Apple Music vs Spotify for Broadway — Page 2

re: The Wrong Man--the only recording that exists is the concept album, though some of the cast members did quarantine performances on Youtube

I had Amazon Music as a trial for a bit, and they did seem to have more than Apple Music, though I didn't do an exhaustive search. (At the time Apple did not have Anastasia, the recent My Fair Lady, and The Lightning Thief, though it seems like they've added it since then, so it's possible they've increased their Broadway library recently.) It does seem that there's more people creating/curating playlists for Spotify, and generally their discovery tends to be better, but I like Apple Music because I can upload my own files to iTunes and have it sync (Amazon doesn't allow for file uploads) and Spotify's interface drives me crazy (along with the fact that I would've had to port over my pre-existing music collection anyway).

Apple's interface isn't the greatest either and I could go off an a whole separate tangent about that, but one thing to note is that their search is not exhaustive. For example, if I search "Follies" then the main albums show up but not the 1987 London one, though if I search it in iTunes, I can find it and it shows a banner saying that it's listenable in Apple Music, which has been my general workaround for things I can't find (this also tends to happen with newer albums). It'll also display these harder-to-find albums if you search a specific song ("Waiting for the Girls Upstairs" works in the Follies instance), so there's a couple avenues to try before knowing whether or not an album is actually on Apple Music. (Though on the other hand, based on the Hadestown tiered release, Spotify doesn't quite know how to do "pre-sales" or create a distinguished difference between playlists and albums, so pick your poison.)

I use Amazon Music HD now. Unlike Apple Music (256 kbps) or Spotify (320 kbps), tracks on Amazon Music HD are, at a minimum, CD quality (1,411 kbps, 16 bit, 44.1 kHz). They also have millions of tracks in high resolution sound (9,216 kbps, up to 24 bit, 192 kHz).

HAMILTON, DEAR EVAN HANSEN and many more cast recordings are presented in High Resolution which has far better sound than CDs. There's even a High Resolution version of 1959s THE SOUND OF MUSIC which was remastered from the original masters and sounds pretty great.

You can go a little crazy getting into High Resolution music but, in my opinion, it is definitely worth putting a toe in the water.

Wow, it doesn't seem like 4 years have gone by since I posted on this thread!

I am still using Google Play music but it is in the process of switching to You Tube Music. I just transferred my librafy ovet to You Tube music a few weeks ago and as they said, I am finding a lot more music. The nice thing is that you can download the audio from a video you find so if you find a video of someone singing a song from a show you like, you can just download the audio into your library. They are supposed to complete the transfer in September but it is amazing some of the stuff I have already come across. And they always seem to have all of the new theatre related releases.

Not to bore anyone, but this is how composers and artists are supposed to get paid these days. In the era of vinyl and CDs, very simple. Composers and recording artists received a share of the proceeds of the sales.

Now nothing tangible to be sold, so Congress passed laws requiring both AM/FM radio and streaming radio to pay the licensing fee directly to the composers each time they broadcast one of their songs. The royalty per play was very small, under a tenth of a cent, so only very successful songs made significant money🦽.

That was composers. Congress passed another law requiring performers/recording artists to be paid a licensing fee when their recording was broadcast. But in this case the law applied only to the streamers. To this day Over-The-Air AM/FM stations pay nothing to the artists. This is a source of great controversy (although even if AM/FM did pay, artists less than stars still would not be much enriched.)

Royalty payments are triggered at the song level. The fact that a song is part of an album is usually not relevant.

If interested in this subject, check out “SoundExchange” the non-profit created by Congress to collect the royalties owed to the artists and pay them.

Amazon Unlimited has a free 30 day trial going on right now. No credit card required. I was surprised at some things I found on Amazon. The live cast album of Encores’ Pipe Dream. John McGlinns’ 3 CD box set of Show Boat. It can be very hard to access these by voice command. But you don’t have to use voice commands.

Updated On: 8/7/20 at 09:12 PM

I noticed that Spotify's Throwback Thursday playlist this week is "showtunes" themed (I'm not saying Broadway because some of the songs are from soundtracks...) and they also have some new playlists up in their Broadway section that have some lesser seen songs. The biggest playlists are still Wicked, Phantom etc centric - nothing wrong with that but it's nice to see stuff from Titanic, Irene, Side Show, Hallelujah Baby and so forth on official Spotify playlists. I hope they do more with it.

OlBlueEyes wrote in part: "Not to bore anyone, but this is how composers and artists are supposed to get paid these days. In the era of vinyl and CDs, very simple. Composers and recording artists received a share of the proceeds of the sales.

Now nothing tangible to be sold, so Congress passed laws requiring both AM/FM radio and streaming radio to pay the licensing fee directly to the composers each time they broadcast one of their songs. The royalty per play was very small, under a tenth of a cent, so only very successful songs made significant money?.

That was composers. Congress passed another law requiring performers/recording artists to be paid a licensing fee when their recording was broadcast. But in this case the law applied only to the streamers..........If interested in this subject, check out “SoundExchange” the non-profit created by Congress to collect the royalties owed to the artists and pay them.

Not bored OldBlueEyes.

I have Amazon music and Sirius XM which has "On Broadway," a 24/7/365 Broadway music channel. Drawback: can't download.

Sirius does charge a royalty/licensing fee.

Sirius doesn’t let you download, but it’s streaming service lets you listen to certain programming on demand. For example you can request at any time Howard Stern’ s first Paul McCartney interview or the latest “Dark Horse Radio,” which is a fine weekly half hour show devoted to George Harrison and assembled by singer/songwriter Laura Cantrell.

Sirius is similar to the hosted live FM Stereo rock stations of the 70s and 80s. Does not really compete with Spotify and Apple.

I use Amazon Prime for my requests. Recent albums I’ve found

Laura Osnes Live from the Cafe Carlyle.

Color Purple New Broadway cast.

Kristin Chenoweth first album Let Yourself Go

And from the Kelli O’Hara collection “My Dearie”. Brigadoon “Hanging Around with You” from Nice Work

The Light in the Piazza

Bridges of Madison County

“They Don’t Let You in the Opera”. (Last solo, I think)