| We've had the honor to jam with some pretty amazing people over the years. Maybe some Beatles, maybe some Stones, maybe some Pink Floyds. But let me tell you something: this one right now takes the cake that we get to jam with Nandi. | | | | |  | Ever-young: 11-year-old Nandi Bushell performing with Foo Fighters at the Forum, Inglewood, Calif., Aug. 26, 2021.
(Kevin Mazur/Getty Images) | | | | | "We've had the honor to jam with some pretty amazing people over the years. Maybe some Beatles, maybe some Stones, maybe some Pink Floyds. But let me tell you something: this one right now takes the cake that we get to jam with Nandi." | | | | Roll Over Beethoven
Making a play for a market that mainstream music services have served poorly over the years, APPLE has bought classical music streaming specialist PRIMEPHONIC. It is, if analyst CHERIE HU is correct, and I have no reason to doubt her, "the first acquisition of a niche music streaming service since the SONGZA days (2014–2015)"—by anyone. That's a hell of a factoid, suggesting either a) that generalists like Apple and SPOTIFY have done a good enough job over the years of serving enough music fans' needs that the various areas where they all fall short don't matter enough to make a business difference, or b) they're arrogant enough that they could just kind of ignore what's missing for fans of African music or DJ mixes or Indian music or obscure punk and new wave or, hell, GEORGE JONES. Or both.
But classical, whose core fans need search capabilities and metadata that no mainstream service offers and audiophile-ish sound, has been a particularly big black hole, and this seems like a laudable if belated attempt to plug it. The plan, according to the minimal information the two companies revealed Monday, is to close Primephonic almost immediately (Sept. 7 will be its final day), to gift Primephonic subscribers a six-month Apple Music subscription and port their playlists into the service as a temporary bridge, and to launch a new dedicated classical app in 2022. Which seems a strange short-term strategy—telling classical music fans, who tend to be some of the most passionate of all music fans, that the platform on which they've been listening for the past few years is simply going to go away in a week—possibly along with some of its catalog—and they'll have to make do with a platform that everyone admits is inferior for the next half year or so. If you sold your record collection when you converted to streaming, or just stopped buying new music for the past three years, tough luck for now. Hold on to your LPs and CDs, kids. Your MP3s, too. They're a lot less likely to ghost you.
The new service presumably will combine Apple's design, product and playlisting knowhow with Primephonic's classical expertise, metadata and sound quality. Classical fans need a way to search by composers, conductors, orchestras, soloists, musical works and movements, among other metrics that don't exist or are a mess in Apple. The concept of "artist," the basic driver of pop music searches, doesn't really exist in the classical world (or, rather, most recordings feature several people with various jobs that could all fall under the artist umbrella, with a hierarchy that doesn't resemble the standard pop hierarchy). This requires vastly more detailed metadata and a different search engine, both of which Primephonic will bring to the table. One wonders if Apple might consider applying some of that expanded search power to its pop (and hip-hop, country, jazz, metal, etc.) service. Might we finally see useful producer, label, songwriter and musician searches? Might all that metadata start linking across the Apple Music world? Can Primephonic help Apple—and labels—improve the rest of their metadata? Does the average pop fan care?
Another difference: Primephonic and other classical services pay royalties based on time listened rather than number of plays, which is necessary because of the longer length of typical classical works. Is there learning to be had by Apple in that area, based on the number of musicians who can't stand the way it works now?
What will the experience be for people who listen to both pop and classical, which is a lot of people? Will they have to continue navigating two music apps, or will the apps connect? Will the current, lesser classical interface continue to exist on Apple Music? Is there any way for it not to?
The bigger question on my mind is, is this another chance for streaming music services, who everyone loves to both use and complain about, to reimagine what they are? With minor differences across the sector, many of them cosmetic, we're living in a world that Spotify, for better or worse, codified when it launched 13 years ago, based on the experiences of several less successful services that came before. We're living in an ancient world as music goes. When Spotify launched, OLIVIA RODRIGO was five years old and BILLIE EILISH was six. When RHAPSODY launched, in 2001, EMINEM was riding high on his single "STAN," which wasn't an English word yet. CHOCOLATE STARFISH AND THE HOT DOG FLAVORED WATER was a hit album. The IPHONE didn't exist. The first IPOD had just been introduced and phones weren't smart. Why are record companies still feeding streaming services pretty much the same metadata? Why did the biggest streaming services continue to pretend, until Monday, that classical music doesn't matter? What else did they get wrong?
Also, it is Spotify's turn to buy IDAGIO?
Music Geek Corner
How to notate a violin "chop"... YouTuber ADAM NEELY on OLIVIA RODRIGO, PARAMORE and the art of borrowing but not stealing... Unconventional uses for clarinets and saxophones... The secret to writing (or hearing) a great chorus.
Rest in Peace
RANDY "BAJA" FLETCHER, a longtime country production manager who died Friday from an injury suffered the day before while setting up a Keith Urban concert in Put-in-Bay, Ohio.
| | | | Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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Director Mark Lo's lullaby to drums, featuring Stewart Copeland, Cindy Blackman, Nicko McBrain, Samantha Maloney, Clem Burke and Topper Headon. | | | Music | Media | Sports | Fashion | Tech | | "REDEF is dedicated to my mother, who nurtured and encouraged my interest in
everything and slightly regrets the day she taught me to always ask 'why?'" | | |  | | | Jason Hirschhorn | | CEO & Chief Curator | | |  |
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