A Review of Boosey Radio
The other day (which is a nice concept if you really believe in the passage of time, which I do) I received through all the machinations and tubes and tin-cans with bits of string tied to them, a request to take a look at Boosey Radio. This is the new online classical music store/radio from the ever so well-known and respected classical music publisher, Boosey and Hawkes. Here are my thoughts.
Firstly, as currently designed it is going to annoy pretty much anyone who is more than casually into classical music. I’ll discuss details later, but essentially it is aiming at people who are not really familiar with the genre. While this might be deliberate, and may be a good way to attract a wider audience, anybody who really falls for the music is not going to stay on the site. This is odd, and slightly frustrating, given the eminence of the brand. It does look to be very much in Beta however, so hopefully they’ll fix up a lot of the outstanding issues.
Lets start with the good stuff:
- Sound quality - It’s streamed, so I’m not sure what the bitrate is, but it sounds pretty crisp for internet radio. Better than Naxos radio.
- The podcasts are good - I love programs in which music is interlaced with descriptions and histories surrounding the pieces and composers. They are accessible and trendy, but pretty informative and engaging.
- Nice Player - It displays the currently playing track, lets you skip, pause etc. You can also float it out of the webpage so it acts like a desktop application. Having a link to buy the track that is currently playing is a nice feature.
- Multiple operating systems - Thankyou Boosey! It’s all Java based, so it works on Windows, Mac and Linux.
Now for the bad:
- Individual Tracks, not Opuses - Aaaah! The player plays individual movements from pieces, and not the whole opus. This reeks of those horrible “Most Relaxing Classical Music Ever!!!” CDs. Anyone into classical music is not going to listen to the radio unless there is at least an option to play whole opuses. If you could switch into an “entire symphony” mode then I’d be addicted, instead of playing with it for about five minutes.
- Ringtones - Good god, just the fact that I can see this as a major option on the page makes me not want to use it. This is pretty much the ultimate cheapening of classical (or any) music, packaging it into 15 second snippets to be played while reaching into ones pocket. I know that these are popular and pay the bills, but if (as it currently does) it appears as though this is one of the primary services provided by the site, it’s going to turn a lot of people off.
- Connectivity - Searching by composer brings up a list of tracks to buy, and you can click on little icons to sample a track, but ideally there should be a way to play a track in the very nice radio player application on the front page.
- Help section - While this is a nice idea, allowing you to move your mouse around the controls and bring up tips, it ends up being quite confusing because only a small subsection of the controls have tips and it is not clear which these are until you swipe the mouse all over the screen.
- Roundabout Ordering - You pay through a third party and get a purchasing code through your cellphone which you then enter into the website? No-one is going to sit through that. You need to be able to set up an account and purchase music with one or two clicks, directly on the site.
- How much is a track? - There is conflicting information on the cost of a track. The cost should be incredibly clear as early as possible in the ordering process. Also, all tracks seem to be priced the same, regardless of length. This is insane when some will be around ten times longer than others.
- Station Names - Please don’t call stations things like: “mysterious”. At the bare minimum there needs to be some kind of longer description of what will be playing. Far better would be to avoid the cutesy names altogether.
Overall, there is a lot of potential, but in it’s current state there is no chance I would use this regularly, except maybe for the podcasts. If the site could be modified so that it could appeal both to complete newbies, as well as seasoned experts — perhaps by being able to switch between two alternate versions — then it would be infinitely more appealing.
January 16th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
I haven’t gone to the site (may never go), but I wonder why we need another online vendor of classical music downloads, with iTunes, Amazon, and all the others. Is there anything special this one offers to make up for the obviously cumbersome ordering method?
January 16th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
Well, the podcasting is nice… but at the moment there are only about four samples available.
I think there is a niche to fill with a high-quality internet-radio type deal, so that you can listen during at work and discover new pieces.
But in general, I think having as many people trying to give us a classical music store is a good thing. Natural selection, etc. Having said that, Boosey is definitely not the fittest of the population…
January 17th, 2008 at 1:27 am
One thing I noticed in a quick look at the Boosey site was that the downloads don’t seem to have any identifying information as to the performers (conductors, orchestras, recording dates, etc.). Some also seemed incomplete - just select movements from works and not the entire work. What’s up with that? Also, what bitrate does Boosey use?
Perhaps Boosey’s format for their site isn’t the answer, but more competition form vendors should help improve the marketplace. If early standards like iTunes want to maintain their pre-eminence they need to improve sound quality - 128 kbps doesn’t cut it (yes, I know they offer some of their selection at 256 kbps now, but it’s a very very small percentage of their total catalog). eMusic offers most of their downloads at rates between 160 and 256 (they use variable bitrates for some reason, so you end up with odd bitrates like 187500 or 196400) - not outstanding in some cases, but better than iTunes.
The best download site I’ve found for classical is the new Deutsche Grammophone site, which offers all downloads at 320kbps, and also gives you a nice pdf file of the full original CD Booklet and jewel case inserts so you can print them out and have the full original packaging. DG is a bit more expensive, but the quality improvement is worth it (And it’s not even really that much more expensive: For example, I recently downloaded Boulez’s recording of Mahler’s Ninth from DG for $10.99; the same album is available at iTunes for $9.99, but in 128kbps. The choice is obvious.) DG also let’s you re-download unlimitedly for free, unlike iTunes, so if a file accidentally gets erased (as happened to me), no problem. With iTunes I would have had to buy the CD again in order to re-download the movement I accidentally erased before having a chance to burn it.
I also don’t understand why sites like iTunes (or, more accurately, the record companies that license their products with them) are so stuck on using DRM. Don’t the suits at the record companies know that it’s easy to get around the DRM, so it’s a pointless limitation? Because even the DRM files allow you to burn them to a CD playable on any regular CD player, all you have to do is burn the downloaded files to a CDR as a music disc, then rip the music back onto your hard drive from the disc as MP3 files (or whatever format you choose), and those files will then be DRM free! DRM problem solved.
I hear lots of grumbling about DRM, which is really a minor issue, but not as much outrage as there should be about low quality bitrates, the much more serious problem with sites like iTunes.
January 17th, 2008 at 11:58 am
Hi Dennis,
I completely agree about bitrates. Now that all the record companies are finally getting their act together and realizing that DRM is completely pointless (and probably negative: there’s no way I would buy DRMed music, so the only way to get it would be illegally. Now that unDRMed music is available I am happily paying for it) I think this is the Next Big Concern in the online music community.
DG is definitely the premiere classical music download site at the moment. I actually also purchased Boulez’s Mahler 9 from there yesterday, based on your and other comments on the last Mahler post. The quality and functionality are superb. If they just offered lossless FLAC as an option it would be absolutely perfect.
I also use eMusic. It’s good for quickly grabbing things I am interested in hearing, and the quality is pretty good. Variable bitrate is what I use for my own MP3 ripping, as it increases the bitrate for the more complicated sections and reduces it for less dense parts, when it is not as necessary.
Overall i think it’s great that so many options are springing up, and that iTunes finally has competition. I can’t stand bloody iTunes.