Music Streaming Services

[The Minsky Moment]

I've used Rhapsody and Spotify.  It's a terrific thing to have access to all that music.  But it must be said: they kind of suck from an ease of use perspective for jazz and classical.

Example - David Murray, the tenor player.
If I search "David Murray" on Spotify I get over a dozen artist hits.  "David Murray", "David Murray Quintet," "David Murray Trio," "David Murray Octet," "David Murray Quartet," "David Murray Quartet+1"    Albums are split among these different "artists.". The album he did with Cassandra Wilson has a separate artist title as does the couple he did with the Gwo-Ka masters.  Similar thing happens if I search on Rhapsody.

On both services most of the album hits are under "David Murray." On Spotify though the second album listed is the Wurttemberg Sonata of CPE Bach, as played by the (white) classical pianist and educator David Murray, who appears at least one other time in the album list notwithstanding the nice picture of the (black) David Murray blowing his tenor sax.  (thankfully Michael Murray the organist does not appear with his two dozen plus discography).  The David Murray artist search does not turn up the World Saxophone Quartet even though Murray is a founding member and arguably is best known for his work in that lineup - Rhapsody does list one WSQ as an "other" album, and Spotify notes it as a "related artist" to "David Murray" (but not to "David Murray Quartet" etc.)

As for dates when certain musicians had significant sessions as side men, forgetaboutit.  For example while the Spotify album list for Wayne Shorter catches some of his work with Weather Report, it does not include the critical work he did for Art Blakey -- including his stint as musical director for the Jazz Messengers -- or Miles Davis' second quintet.  A bit of an oversight given that many of his most famous compositions were written then for those groups. Rhapsody does a little better on this - it includes as "other" albums many of those recordings, but curiously omitting the Second Quintet albums released from 1964-68 (these are found elsewhere so its not like they couldn't be there).

Classical is much much worse.  Primarily due to the fact that there is just a simple "artist" field, and both services fill it will-nilly with the composer, the primary soloist, the conductor, or the orchestra performing, without any discernible pattern.  Other metadata fields are fubar as well - neither service handles compilations well or has consistent policies on track names.  Aria compilations and highlight albums are not uniformly well-distinguished from complete versions. 

In Rhapsody (didn't have the patience to even try with Spotify) ,saved albums are saved under artist names by first name, so you better remember Rossini's first name (I didn't).  Assuming of course it goes under the composer name to begin with: the Kleiber Beethoven symphonies 5 & 7 get filed under "Wiener Philharmoniker" (good thing I picked up a little German!), whereas the Wiener Philharmoniker's production of "Die Zauberflote" (Solti) is filed unceremoniously under "Various Artists" - a category that captures about half the classical recordings I've saved.

OK no problem - just search under album: "D" for "Die Zauberflote".  Nope.  "Z" for "Zauberflote"? No.  Not under "The magic flute" or "Magic Flute" either. But the last is at least within spitting distance: the album title according to Rhapsody is "Mozart: Die Zauberflote"

Somehow I doubt Bieber fans have to put up with this kind of crap.

[mongers]

At a guess most of their 'tagging' information is scrapped from open sources or the companies supplying them are relying on user generated content at some point in the chain.

[Capetan Mihali]

Indexing.

[viper37]

Somehow I doubt Bieber fans have to put up with this kind of crap.

I don't know of any, so I can't ask them

I like to use Pandora, though legally it's only for US people (you got to use a VPN if you are abroad).  For metal, it has good selections.  It plays the song you ask for, then finds other similar songs.

[The Minsky Moment]

I like Pandora, but it's a radio-style service - you can't play particular things on demand.

Spotify seems like a nifty thing for the young-uns: facilitating sharing playlists kind of like oldtimers made and shared mix tapes, only a lot more convenient.   But I'm past that now.

Rhapsody is really pretty good overall for jazz: the playlist curation is quite nice with a varied selection of top tracks of the month and year and special themes e.g. if someone like Ornette Coleman dies.  The tagging problems are annoying but manageable if you have sufficient familiarity.

Classical is really a mess due to the metadata problem though and that is a shame because it IMO classical is where these services should have their highest value added.   More than half the fun is comparing different versions and interpretations of key pieces but if in the CD world that means either cutting yourself off or spending obscene amounts.  A all-you-can-eat subscription service solves that problem: for relative peanuts you can play multiple versions whenever you want. 

EXCEPT YOU CANT FIND THEM. 

[Syt]

Minsky, I feel your pain, especially when it comes to Classical on Spotify. I don't listen to much Jazz, but I find playlists most useful for that; either creating one myself, or taking someone else's (there's one of 50s-70s Jazz I like to listen to at work).

[Admiral Yi]

Hey Syt, a long time ago you asked us for advice on getting into the blues.  How did that go?

[Syt]

I honestly don't remember.

[Liep]

Have you tried Apple Music? Searching for artists are easier, because you don't have to specify a certain predefined artist before searching through albums. You can though, if you want to.

At least I can find classical albums easier than in spotify and can also search among the CDs I own and have mp3-yfied. Anyhoo, first 3 months are free.

[Warspite]

I agree entirely about Spotify. It really needs to up its game when it comes to classical indexing.

[viper37]

How about creating your own playlist on Youtube?  With the right extensions, there's no delay and no ads.
You will have to find individual songs, no indexing, hope someone made a clip, that it's available in your country, that it does not get removed, but, I like it as an option to listen to music in the office.

I know it's not what you want, but if you can't find it elsewhere, it could be an alternative.

[The Minsky Moment]

Have you tried Apple Music?

No- I have a Sonos setup at home and I don't think Apple Music is integrated yet.  Supposedly will be done by the end of the year - I can trial it then.

[Richard Hakluyt]

I've had similar problems with spotify. It is a shame as I would happily pay for a subscription.

[The Minsky Moment]

Both services are great in terms of content.  No question in my mind it's worth it despite the annoyance factor.  But I would pay a couple dollars more per month for fixed up metadata.

[The Brain]

As a strictly top 40 man I have no problems.