Spotify - high quality, legal, free, streaming music.

[Tsaraslondon]

I've just looked up the spotify listing for the new Colin Davis Philips box set.

Composers aren't mentioned once, so we get.

1. 1.Allegro moderato - Allegro
2. 2. Andante
3. 3. Allegro molto
4. 1. Allegro
5, 2. Adagio - Piu adagio - Presto

etc.


Very informative!

[DavidRoss]

This, along with their better sound quality (initially, at least -- maybe Spotty's caught up?), is why I went with Mog instead. Can you get that in the UK?

[TheGSMoeller]

That is a frustrating aspect of Spotify. Ive had to locate track listings from other sites for many of the box sets.

[DavidRoss]

Good morning, Greg!

[TheGSMoeller]

Morning, Dave!

What a walk off win yesterday for the Giants, eh? 

[DavidRoss]

Typical Giants baseball -- keeps 'em in their seats 'til the very end. 

Oh, and did I mention above that Mog is a Bay Area outfit? And despite acquisition by Beats, the service is maintaining its quality so far.

[DavidRoss]

"Music On the Go"

It should have been named for their cat.

[TheGSMoeller]

Just signed up for MOG, haven't had a chance to navigate through the selection much, but the sound quality is nice.

[Tsaraslondon]

MOG is not available in the UK yet

[knight66]

Sadly, not even Voice of Mog!

Mike

[mn dave]

Only a fool purchases CDs that he might listen to only once or twice while the same music is available on Spotify.

I am that fool.   

*bangs head against keyboard*

[Brian]

Only a fool purchases CDs that he might listen to only once or twice while the same music is available on Spotify.

I am that fool.   

*bangs head against keyboard*

Recently Naxos Music Library added a label to its streaming service and I literally wiped out an entire $200 shopping cart worth of stuff I would have bought. But exactly - I was probably only going to listen 2-3 times, and also, this is a 600 sq.ft. apartment and half my CD collection is already packed in boxes, where's all that music gonna go? 

[mn dave]

Recently Naxos Music Library added a label to its streaming service and I literally wiped out an entire $200 shopping cart worth of stuff I would have bought.

Very cool!

[Brian]

I don't have Spotify or MOG or any competitors, though. Anybody have experience comparing them?

[Holden]

Very little difference in sound quality for the MOG and Spotify premium services. I've stuck with Spotify. Not sure why but I like it.

[mn dave]

For me, Spotify is slow at times when pulling up search results. Overall though, it's pretty neat.

[Madiel]

I don't use Spotify much, and only the free version, but when I came back to it in recent weeks I certainly noticed it had become much slower, or seemed to get stuck altogether.  This was only on the opening pages or searches. Once I had found what I wanted and picked tracks to play it was absolutely fine.

I also have strong suspicions that it is slowing my computer up when I'm not even trying to use it.  I've already discovered a couple of times that it is running things in the background completely unnecessarily, and I've done my best to turn such processes off, but I'm not convinced I've entirely succeeded.

[otterhouse]

(posted this on the Gramophone forum, but no answers yet, so try it here!)

Starting with a confession and a question;

As I hardly buy any CD's anymore, it has been more than two years since I last bought a Gramophone magazine... Think it was june 2011, and although I peeked once and a while on this forum, my connection with the magazine was broken. But, since I discovered Spotify, the "need" for a magazine like the Gramophone grew and... I bought the 2013 awards issue. The combination of the Gramophone magazine and Spotify is like an "all you can eat" ticket in a paistry shop... Not only in the reviews (not all recordings are on Spotify *yet*), but also the advertisements make me hungry and explorative... :-)

At the same time, there are many discussions about the benefits (or rather, disadvantages) of Spotify for the music industry. Surprisingly little on the effects it has on the Classical music industry, except short shoutouts like:

http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2013/07/radiohead-quits-spotify-should-classical-artists-pull-out-too.html 

--Question--!
Now, for my own understanding (and for the story below), a question: Does anyone know if classical labels are payed "per track"? Does a short Schumann piece from the Davidsbundlertanze earns a label the same amount of money as a 25 minute Mahler track? Or is there an other arrangement made for that?
-- --

In the early days of CD, large works were devided in separate tracks, even "theme 1, theme 2 development" etc sections. If Mahler of Bruckner symphonies are payed per track, that would be an interesting extra income for classical labels, I guess... ;-)

But wait, did'nt Spotify pay *anything*, or way too less for artists? And does nobody use Spotify for listening to classical music? Well, yes and... no. It's interesting to look at the amount of plays a spotify artist has had. Ok, someone like the now obcure pianist Pierre alain Volondat dit not go above the 1000 plays so far for any of his tracks; but someone like Roland Poitinen has some amazing amount of followers and track listenings...

see -->  https://scontent-b-ams.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc3/1379793_10201744600569486_680127183_n.jpg 

Now note, and the label Bis does this quite cleverly, the separate "tracks" come from different re-packagings on Spotify, each with an own trigger to "lure" the listners to the same recording(s), analog to what this article:

http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2013/20130501spotifypackaging 

describes in "what is lacking" in the sense and cleverness of classical labels...

and see, a Scarlatti recital by Yegvreni Sudbin get's over a million trackplays, small pieces by Eric Satie, played by pointinen (again, in different repackaging!!) a multitude of that...!

Again, maybe Spotify does not pay much:

http://www.sonicscoop.com/2013/07/31/op-ed-spotify-payouts-revisited-how-much-does-it-pay-now-and-how-much-should-artists-demand/ 

but in the long tail thought, all these bits and pieces add up to some nice earnings for "dead" CD's...

A vague stockmusic company called "Cavendish" has around 20 million plays per smartly tagged collections like

http://open.spotify.com/album/6aDatzcG95hbE4LgkCqB33 



and not only for Mozart, also their Bach, Beethoven etc collections let them earn a nice amout of income. And remember, it's not only Spotify, but also comparable services like Deezer, Rhapsody etc and future services like Google play music...



So, questions are,

1) do long tracks generate the same amount of money on Spotify as short tracks?

2) Looking at the figures and the future; if you tag your music cleverly (and do that in numurous repackagings so the user can *find* your music ) is a service like Spotify a welcome new source of income for the classical music industry?

PS, Spotify and web-streaming services do not nessicarily have to "replace" other ways of listening to recorded music (over 1000 CD's I'm not throwing away!!), but can be a new way to explore music....

Rolf
http://classical-lp.blogspot.nl/ 

[otterhouse]

Ps, what I like about Spotify is that, in stead of the celebrity driven -bit-and-pieces- programming of our national Dutch radio, I can select a nice program for the morning...
Through a FM cable (tunecast), I can also stream it though my phone on the car stereo...

Here is are a couple of playlists I made, hope you will enjoy them!

http://open.spotify.com/user/otterhouse/playlist/0s8p9rzyZKDBCzcBaGPou2
(for the "bit" adventurous listner)

http://open.spotify.com/user/otterhouse/playlist/7IHpmgdQre6XV88157PdCQ
(last works of composers, sometimes unfinished...)

http://open.spotify.com/user/otterhouse/playlist/3pUTrLuS0d4ECC1wslM558
(translated, "In stead of the morning program of the Dutch radio" :-)

http://open.spotify.com/user/otterhouse/playlist/2O47O7Z7HHWE8aegozcnBm
(Theodore Gouvy CD, the serenades are "cartoon music from the 19th century", not "great" works, but very amusing!)

Greetings,

Rolf

[mn dave]

I'm not sure of the answer to your questions though some labels and artists might consider Spotify a promotional tool and receive what they expect from it.

Thanks for the playlists, Rolf!