they recorded in a church in
| the country/rural area and seem to have have left the
| window(s) open, so during the musical stop you can hear birds
| chirping in the recording (if you have decent headphones).
| bryanmgreen wrote:
| Is 192/24 discernible to most people with mostly common
| listening equipment? No.
|
| Should we be complaining that an audio streaming service is
| offering the highest quality audio? No. Especially because
| they're not charging a premium for it.
| explaininjs wrote:
| Have you personally tested this in a blind study? I have, and
| the higher quality made a noticeable difference and I was able
| to identify it and prefer it across all test cases. The others
| I tested with did not notice any difference. It could be one of
| those cilantro things idk. But other accounts are in line with
| my experience: https://audiophilereview.com/audiophile-
| music/yes-19224-file...
| lesterchixi wrote:
| [dead]
| antiviral wrote:
| 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.
| singularity2001 wrote:
| This app is available only on the App Store for iPhone. (not
| ipad)
| eddieroger wrote:
| That is true, but what is also true is that the iPhone version
| works just fine on iPad, albeit a little skinny. But I'm
| currently listening to it and it works just fine, Spatial Audio
| and all.
| ak_111 wrote:
| Am wondering if something like this should exist for jazz and
| even a separate one for techno?
| whalesalad wrote:
| The domain applemusic.apple is outstanding. It's giving Tim Apple
| energy.
| HeavyFeather wrote:
| The best part is that it isn't even set up:
| https://applemusic.apple/
|
| This awkward press release lives at
| https://learn.applemusic.apple/apple-music-classical
|
| Drop the pathname and you get a nice 404.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Classicals are a bit like different bands playing covers for a
| song.
| ehPReth wrote:
| I wonder why "applemusic.apple" and not just "music.apple", is it
| a trademark thing? The latter is certainly more cleaner
| cpeterso wrote:
| Return of the Beatles' Apple Corps v Apple Computer lawsuit?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer
| laserson wrote:
| How does this compare with Concertmaster? It's basically a skin
| on top of Spotify for browsing classical music. It's free and
| pretty good. (There's also an app.) And I believe there is a
| version for Apple Music already?
|
| [1]: https://concertmaster.app
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| It's very surprising there's no iPad or Apple TV version of this.
| iPhone only is a bit of a shock.
| themadturk wrote:
| Mobile only. I have a copy of it sitting on my iPad right now.
| It's the iPhone form factor, but seems to work.
| dewey wrote:
| For those asking why they "didn't just" improve the existing
| music app. This is the rebranded version of a service called
| Primephonic which they acquired last year. This is obviously way
| less work than trying to jam it into the existing app, so I don't
| think it's an entirely unreasonable decision.
|
| https://www.apple.com/hk/en/newsroom/2021/08/apple-acquires-...
| cschmidt wrote:
| 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/
| rsfinn wrote:
| As of just now, that link redirects to the "Apple Music
| Classical" press release page.
| cschmidt wrote:
| You're right, it has changed since this morning.
| russelldjimmy wrote:
| From a different thread on HN about the same topic, some
| commenters mentioned that the information architecture and
| navigation required for classical music is different enough
| from other music to warrant its own app. I would be surprised
| if Apple made a decision to cut corners on work and ship a
| product faster (because from their other products, they seem to
| be a company that believes in taking their time and delaying
| releases till they are done to a level that they deem
| satisfactory)
| Y-bar wrote:
| I have a lot of rap music which has the same problems today
| and would be solved by the metadata management in the
| Classical Music app. I dearly hope Apple will bring back some
| of the management from that app into the regular app, or
| allow non-classical music into the new app.
| jdgoesmarching wrote:
| I have a strong feeling that they acquired Primephonic to
| eventually replace the primary Apple Music architecture. To
| your point, there's a lot of cool functionality you can
| create with different performances of songs in all genres
| that could be a huge competitive advantage, but Apple Music
| currently struggles with simple metadata management.
|
| No shade to the classical music enjoyers, I am one of them,
| but that is nowhere near a large enough market for the
| largest company in the world to acquire a niche app for the
| sole purpose of catering to them. It only makes sense to me
| if they're after a tech stack that can be folded into their
| main service, and Apple almost always companies for their
| tech rather than their product (including Beats for Beats
| Music).
|
| Rolling it out as a classical music app first is a pretty
| clever way to test new features and architecture at limited
| scale. I would 100% look to that app to see the potential
| future of Apple Music.
| treerunner wrote:
| Many types of music have additional requirements, at least
| for discovery. For example, how about cover songs? It would
| be nice to find every available version of All Along the
| Watchtower. This is not unique to classical so why not fix in
| the parent app?
| dewey wrote:
| Yes, the structure is very different and having them both in
| one app would probably also make it confusing to users if
| views for the same like an "album view" look different just
| by clicking on different cover art associated with either
| Apple Music, or Apple Music Classical.
|
| > because from their other products, they seem to be a
| company that believes in taking their time and delaying
| releases till they are done to a level that they deem
| satisfactory
|
| This is definitely not the case for a long time already. Some
| people would probably say "Since Snow Leopard". If you use
| the Apple Music app on macOS, or really any recent macOS apps
| that was ported from iPadOS to macOS it's obvious that this
| is not true anymore. System Settings would be another such
| example.
| michelb wrote:
| I'm wondering if they will also do this with jazz, which has
| similar issues.
| russelldjimmy wrote:
| I would love that as well!
| joseph_grobbles wrote:
| [dead]
| tonguetrainer wrote:
| A sign of the times. Classical and ambient music are getting more
| popular as we are all stressed out, and there is no end in sight.
| erfgh wrote:
| Has anyone used Apple Music on Windows? Probably the worst
| experience of my life.
| gumby wrote:
| I installed this last night and i immediately found it a much
| better experience. Apple did the right thing by using a separate
| app (and by buying it, as they did with iTunes-- somehow this
| isn't in their DNA).
| codetrotter wrote:
| A little bit off-topic perhaps but.. does the domain
| applemusic.apple look funny to anyone else? Like, why not just
| music.apple or applemusic.com or apple.com/music or
| music.apple.com lol
| lifefeed wrote:
| 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 classical music, it's not impossible to represent this
| with a generic interface, but it would benefit by something more
| geared to how jazz fans like to browse.
| joenot443 wrote:
| Learning Take Five on alto sax when I was 15 or so was part of
| what solidified my love for the instrument. Such a recognizable
| and timeless song; it's often my go-to suggestion for people
| unfamiliar with jazz.
| crazygringo wrote:
| 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.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| for some composers, they are: Gershwin, Ellington, Rodgers &
| Hart, Cole Porter. Artists do entire albums featuring them
| alone.
|
| And there are some who you'd really _like_ to see in their
| own sequence: Johnny Mercer and Hoagy Carmichael come to
| mind.
|
| But generally, you're right.
| pwinnski wrote:
| The composers of some very early jazz standards are literally
| unknown, or unverifiable!
| sammalloy wrote:
| Or that many "jazz standards" are based on popular music
| that wasn't jazz to begin with.
| walthamstow wrote:
| Some of them are even Disney songs
| mastercheif wrote:
| Check out https://roonlabs.com
|
| Roon uses a database-style approach to keep track of the
| differences between compositions vs performances + artists vs
| composers. It's peerless for Jazz.
|
| It also has many of the "Apple Music Classical" features
| already like breaking out movements from tracks.
| taude wrote:
| I've heard Roon mentioned a lot, and I have BluOs and my NAD
| amp support it natively. I've never really bothered to look
| into this. But this sounds like it's time for me to explore.
| Weird that it took an Apple product marketing sheet for me to
| "get" what Roon is like then....
| dashwehacct wrote:
| This too is one of my favorite songs, but in a slightly
| different style:
|
| https://youtu.be/rbt78buj80Q
| lifefeed wrote:
| That is really nice.
| throw0101b wrote:
| This is the "Take Five" variant by Val Bennett, "The Russians
| Are Coming", used in the show _Secret Life of Machines_
| (awesome series, now freely /legally posted on YT):
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMxate9gegg
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-fvwg9zy08
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Life_of_Machines
| methehack wrote:
| Check out roon + quboz and/or tidal -- that's the audiophile
| route.
|
| Roon is just meta-data and presentation. Quboz/Tidal hold the
| content. Roon's content and interface is fantastic compared to
| spotify and apple music. It uses third party content
| (wikipedia, reviews from tivo, maybe others) seemlessly. And it
| elevates the use of the album art. Also, it allows for album-
| centric approach to viewing/organizing/listening which I vastly
| prefer. Roon also allows deep linking. Like every album/track
| has a list of the people on it and you can see everything each
| of them has done. Same for composers/etc. Also, from each
| track, you can get to all the other recordings across all
| artists. Using this for the last month has really pointed out
| to me how crap apple and spotify are for
| discovery/learning/investigation.
|
| Technically, this route is also superior because, as I
| understand it, roon tells the streamer + DAC, which may be way
| higher quality than the DAC in any apple device, to stream
| directly from TIDAL or QUBOZ. This yields higher quality
| because you skip the apple DAC and airplay, both of which
| lessen quality compared to what's possible with the other
| route. I'm sure the apple DACs are fine for what they are, but
| I'm also sure they're full of compromises. You can spend like
| 5K on a DAC alone.
|
| I know audiophiles can really overdo it, but I have been using
| this combination for a month or so now and I think it's sooo
| much better. Music is way more like I remember it. It was
| confusing to me because spotify/apple music have everything and
| yet I found them very frustrating to use. My instinct was right
| -- they're crap products compared to what's possible. Your
| mileage may vary.
| dekhn wrote:
| I use Take Five as my reference recording. The bass in the
| background of the drum solo is very good for evaluating
| reproduction quality.
| disposition2 wrote:
| 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 :(
| rubslopes wrote:
| No current app has come near Rdio in terms of music
| discovery. IIRC, you could also comment on albums, which was
| awesome.
| CountHackulus wrote:
| I really miss Rdio, it really was the best music streaming
| service.
| sonofhans wrote:
| Yes, I'll join you in pouring one out for Rdio. I listened
| to, and paid for, Rdio every day for years until Spotify
| killed it. Rdio allowed users to fulfill simple goals -- find
| music you know and listen to it; find new music and listen to
| it. The paths to those goals were simple and clear.
|
| Turns out it's hard to make money that way. Thus why, I
| suppose, Spotify is a cornucopia of manipulative dark
| patterns.
| iakov wrote:
| I use spotify daily to listen to my playlists and find new
| music regularly. I have not noticed any dark patterns,
| apart from search on desktop being weird sometimes. What
| are they?
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| For one, all of the recommendations you receive are
| driven partly by sponsorship by major labels - release
| radar, the for you mix, and the radios you run from your
| playlists. This is not clearly documented online, but
| there is some coverage from when it was introduced in
| 2020. I'd be curious if anyone here has more up to date
| information.[0]
|
| So one dark pattern would be the fact that the entire
| discovery system is partly driven by advertising
| incentives with no indication to the user about what
| recommendations are most genuine and what are being
| selected as the most-relevant sponsored option.
|
| As an individual user, I think I've noticed this before.
| There was a span of time where every single playlist I
| made with hip hop on it would always bring up the same
| 2-3 JPEGMafia tracks in the radio mix, regardless of the
| playlists' individual content or the fact that I don't
| listen to that artist.
|
| [0]https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/02/spotify-will-now-
| allow-art...
| BlueDingo wrote:
| I only know of the upgrade splash screens where Dismiss
| is small and/or floating off of the brightly colored
| splash so it doesn't contrast and is harder to see.
| Exactly like Amazon Music.
| iakov wrote:
| That is nasty, but does not sound like a very bad
| behaviour. Annoying - yes, tricking user into doing
| something they had no intention to do - hardly.
| behnamoh wrote:
| Why did Apple desperately repeat the link to their app
| SEVEN TIMES on this page? It doesn't feel "Appley".
| CE02 wrote:
| I second this! Couldn't agree more. In all honesty, some of the
| best parts of jazz lie in its history. For example listening to
| Clifford Brown might make you think "huh this is neat". But
| understanding his relationship to gillespie, early death, etc,
| puts his career in a unique and fascinating frame.
| MavisBacon wrote:
| +1 on Clifford Brown. I think he wrote some of the most
| brilliant bop melodies and his death was probably one of the
| more tragic that music ever saw
| ocimbote wrote:
| I'm a happy user of Qobuz, which I find to have mapped quire
| nicely the composer/author/musician graph, at least at the API
| level.
|
| You might want to check it out.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| When I tried out Tidal a while ago I noticed that it handled
| the liner notes type stuff much better than Spotify or anyone
| else.
|
| Very much was able to do the sort of things you're alluding to,
| noticing you like a drummer on a track then clicking on them
| and finding out what else they've done. That sort of thing
| can't be done on Spotify.
|
| There's a lot more potential with that sort of stuff that no
| one is yet doing.
|
| I'd be delighted to see an Apple Jazz app.
| thewebcount wrote:
| I want that for pop music, too! I don't understand why Apple
| (and other companies) don't get that there are users who want
| to slice and dice music in this way for every genre. When I go
| looking for "No-one is to blame" by Howard Jones, I want the
| version from "Dream Into Action" not the crappy radio remake he
| did with Phil Collins on the drums. When I listen to "Leave it"
| by Yes, I may want to make the connection that it was produced
| by Trevor Horn who was also 1/2 of The Art of Noise. In fact,
| my friends and I used to play a game we called "6 Degrees of
| Bruford/Wakeman". You could find connections between just about
| any band and either Yes or Genesis in 6 or fewer steps.
| rodgerd wrote:
| From popular genres I would think hip-hop would be the one to
| target; pop and rock have had pretty much for its entire
| existence encouraged listeners to link a recording with a
| band, and not to think about a producer or composer/writer,
| and to be generally negative about the idea of different
| performances (derided as covers, unless, like Joan Jett your
| covers become identified as the standard).
|
| Hip-hop fans are generally much more interested in the
| producer, songwriters, and also sample use. They'd be a great
| audience for richer metadata and better presentation of same.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| One impediment is the pop industry doesn't organize it that
| way. Classical does, so PrimePhonic/Apple didn't have to
| invent a new taxonomy to make a classical service.
|
| Apple and Spotify could use their market power to make labels
| backfill a more complex data format for pop.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| ...or, they could pay actual human beings instead of just
| relying on the crap data that labels provide.
|
| Although I guess that in today's world, I could just say
| "use AI to figure it out."
| grumpyprole wrote:
| > Although I guess that in today's world, I could just
| say "use AI to figure it out."
|
| Amazon do this and it doesn't work at all well for
| classical music. The album reviews are full of reviews
| for the same piece of music but different performances,
| it's not always easy to tell either. I stopped buying CDs
| from Amazon years ago, although primarily because they'd
| always arrive with cracked jewel cases.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| I don't see how that could work without cooperation from
| the labels since they, the artists and producers have the
| authoritative data about each track and album. Even then,
| going back more than a number of years accurately would
| be challenging.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| I don't really listen to classical but this app gets me
| interested a bit especially with the instruments feature, also
| the era selection. You can also choose by conductors but that's
| something fanatics would be able to hear lmao, it's the same
| song, but conducting is supposed to make a difference?
| favsq wrote:
| applemusic.apple? why not music.apple? smh
| pwinnski wrote:
| Because that's already a redirect for the standard Music app?
|
| My guess is that the team developed the site without knowing
| whether they'd have permission to deploy it on *.apple or not,
| so they put apple in the domain basename and it was deemed not
| worth it to take it out once they knew the deploy target. Just
| guessing, though.
| johndill wrote:
| Looks nice but I have to play with it more. It has certainly been
| "Appleinzed". Playlists feature single movements of pieces that
| make little musical sense outside of the context of the whole
| composition they were meant to be a part of. For new users
| looking to dop their toes in the Classical world the absolute
| first, featured piece you see is Mahler's 9th symphony. Certainly
| not something new listeners would likely enjoy as a starter
| piece. Search looks good and the browse part offers good choices
| of the various genres. It imported all my classical albums and
| only my classical albums from Apple music. Good start
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Playlists feature single movements of pieces that make little
| musical sense outside of the context of the whole composition
| they were meant to be a part of._
|
| That's a fundamental flaw of playlists, and not unique to this
| app or to any music created before the streaming era.
| pwinnski wrote:
| While you're thinking about playlists, I should introduce you
| to classical radio. Out-of-context movements are the norm
| there!
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