Who needs streaming?

That's 3200 CDs and counting. More than enough to satisfy me until I shake off this mortal coil. Recent purchases include the following. Harry Van Der Kamp and the Gesualdo Consort Amsterdam's 17 disc box Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck: The Complete Vocal Works. Sweelinck is an important and overlooked composer who pioneered turning sacred music into an art form. From BIS Dark With Excessive Bright by Missy Mazzoli; contemporary music that might just reach a wider audience recorded in stunning SACD sound. This new release is just more confirmation that the music industry let the genie out of the bottle by ditching CDs and embracing streaming, and then went on to murder the genie by opting for the MP3 format as the de facto audio standard. 

And again from BIS and again in hi-res SACD, Autumn Equinox by the Finnish composer Sebastian Fagerlund. There is so much quality new music coming from Scandinavian composers that is being buried under the current obsession with virtue signalling. Kudos to BIS for recording where others dare not place microphones. I was horrified when I heard that Apple Music had bought BIS, followed by the equally sad news that the label's founder Robert von Bahr had departed. But judging by my recent listening, all is not yet lost with BIS. Or perhaps the Suns of Arqa were right when they famously sung, all is not lost, but where is it?

Comments

Pliable said…
To qualify my comment about BIS's future after the Apple purchase and Robert von Bahr's departure. Recording dates for the Missy Mazzoli disc are 2021 and 2022, and for the Fagerlund disc 2022.

All of which predate Apple's involvement and Robert's departure.
But let's keep an open mind. All is not lost, but where is it?
7:12 pm
Chris Isbell said…
Assuming the average CD price is £10, the cost of your discs roughly equates to over two hundred years of streaming subscriptions.

Quality is no longer an issue since 320kbps is indistinguishable from lossless expect in extremely rare and exceptional cases. Nowadays many services have a lossless option.

About the only downside of streaming is the lack of the printed material included with physical media.

The advantages of streaming are highly compelling for almost every music lover.
5:53 pm
Pliable said…
Thanks for that Chris; obviously compelling, but just not for me. I suspect the illogical resurgence in the vinyl market suggests that physical media still has a latent appeal for many others. And interestingly, CD players are now making a comeback - https://www.classical-music.com/articles/cd-players-comeback
6:04 pm
Maury said…
Leaving aside the constant fluctuation in what is available for streaming on any plan, streaming is recreating the singles era of the 1960s. Instead of radio, people mostly stream a succession of tracks and personal playlists on today's equivalent of the AM transistor radio which is called the mobile device. The fidelity of the mobile device is better than lossless to most of these listeners. The reason for that is purely the ability to play the tracks wherever you are, just like the AM radio. Yes, people technically can stream an entire album or symphony (if available) but that is a small and dwindling minority of listeners. Audio downloads of these have actually declined faster than any other format. All we need are AI DJs to complete the process.

The merit of audio physical media is that it promotes more involvement with the music. You have to listen to an LP side or the CD tracks.

As for the whole issue of fidelity it is mostly irrelevant in the face of mastering with dynamic range restriction aka the Loudness Wars which is starting to migrate even into classical and jazz mastering.. This is a large part of the appeal of vinyl records since they have physical limitations of loudness. So, the LP mastering is almost always significantly more natural than the digital version.
10:20 am
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