All About Streaming Music Services

[Papy Oli]

Olivier, what country are you in?  I just checked and all of Suzuki's recordings are still on Qobuz.

In the UK, David. I can see them on Qobuz, no issue.

I only posted about it because it is the first time I saw such occurrence on Idagio in over 3 years of using it.

[DavidW]

In the UK, David. I can see them on Qobuz, no issue.

I only posted about it because it is the first time I saw such occurrence on Idagio in over 3 years of using it.

That is nuts, usually they offer the same catalogues.  Is this an issue with BIS as a whole on Idagio?

[Madiel]

Looks like I've lost much of the BIS catalogue in Australia.

[DavidW]

Looks like I've lost much of the BIS catalogue in Australia.

I hope this is temporary and not Apple exclusivity creeping in.

[Spotted Horses]

Looks like I've lost much of the BIS catalogue in Australia.

On what streaming service?

[Harry]

I noticed this morning that all CD's I had in my library from the label BIS are unavailable, on Qobuz. That is really a worrying thing. BIS truly sold themselves out to Apple.

[Papy Oli]

@Harry
Have you tried searching for them again ? As I mentioned further up, I had a few BIS entries in my Qobuz UK favourites that took me to blank pages. Searching for them again, they came up under a new listing and are still there this morning e.g.:

https://play.qobuz.com/album/f2ojwqov9jhfb
https://play.qobuz.com/album/sagpdtohvf55a
https://play.qobuz.com/album/qp1d739ywfm2b

Maybe they are doing a re-listing following the Apple takeover? All the Suzuki recordings are still there on Qobuz UK as of now.

(No such luck on Idagio, although the Petersson box is still there. That said, based on my impression, Idagio seems slower to (re)upload compared to others, for instance with the Hyperion releases.)

 

[Papy Oli]

That is nuts, usually they offer the same catalogues.  Is this an issue with BIS as a whole on Idagio?

Did a quick search on Idagio:
- Only 2 volumes of the Sibelius edition left
- Schnittke symphonies all gone bar No.3
- Stenhammar quartets all gone.
- No Suzuki
- No Brautigam

[Harry]

@Harry
Have you tried searching for them again ? As I mentioned further up, I had a few BIS entries in my Qobuz UK favourites that took me to blank pages. Searching for them again, they came up under a new listing and are still there this morning e.g.:

https://play.qobuz.com/album/f2ojwqov9jhfb
https://play.qobuz.com/album/sagpdtohvf55a
https://play.qobuz.com/album/qp1d739ywfm2b

Maybe they are doing a re-listing following the Apple takeover? All the Suzuki recordings are still there on Qobuz UK as of now.

(No such luck on Idagio, although the Petersson box is still there. That said, based on my impression, Idagio seems slower to (re)upload compared to others, for instance with the Hyperion releases.)

 

Yes I tried, and older recordings are available, but the new releases are still unavailable. The cantatas are available and some others too, I saw that.

[Harry]

Did a quick search on Idagio:
- Only 2 volumes of the Sibelius edition left
- Schnittke symphonies all gone bar No.3
- Stenhammar quartets all gone.
- No Suzuki
- No Brautigam

That's a disaster

[Madiel]

On what streaming service?

Idagio.

[Madiel]

Maybe they are doing a re-listing following the Apple takeover? All the Suzuki recordings are still there on Qobuz UK as of now.

(No such luck on Idagio, although the Petersson box is still there. That said, based on my impression, Idagio seems slower to (re)upload compared to others, for instance with the Hyperion releases.)

 

The peculiar thing though is that it's saying the albums don't exist. It's saying that the albums are not available in a particular country.

Which is absolutely a thing that happens with the insane vagaries of licensing deals. Among the several reasons that I still prefer CDs is that I can buy them from anywhere in the world, including in cases where the record companies have decided for some strange reason that an Australian couldn't possibly want to hear certain music.

It's stranger than that, though, because the way I confirmed for sure that something odd was happening was by trying a playlist I created in Idagio that I knew had a BIS track in it. The track would play perfectly well from the playlist, but without cover art. And if I tried to go from that track to the source album, that was when I got a message about the album not being available... despite just having played a track from that album.

There were still a few BIS albums detectable, but not many on the searches I tried. If something really has happened long term then I would very much want to yell at Apple. Only finding the right part of Apple to yell at is sometimes extraordinarily difficult, and only intermittently effective (possibly when enough people yell the same thing).

[Roasted Swan]

The peculiar thing though is that it's saying the albums don't exist. It's saying that the albums are not available in a particular country.

Which is absolutely a thing that happens with the insane vagaries of licensing deals. Among the several reasons that I still prefer CDs is that I can buy them from anywhere in the world, including in cases where the record companies have decided for some strange reason that an Australian couldn't possibly want to hear certain music.

It's stranger than that, though, because the way I confirmed for sure that something odd was happening was by trying a playlist I created in Idagio that I knew had a BIS track in it. The track would play perfectly well from the playlist, but without cover art. And if I tried to go from that track to the source album, that was when I got a message about the album not being available... despite just having played a track from that album.

There were still a few BIS albums detectable, but not many on the searches I tried. If something really has happened long term then I would very much want to yell at Apple. Only finding the right part of Apple to yell at is sometimes extraordinarily difficult, and only intermittently effective (possibly when enough people yell the same thing).

In the interim I find yelling at my wife's i-phone or my daughter's mac gives me some solace.

[Madiel]

The much-changed BIS website now says its recordings are available on:

Apple Music
eClassical (SACDs/CDs available)
Presto music (SACDs/CDs available)

The small number of platforms and the fact that other two explicitly talk about discs being available makes me even more suspicious that this is no accident.

To which I would only respond with a giant "fuck you". Apple is more and more shifting from being a platform provider to trying to be a content owner, and quite frankly I'm sick of this happening. I guess maybe Netflix has managed it well (though I don't have Netflix) but so often it's a terrible outcome. Using my Apple TV box the way I intended (before Apple TV+ content existed) is getting harder and harder with each operating system change because Apple is determined to make the box focused on its own content, not all the other TV streaming services I access on the box. Spotify bought a podcast company I liked, then went and made many of the podcasts Spotify-exclusive, then killed many of the podcasts when the audience plummeted because people did not change platforms. Because Spotify is not very good for listening to podcasts compared to dedicate podcast apps (I don't personally think Spotify is all that amazing for listening to music despite its popularity).

Apple taking good classical music recordings and making them exclusive is in no way going to persuade me to use Apple Classical. What would persuade me to use Apple Classical is making the interface and the search functions work as well as Idagio does. And even then I would only be motivated to change if Idagio stopped being good to use or it died.

[Papy Oli]

It's stranger than that, though, because the way I confirmed for sure that something odd was happening was by trying a playlist I created in Idagio that I knew had a BIS track in it. The track would play perfectly well from the playlist, but without cover art. And if I tried to go from that track to the source album, that was when I got a message about the album not being available... despite just having played a track from that album.

Weirder and weirder!! 

The much-changed BIS website now says its recordings are available on:

Apple Music
eClassical (SACDs/CDs available)
Presto music (SACDs/CDs available)

The small number of platforms and the fact that other two explicitly talk about discs being available makes me even more suspicious that this is no accident.

And yet, if you click on Suzuki's JSB's SMP that appears on their scrolling main page's banner, it still gives you links to Tidal, Spotify, Youtube Music... the head doesn't know what the buttock is doing 

[Madiel]

I've sent an email to BIS. Whether that's the head or the buttock remains to be seen.

[DavidW]

Using my Apple TV box the way I intended (before Apple TV+ content existed) is getting harder and harder with each operating system change because Apple is determined to make the box focused on its own content, not all the other TV streaming services I access on the box.

I've noticed that too.  I use an Apple TV with my den tv and it defaults to apple+ content without even showing the apps and I have to hit home repeatedly.

[Harry]

I've sent an email to BIS. Whether that's the head or the buttock remains to be seen.

Good action, let us know, if they answer. I had some experience with them, not always positive.

[DavidW]

In the US I just checked Idagio and nearly everything is gone.

For Qobuz it looks like it is all still there.

[Madiel]

Robert Bahr says no, their albums are not being removed from other streaming services.

The answer was literally "No." 

I've told him that some of us are having difficulties.