All About Streaming Music Services

[MusicTurner]

Qobuz isn't available in Australia.

I understand from the earlier posts that this has now changed. Generally, they seem to be expanding now into several European countries also, including Denmark.

[Madiel]

I understand from the earlier posts that this has now changed. Generally, they seem to be expanding now into several European countries also, including Denmark.

Apparently the recent expansion was Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/marksparrow/2021/04/15/hi-res-streaming-service-qobuz-launches-in-australia-new-zealand-and-scandinavia/?sh=352186232196

[Papy Oli]

According to an email received today, Apple Music has bought Primephonic, which will cease in its current form on 7th Sept and reopen within Apple at some point in the new year.

I had made my mind up recently to join Primephonic (after enjoying my 2nd month out of 4 at a reduced price trial and getting used to it) and was considering continuing with a yearly subscription then on. I spent the last week creating large playlists with Cantatas cycles and Baroque composers to explore and now it buggers off for 3 months+ and then to Apple.

After my inadequate experience with Qobuz, now this.

Full streaming can do one.

[DavidW]

Olivier you seem to keep having bad times with streaming.  Apple has a lossless version now.  Have you tried going directly to their service and giving it a shot?  At least for the time being?

[Madiel]

According to an email received today, Apple Music has bought Primephonic, which will cease in its current form on 7th Sept and reopen within Apple at some point in the new year.

WHAT THE FUCK?

*checks email*

My initial reaction is that this is a fucking disaster.

EDIT: Apparently the plan is to launch a dedicated classical music app. Which means... the whole e-mail blurb of reaching people who listen to both does what, exactly?

But I at least know that Apple kind of cares about classical music metadata, which is the crucial issue. More recent material on iTunes is much, much better than a lot of other sources in having useful metadata.

I'll probably try the Apple Music thing... right after copying my entire iTunes Library to another folder in case things go arse up when I sign up. Or I could just go start using Idagio.

[DavidW]

I think that this is actually a big win for classical music listeners.  Here me out...

Ever since the rise of the mp3 we've been dealing with a tagging system that was developed almost exclusively for popular music.  It has been a pervasive problem for us when ripping cds, buying digital downloads, and searching streaming services.  At no point has a major company showed any interest in addressing the problem.

Now tagging has improved a bit (but not a lot).  And the rise of these small services (Idagio and Primephonic) that cater towards conquering that problem is great... but they are small and honestly you can feel it.  Their apps have long standing problems and generally suffer from a lack of polish.

Apple wanting to launch a classical music service is the first time that a major company has genuinely acknowledged us and wants to make our experience a good one.  And with the resources of Apple all the little problems and lack of features that Primephonic has will go away.

In a year from now I wouldn't be surprised if all of us streamers end up switching to this new service.  I wouldn't be surprised if other major players (e.g. Spotify) announce similar plans.

[Madiel]

I think that this is actually a big win for classical music listeners.  Here me out...

Ever since the rise of the mp3 we've been dealing with a tagging system that was developed almost exclusively for popular music.  It has been a pervasive problem for us when ripping cds, buying digital downloads, and searching streaming services.  At no point has a major company showed any interest in addressing the problem.

Now tagging has improved a bit (but not a lot).  And the rise of these small services (Idagio and Primephonic) that cater towards conquering that problem is great... but they are small and honestly you can feel it.  Their apps have long standing problems and generally suffer from a lack of polish.

Apple wanting to launch a classical music service is the first time that a major company has genuinely acknowledged us and wants to make our experience a good one.  And with the resources of Apple all the little problems and lack of features that Primephonic has will go away.

In a year from now I wouldn't be surprised if all of us streamers end up switching to this new service.  I wouldn't be surprised if other major players (e.g. Spotify) announce similar plans.

There is at least a possibility that it will work out well in this way. As I already mentioned, Apple have shown within iTunes at least some interest in getting tagging a bit better, so I do have some hope that their intention is to get tagging to work. And Primephonic clearly cared about this. They had metadata problems in their database, yes, but they would always respond if I pointed one out**, and basically their starting point has to be the metadata they're provided, which for older releases was often questionable, because doing it all manually is too big a job.

But against that I will make the following two observations.

First, I would dispute the notion that Primephonic as an app is somehow less polished than what Apple will offer. Apple has made a complete hash of its Podcasts app, to the point where I've actively avoided updating iOS on my iPhone to avoid encountering the massive problems that users have been complaining about. With Primephonic I would see evidence of them working on it and improving it, and problems with its reliability were infrequent. I really don't see any guarantee that Apple won't stuff this up. They might get it right, yes, but I wouldn't bet my house on it.

Second, it mystifies me why Apple's first move is to shut down the existing app. If there was an announcement that Primephonic customers would move to Apple Music once the promised classical service was built, I would understand that. But instead, I'm being moved onto the current Apple Music - the Apple Music that they're basically acknowledging is currently deficient when it comes to classical music. Sure, I'm getting it for free (it turns out I get 9 months free because I get a 3 month trial before the Primephonic offer of 6 months starts), but essentially they're giving me until sometime "early" next year to identify my dissatisfaction with the current Apple Music's ability to handle classical and go play with Idagio instead.

There wasn't much of a margin when I initially decided to go with Primephonic instead of Idagio. I liked Primephonic a fraction better, but it's not as if I hated Idagio. Now, I get to do a comparison between current Apple Music and Idagio, not future-classical-specialist Apple Music and Idagio. They're asking me to assess Apple wanting to launch a classical music service, rather than Apple actually having a classical music service. They're telling me to trade in a service that I knew and used for a promise of a service somewhere down the track. And that just seems extraordinarily dumb.


**Another negative is that I basically have zero hope of Apple Music customer support ever being anywhere near as responsive as Primephonic was.

[Pohjolas Daughter]

I haven't tried a streaming service before.  Out of curiosity, what are the bit rate/streaming options currently available via Apple and also via Qobuz?

PD

[DavidW]

I haven't tried a streaming service before.  Out of curiosity, what are the bit rate/streaming options currently available via Apple and also via Qobuz?

PD

Qobuz offers a lossy and a lossless plan.  The lossless plan also supports hd audio if you think you can hear the difference.  Apple offers a lossless plan.  I might be mistaken but I don't think they have multiple tiers.

[DavidW]

Madiel I've had problems with both Primephonic and Idagio.  One of them doesn't support basic features like making playlists or correctly auto-resuming.  Another crashes frequently.  I don't remember which is which, but both felt like they were in beta stage and they never got better.  It could be an Android thing but since 80% of the world uses Android that is unacceptable.

Also one of the two never launched a dedicated pc app (at least while I used it).  One of the few streaming services I can think of that does not.

But if you use Spotify, Qobuz, Amazon or Apple those apps are polished and they just work well.  I don't know anything about podcasts but Apple is big enough that I doubt it is the same dev team on podcasts as on Music.  I do agree with you that is stupid to immediately pull the plug on Primephonic.  They should have at least left a skeleton support team on the original service while they switched over to the Apple umbrella.

[Pohjolas Daughter]

Qobuz offers a lossy and a lossless plan.  The lossless plan also supports hd audio if you think you can hear the difference.  Apple offers a lossless plan.  I might be mistaken but I don't think they have multiple tiers.

Thanks for the info! 

Olivier

You might want to save your music lists that you had prepared.  Perhaps, either copy and paste to Text/Word or take some screen shots of them?

PD

[Madiel]

I just tried a fairly simple experiment, looking for Mozart's symphony no.12.

Typing "mozart symphony 12" into both Primephonic and Idagio readily obtained the relevant work amongst the very top results.

Apple Music? Not a chance. It figured out that I probably wanted Mozart and symphonies, but I scrolled and scrolled looking for any sign that any of the offered albums or "songs" represented the symphony I wanted, instead of one of the more common recordings of his later masterpieces. Nope.

I actually got far better results on Deezer, which I subscribe to and which I used to use for everything pre-Primephonic. I still use it for pop music, and sometimes for classical albums that I can't find on Primephonic. The classical metadata is quite hit and miss, but hell, just then it did miles better than Apple. Not every hit near the top of the results was right, but I still did find several recordings between the albums, tracks and playlists without scrolling down off the first page.

An experience like that gives me zero incentive to make much use of my free Apple account. I can keep using Deezer without constantly having to say, no, don't mix up my personal iTunes library into your own music library. And for classical I can either muddle through Deezer with strategic searching like I used to, or go take the money I used to spend on Primephonic and subscribe to Idagio. I suspect I might rapidly do the latter.

[foxandpeng]

I haven't tried a streaming service before.  Out of curiosity, what are the bit rate/streaming options currently available via Apple and also via Qobuz?

PD

Hi PD

I now use Spotify pretty much exclusively, apart from the downloads that I already have (which stands at a large number of digitised recordings to be fair). I use their paid service and stream at 320Kbps, which is CD quality, I think. You can agree to set lower than that to save on data if you wish, of course. I was using 160 kbps for some time, which obvs wasn't as good. No extra cost for the jump in quality from Spotify, apart from what it might mean to your data streaming plan from your cellular or wifi provider. My plan is pretty much unlimited, and I tend to connect my phone to wifi anyway, so no big deal. The standard paid plan lets you connect up to 5 different accounts included in the cost, so it is pretty good. About £15 monthly, I think? Something like that. Works for us, and we've never had any issues.

[71 dB]

I use their paid service and stream at 320Kbps, which is CD quality, I think.

"CD quality" is ~1400 kbps (*), so technically bitrate-wise 320 kbps isn't even close to "CD quality", but in practice it is next to impossible to tell apart from "CD quality".


(*) 44100 samples per second per channel x 2 channels x 16 bits per sample = 1 411 200 bits per second.

[DavidW]

Yeah I don't think any services call mp3 "cd quality" anymore now that lossless flac streaming has became so prevalent.

[Pohjolas Daughter]

Hi PD

I now use Spotify pretty much exclusively, apart from the downloads that I already have (which stands at a large number of digitised recordings to be fair). I use their paid service and stream at 320Kbps, which is CD quality, I think. You can agree to set lower than that to save on data if you wish, of course. I was using 160 kbps for some time, which obvs wasn't as good. No extra cost for the jump in quality from Spotify, apart from what it might mean to your data streaming plan from your cellular or wifi provider. My plan is pretty much unlimited, and I tend to connect my phone to wifi anyway, so no big deal. The standard paid plan lets you connect up to 5 different accounts included in the cost, so it is pretty good. About £15 monthly, I think? Something like that. Works for us, and we've never had any issues.

Thank you for the info Fox! 

PD

[foxandpeng]

in practice it is next to impossible to tell apart from "CD quality".

Works for me. There comes a certain point where quality looks amazing on a digital display or in an advertising spec, but as far as the average human ear is concerned, it no longer really matters.

I am delighted for those who have above average hearing, but I don't share that blessing, sadly 🙂

[aukhawk]

It's not really a blessing.  Imagine if you had 'above average' eyesight and could see infra-red.  You'd have to wear special glasses all the time to filter it out.

[foxandpeng]

It's not really a blessing.  Imagine if you had 'above average' eyesight and could see infra-red.  You'd have to wear special glasses all the time to filter it out.

I guess. Be careful what you wish for, I suppose.

[DavidW]

It's not really a blessing.  Imagine if you had 'above average' eyesight and could see infra-red.  You'd have to wear special glasses all the time to filter it out.

Your analogy would make sense if you were talking about hearing ultrasound, but Fox is talking about lossless vs lossy (at the same frequency range).  He is saying that he can't hear the compression artifacts (which at high bitrates most people can't unless they are trained to hear it).

A more appropriate analogy would be to be able to see the compression artifacts in a Netflix stream because you know what to look for.  Not having superhuman sight all the time.