The New Yorker’s Alex Ross picks his way through the sonic landfill that most music-streaming services make of classical music, frustrating and/or confounding both classical mavens and listeners beginning to explore this art form.
Ross is not impressed by the new Apple Classical service (see headline quote). He has no use for Spotify (“obnoxious chaos”), not much for Qobuz (“a bit of a mess”). He likes the search and selection capacities of Idagio and the new streaming service of the British retailer Presto Classical.
He is impressed by the sometimes vast number of choices – Apple Classical, he finds, offers more than 500 Beethoven Fifths; less so by the hoops that users must jump through before arriving at those options. He misses printed opera librettos and notes, although some services offer PDF-format virtual booklets.
He notes that streaming services tend to be geared to playback from smartphones and other hand-held devices rather than computers, a significant drawback for him (and for me – a sign, I suspect, of our ages).
Ross’ bottom line: “[W]ith myriad possibilities accessible at the flick of a finger, it becomes harder to concentrate on a single album or on a single work. Gluttony takes hold, indigestion sets in. For that reason, I still prefer CDs or LPs: [T]he experience is finite and complete, with silence on both ends.”
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/apple-again-fails-to-save-classical-music
My bottom line: Streaming can wait. I don’t care to choose among 50 Beethoven Fifths, let alone 500. I’m fine with digital downloads in place of physical objects. Most mp3 downloads are much less expensive than a CD; higher-quality downloads are roughly the same price. (Highness of fidelity ultimately depends on the quality of playback equipment.) I don’t need booklets for most recordings and works, as there are plenty of information sources on the Internet. Speaking of which, there’s YouTube, whose praises I sang here:
Letter V 