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.
The PCR Song
Oooo, I can’t resist this. It’s a song (and viral advert) for PCR, or polymerase chain reaction: probably the most ubiquitous and useful technique in DNA research, which is what I do.
If you don’t fancy reading the whole wikipedia article, it’s basically a technique for multiplying a very small amount of DNA (which is what you tend to get from biological samples) into a very large amount of DNA. It uses something called Taq polymerase which is a special enzyme extracted from bacteria which live in thermal springs and can stand really high temperatures. Basically all you do is throw some in with your DNA and a bunch of bases, and keep heating it up and cooling it down. It’s amazingly simple and remarkably effective.
And a rather unexpected subject for a song.
Now we just need one about DNA helicase!
Pre-Monday Mahler
While down South in the wild tundra of South Carolina, drinking barrel after bottle of booze, I discovered that my great Aunt is a huge classical music fan. In fact, the room I was staying in (which was dubbed Cinema 1 due to the presence of all the audiovisual type gadgetry, and furnishings for intake of their output) included amongst its eaves and soffits the entire DG-branded Ring cycle on VHS. Euggh VHS. Had it been on DVD I could have cunningly ripped it to my laptop, instead it’ll have to wait to be Netflixed.
The more stealable, cultural, classical materials were the collection of Mahler symphonies conducted by Bernstein. These bad boys. Apparently, everyone thinks they are fantastic recordings of the symphonies. I nabbed the 5th and 6th (based on recommendations from aforementioned great Aunt Laura, and Alex Ross)
Mahler is someone who I have wanted to get into for ages, mostly because Shostakovich is supposed to be sort of his heir. The problem I have had with his music up to this point is its Romantic tendencies, it’s always sounded a bit too sweeping, too rich. I haven’t really given it a fair chance though, to be honest, haven’t tried to let itself get all up in my head via repeat listens despite the difficulties. Tragically ignoring my own listening advice. That’s in the process of changing, with this recent theft.
The sixth seems to be more intriguing than anything else of his I’ve tried so far, the marchy beginning certainly kicks arse. Plus there’s a big hammer lurking in there somewhere. It’s also really cool how the start of the scherzo mirrors the start of the first movement. As you can probably tell, I haven’t had much time to absorb it yet. I’ll let you know how it goes.
PopularConvert.com
Here we (I mean I) are (I mean am) at the end of the first sort of proper work-week of the year. Another 51 of them loom ahead. Just over 2% finished, etc, etc. Happily, my supervisor is permanently perched in her fifth floor aerie, screening and preening over grant applications so that all we lowly graduate students keep getting funded. This means that every one of our meetings last week, and all in the upcoming week, have been indefinitely postponed. Hooray! Minus the threat of our overseer inopportunely appearing in the doorway, the lab is about ten times more cheerful. It also means I am way less likely to come in on the weekend and instead can concentrate on such necessities as estimated tax payments, fixing the broken blinds and going to the annoyingly off-semester scheduled gym.
To celebrate this surprisingly pleasant start ot the semester, here are couple of our (me, girlfriend, friends) favorite absolutely non-classical, popular, four-on-the-floor, music videos.
The delightfully NES styled Move your Feet:
And the delightfully slutty Perfect Exceeder:
Tasmin Goes Free
Via the Omniscient Mussel (which always takes me 5,923 attempts to spell correctly), Tasmin Little (the violinist who pulled a UK version of the Joshua Bell busking stunt) is releasing her first album in four years completely free, gratis, etc. It’ll be up on her website “early next week”.
And while you wait for that, here she is serenading a cafe:
There is something distinctly bizarre about classical music videos.