And 'platforms' like Pandora, Spotify, YouTube (if you can even consider it as adequate at all in this context), and others will never replace the ability to build a personal collection.
I agree. In particular, I would add that many of these platforms serve the classical music listeners poorly, IME. I tend to see lots of a) overplayed pieces that I've heard a billion times like Vivaldi's Seasons and/or b) mediocre orchestras/artists (the Radio Orchestra of East Bulgaria or something). The ITunes catalogue is also rather weak, actually. Lots of great classical CDs can't be found there. Finally, in many cases I'm attached to a particular rendition or version. I don't want to hear the Brandenburg Concertos on modern instruments, for example, yet you'll often hear this sort of thing on these services.
So, at this point I have a very large classical collection that I've accumulated over the years that serves my idiosyncratic tastes. Until someone comes along that provides an equivalent experience -- and there's probably a market opportunity there -- nothing can replace it.
I'm also big on performance and interpretation of classical music. I've compromised my quality standards on every genre of music except classical music, which I still revert back to my CD collection. Sadly, I feel classical's aging audience hasn't created the forcing function for that industry to get organized regarding the categorization and distribution of their catalogue online, which is a damn shame. Having said that, it takes a certain tuned ear to pick out the world of difference in the performance and interpretation between pieces that are compositionally identical. I personally feel you need a certain threshold of fidelity to distinguish those subtleties.
Because of this, I find I listen to less and less classical music over the years, simple because CD device players are starting to disappear from my life. For example, I'm typing on a laptop right now that doesn't even have a CD drive (Macbook Air). I literally have to go out of my way to listen to classical music in the way I want to hear it. It's sort of sad, really.
Comments
And 'platforms' like Pandora, Spotify, YouTube (if you can even consider it as adequate at all in this context), and others will never replace the ability to build a personal collection.
I agree. In particular, I would add that many of these platforms serve the classical music listeners poorly, IME. I tend to see lots of a) overplayed pieces that I've heard a billion times like Vivaldi's Seasons and/or b) mediocre orchestras/artists (the Radio Orchestra of East Bulgaria or something). The ITunes catalogue is also rather weak, actually. Lots of great classical CDs can't be found there. Finally, in many cases I'm attached to a particular rendition or version. I don't want to hear the Brandenburg Concertos on modern instruments, for example, yet you'll often hear this sort of thing on these services.
So, at this point I have a very large classical collection that I've accumulated over the years that serves my idiosyncratic tastes. Until someone comes along that provides an equivalent experience -- and there's probably a market opportunity there -- nothing can replace it.
I'm also big on performance and interpretation of classical music. I've compromised my quality standards on every genre of music except classical music, which I still revert back to my CD collection. Sadly, I feel classical's aging audience hasn't created the forcing function for that industry to get organized regarding the categorization and distribution of their catalogue online, which is a damn shame. Having said that, it takes a certain tuned ear to pick out the world of difference in the performance and interpretation between pieces that are compositionally identical. I personally feel you need a certain threshold of fidelity to distinguish those subtleties.
Because of this, I find I listen to less and less classical music over the years, simple because CD device players are starting to disappear from my life. For example, I'm typing on a laptop right now that doesn't even have a CD drive (Macbook Air). I literally have to go out of my way to listen to classical music in the way I want to hear it. It's sort of sad, really.