Which streaming service for 2015?

[antongould]

One thing I find with Streaming, at least using Deezer with which I am most familiar, is that the indexing is not always as good as it can be. Prompted by ER's latest attempt to bring Mieczyslaw Weinberg to a wider audience I went to Deezer and put Weinberg in the search window and was sad to see very little returned. I tried Weinberg Symphony and found only a couple. But add his christian name and more emerges and if you go into the various albums and use the various "descriptions" therein as further searches you eventually find a lot of his music. I m just listening to Symphony No.6 on a Naxos CD of that title and yet put Weinberg Symphony No.6 into the search and you get nothing

[Dave2002]

This is quite a common problem I think, with services such as napster and spotify, and probably many others.

Obviously sometimes things work out - more or less at first time of asking. Some other times I have found that instead of putting in the name of the composer, or the name of the pieces, that identifying one or more CDs of the hoped for work by using an online store, such as amazon, and then looking for the performers on the streaming site, that success can be achieved. It can be a real pain. I have had success by that technique, when otherwise it has looked hopeless. I probably discovered that by deciding to buy a CD instead of the non existant streaming method, then decided to look up the performers on the streaming site, et voila!

Of course Weinberg is a problem, as his name has several variants - Vainberg etc.

However here is Weinberg Symphony 6 on spotify - https://open.spotify.com/track/03RusWy2zKvnurRpMb1KAx - and that was found by the obvious way.

Symphony 12 is also there.

Napster is harder, and it took a while (5 minutes?) to find this http://app.napster.com/artist/americ...hony-orchestra which is not the same naxos performance.

I agree, that given the technology, it should be much easier. There are also errors on some systems. Yesterday I listened to Sibelius 1 conducted by Kurt Sanderling on napster, yet it was catalogued as Symphony 2! I have seen errors on several different streaming sites, and sometimes there are also problems with tracks. One piece I listened to recently just stopped half way through one of the tracks. It was not a temporary glitch, as it did exactly the same thing several times over, so not a download link problem. Sometimes one even gets a totally different piece played - not merely a different symphony by a wanted composer, but a completey different work. I'm not, however, sure if one ever gets punk rock instead of chamber music.

[antongould]

Cheers Dave - very much what I am finding. Amazingly I cannot find any search criteria that gets me to the 6th Symphony. You have to search by track and then pick up the album from there. I cannot help thinking it would pay these streaming sites to hire some knowledgeable person(s) to sort out and/or standardise their search procedures.

[richardfinegold]

One thing I find with Streaming, at least using Deezer with which I am most familiar, is that the indexing is not always as good as it can be. Prompted by ER's latest attempt to bring Mieczyslaw Weinberg to a wider audience I went to Deezer and put Weinberg in the search window and was sad to see very little returned. I tried Weinberg Symphony and found only a couple. But add his christian name and more emerges and if you go into the various albums and use the various "descriptions" therein as further searches you eventually find a lot of his music. I m just listening to Symphony No.6 on a Naxos CD of that title and yet put Weinberg Symphony No.6 into the search and you get nothing

You may want to try the other common spelling of his last name--Vainberg.
Also, although it has been reported that he may have had a deathbed conversion to Russian Orthodoxy, for the vast majority of his life he was jewish, so there would have been no "christian" name to input.

[majorminor]

Krivine Beethoven on HMV Download

Qobuz are offering the Krivine Beethoven, lossless CD rate with downloadable booklet, for €19.99

It's still on HMV at 320 kbps for £7.99

https://www.hmvdigital.com/releases/1154957

[Dave2002]

It's still on HMV at 320 kbps for £7.99

https://www.hmvdigital.com/releases/1154957

To my amazement the CD set (Krivine Beethoven symphonies) ordered yonks ago has just dropped through my letterbox. I will now have no qualms about using the Autorip versions which Amazon has provided to go with the CDs.

[richardfinegold]

Enjoy the Krivine.
The experience of having the Krivine eliminated from my playlist on Spotify is a warning about streaming services. Classical recordings are frequently in and out of circulation. At least a CD stays in your possession. Do downloads also get pulled from your personal cloud if a deletion occurs?

[Dave2002]

Enjoy the Krivine.
The experience of having the Krivine eliminated from my playlist on Spotify is a warning about streaming services. Classical recordings are frequently in and out of circulation. At least a CD stays in your possession. Do downloads also get pulled from your personal cloud if a deletion occurs?

Downloads should still be available if the CD or download is deleted, but it would be up to the download "owner" to keep copies safe, perhaps by burning them to CD or keeping a copy on a hard drive. Personally I can foresee major problems with so-called cloud storage, though I am aware of a lot of IT "wisdom" that cloud storage is the way to go. Fine if one does not have critical data, which needs to be kept secret and secure, and accessibility may be an issue too. Besides technical and operational problems, which might be temporary but extended, such as server or link downtime, other potential hazards are company takeovers. OK - I'm an IT dynosaur, but I just don't believe all the hype about "the cloud". It could/can work very well, but there has to be a comprehensive risk assessment for critical systems. Perhaps either avoid cloud "solutions" altogether, or have a plan B as well. Remember unsinkable ships - and if they are unsinkable they don't need to carry (m)any life jackets!

[richardfinegold]

Downloads should still be available if the CD or download is deleted, but it would be up to the download "owner" to keep copies safe, perhaps by burning them to CD or keeping a copy on a hard drive. Personally I can foresee major problems with so-called cloud storage, though I am aware of a lot of IT "wisdom" that cloud storage is the way to go. Fine if one does not have critical data, which needs to be kept secret and secure, and accessibility may be an issue too. Besides technical and operational problems, which might be temporary but extended, such as server or link downtime, other potential hazards are company takeovers. OK - I'm an IT dynosaur, but I just don't believe all the hype about "the cloud". It could/can work very well, but there has to be a comprehensive risk assessment for critical systems. Perhaps either avoid cloud "solutions" altogether, or have a plan B as well. Remember unsinkable ships - and if they are unsinkable they don't need to carry (m)any life jackets!

I don't know Dave, but I am becoming a Luddite and having a new love affair with my polycarbonate discs...

[neiltingley]

I note that others here are definitely recommending Qobuz.
.

I've used qobuz for at least a couple of years now. I can use it at work via the web interface and at home via my squeezebox server.

I've stopped buying CDs as a result with the odd exception for specialist releases such as Jorge Bolet collections from Marston.

They've given their android app a much needed facelift and the desktop client / web client have been rebranded and sharpened up.

I listen to qobuz almost every day so. A subscription is about the price of CD per month.