A basic guide to downloading - Page 2

James Jolly on classical music downloads on the web

Music from the web

‘I’ve a huge CD collection which I still want to listen to…’

Most people’s MP3 players contain a combination of music that they’ve ripped (ie transferred from CD to their computer’s hard-drive) and music that has been downloaded (the proportion is invariably a single-figure percentage of downloaded music). It makes sense to load your computer (especially if you are planning to take your music with you) with your favourite recordings and then supplement them with downloads as necessary. If you’ve a laptop, why not store some music there, then you’ll always have something for those unplanned-for delays when music is the only balm!

‘I like to read the notes that come with the CD...’

Again this is being fast addressed by the independent sector. Many companies are assiduously adding sleeve-notes to their downloadable offerings (Chandos and Hyperion lead the way here). Some of the high-profile major company releases are also being offered with downloadable PDF notes. This embarrassment of material, though, brings with it its own problem: where do your store it? It’s also worth trawling the web for programme notes – an increasing number of orchestras are making their material available on their websites.

‘I see that certain recordings are only being made available as a download.’ True, and that’s clearly the way things will start to go. Universal has been exploring download-only productions under the DG and Decca Concerts brand. These offer live concert recordings with minimal editing.

The one genre that would seem ideally suited to download-only music is new music where sales are invariably low. It’s an option being explored by a number of orchestras allowing people to capture the quality and experince of the ensemble performing in its own concert hall. The St Louis Symphony under its dynamic music director David Robertson has already embarked on an imaginative series that offers live recordings of work central to each season’s music-making, and some of the Boston Symphony's more recherché recordings are also available only as downloads. With the cost savings made by not having to press CDs and print booklets, this could greatly benefit new music ventures.

Where?

Let’s assume you are buying your music to transport around on an MP3 player – most people do and it’s a staggeringly easy way of guaranteeing that you can hear pretty well whatever you want, whenever you want it. (But as already noted in the introductory questions and answers, you need go no further than downloading it onto your computer and leaving it there to listen to.) However you choose to listen to your music, you will need to store it. Many DSPs (Digital Service Providers – basically download stores) offer a player that works with their offerings. The most wide-spread and probably the easiest to use is the iTunes version. It’s better than most at coping with the sort of information that a classical music consumer will need: it’s certainly visually appealing – clean and intuitive in the typical apple house-style – but it also easily allows you to alter the various information columns to suit your musical tastes. For example, with pop and rock music you may prefer a hierarchy that gives artist, album and song the dominant position. With classical music, you may prefer a line-up that works something like: composer / work / movement or subsection / artist / genre (chamber, instrumental, song, etc).

Searching for music on the various sites is still a far-from-ideal manoeuvre. Most sites are geared up to the rock/pop consumer for whom an artist’s name is probably all that is necessary to home in on their various albums and from there the selection is simple. Imagine typing in Herbert von Karajan – the choice is immense and the whole process is like shooting in the dark. One of the best search engines is found on the classicsonline site – it allows a number of fields to be entered and invariably locates what you’re looking for immediately. If the big DSPs want to be taken seriously by the classical consumer they will have to address the ‘searchability’ of their sites (though this presumes that the data on each recording is in some kind of useable form to start with – mention the word ‘metadata’ to anyone working in this field and they tend to roll their eyes in a state of horror).

So, you want to dip a toe into the new waters of downloading. What do you do?