I was browsing through the iTunes Store earlier today and came across a recording of Bach pieces and it caught my eye because it was a Genius recommendation and the recording was by Capella Istropolitana, a chamber orchestra based in Bratislava, Slovakia. I love their recordings of Baroque music and have many of their releases on the Naxos label. This is a competent group of musicians so naturally when I saw this recording recommendation I wanted to take a look.
The recording aside I sometimes really wonder about the value of reviews in the iTunes store. Here are two of the reviews of the recording in question:
beautiful melody
by mahh superma…
nice flowing beats that are played beautifully.
No offense to “mahh superma” but there are no beats. The music certainly is beautiful and it is definitely played well but this is not how classical music should be described. It’s not electronica.
We also have:
soothing and elegant
by Bballplaya
these compositions are soothing and elegant. some are a bit choppy and rough though.
Actually none of the compositions are choppy and rough. Bach didn’t produce a piece of music that was choppy or rough. Certainly the orchestra may have *played* the piece inappropriately but even in then in the selection of music presented here it would be hard to play any of the pieces choppy or roughly.
I’m glad there were five reviews for this because this music needs to have an audience. It is also quite possible these aren’t kids but based on the choice of words and the chosen nicknames it is kind of hard to assume these were reviews written by adults.
So call me elitist or whatever you’d like but kids, keep listening but learn to listen well. And write better reviews! This is best music of the last 1000 years. It deserves as much!
Pegoraro writing in his Washington Post personal technology column points us to the various “technology duds” to avoid this holiday season. Writing about satellite radio:
Satellite radio. The merger of former competitors Sirius and XM has mainly yielded confusion and anger, as customers have found favorite channels disappearing from these still-separate programming lineups with no notice. The company says it’s giving each service’s listeners a chance to enjoy channels once confined to the other, but in the process, good, original programs have gone silent and familiar DJs have been kicked to the curb.
A receiver that could tune in to both Sirius and XM broadcasts would address this problem, but no such thing is in stores. Until this company puts one on the market, stops gutting its programming and starts communicating its plans clearly to customers, why reward it with your money?
Does Pegoraro not realize that when companies merge they merge their offerings and when that merge happens some things get dropped while others don’t? It is ridiculous to think that Sirius XM isn’t going to cut costs by merging programming especially given the state of their stock at the moment (closed at $0.17/share yesterday) and the state of the US economy in general.
And which company does he think is going to spend R&D money on a dual receiver when the company in question is in serious (no pun intended) financial distress? Hint: none.
I tend to agree that the programming choices that have been made are pretty poor. A good example is the loss of the XM Vox channel while replacing it with the Met Opera channel from Sirius. Vox was vastly superior and the Met Channel couldn’t have been that big of an income source. To top it off the guy responsible for programming Vox is still with Sirius XM on their Symphony Hall channel so it’s not likely they saved money.
I think Pegoraro’s overall statement is ridiculous given the current economic climate and even more ridiculous when considering how most business mergers work. Consolidation always happens. Thats the whole point.
My title is a bit harsh? Maybe. But consider how eMusic.com prices their tracks (and for a bit of point-counterpoint I include classicsonline.com.
eMusic.com
You pay a monthly fee and they have tiers which split based on the number of tracks you can download per month. This actually works out pretty well, except for classical music where it can become downright crazy. My tier, which actually is a special tier since eMusic just recently changed their pricing, is 40 tracks for $11.99. For the challenged that is less than $0.40 per track. The problem is that in the case of classical music many pieces have tracks that are very short, on the order of 15 seconds short. So I’m paying the same price for that 15 second track as for a 10 minute track.
The problem compounds itself when you are considering purchasing one of the many fine options, such as Handel’s Messiah, which is 54 tracks (depening on which version you download…I’m looking at one on the Chandos label). I can’t get that all in one month without buying a booster pack from eMusic.
It would be nice if eMusic would offer an option to buy a whole album vs. looking at everything as just tracks (in other words….follow the model that iTunes and Amazon.com do). I purchased Handel’s Messiah on Amazon as an mp3 download for $13. Their per-track pricing is much more expensive. C’mon eMusic! Give us the option to buy full albums even it is a seperate charge!
Classicsonline.com
These guys price things really weird when talking per-track charges. Tracks that are less than 5 minutes cost $0.99. Tracks longer than 5 minutes cost $1.99. Tracks longer than 10 minutes cost $2.99. Why would I want to buy from these guys again? Yeah great selection. Yeah its from Naxos but their definition of ‘affordable’ is interesting to say the least…at least on a per-track basis.
In their defense they do offer album downloads like Amazon and iTunes and it appears that the are using 320kbps these days for their downloads which is much better than when they launched.
In the end I wish eMusic were being smarter about what constitutes a track given how important it is without them offering album downloads at a discounted price. Everything else aside it’s ridiculous that I have to pay the same thing for a 15 second track as a 10 minute one.
I’ve been a subscriber for quite awhile at the $9.99 a month level. At that level I’ve been receiving 30 downloads a month which, if you do the math quickly, about $0.33 a track.
I just received a note that the cost is going up $2 a month for the basic package of 30 tracks a month. However that’s for new subscribers. For “old-timers” emusic.com is giving an extra 10 downloads a month so even though the monthly cost is going up the actual per-track price is $0.30 so I end up paying less.
They’re also giving out a one-time booster of 10 tracks next month which is quite nice.
I really wish more companies operated this way. Obviously it doesn’t cost emusic much to give their existing customers 10 extra tracks a month. Why aren’t any of the “utility” companies (cell phone, tv, etc.) doing this stuff when they can easily afford it? We all have heard the stories that it costs more to get a new customer than to retain one. Why are the utilities so damn awful then?
Songs because the video is multiple songs sung by Frank Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim but the song I want to bring attention to is the “Girl From Ipanema”. This is a clip from Sinatra’s 1967 television special A Man and His Music + Ella + Jobim when the Bossa nova craze in the United States was going full-tilt.
Sublime is too simple of a word to describe this music. Sinatra’s crooning combined with Jobim’s guitar work and Portugese vocals on “Girl from Ipanema” just ooze style and class. The tuxedos certainly add to the atmosphere. Just amazing stuff.
I have to say though that it’s still shocking to see Sintra dragging on a cigarette right on stage
“Girl from Ipanema” kicks in at about 4:40 (total length of about 6:30).
