Posted: 7/21/15 at 3:49pm
Why do PS Classics, Broadway Records and Jay Records keep either all or the majority of their catalogues off streaming services? Namely Spotify and Apple Music. Thought they would be embracing Apple Music given that it will have no non-paying customers.
Posted: 7/21/15 at 4:26pm
"Why do PS Classics, Broadway Records and Jay Records keep either all or the majority of their catalogues off streaming services? Namely Spotify and Apple Music. Thought they would be embracing Apple Music given that it will have no non-paying customers. "
Because probably they would only end up earning a fraction of profits every time someone streams a song or album.
Posted: 7/21/15 at 4:39pm
It's short-sighted but remember that most of these recordings are paid for by those who want them recorded. And these small companies want cash flow and nothing else. The same thing happens in publishing where a certain category of small companies don't digitize their books. One day they will all wake up dead.
Posted: 7/21/15 at 4:50pm
Yes, they will have to wake up to it won't they? Very soon most people will only stream music (Apple Music hopefully meaning they'll be paying), and therefore no one will be buying these cast albums. Cast recordings to embrace the future or die?
Posted: 7/22/15 at 10:02am
This topic drives me bonkers. I pay for any streaming service I use, and I can totally understand that these record labels may not make what they would usually make off of an iTunes download, but lord knows, it would be nice to be able to listen to Fun Home, On the 20th Century, The Visit, etc. on Apple Music.
Posted: 7/22/15 at 10:22am
I love being able to purchase music that I really care about. These small theater record companies need to make money somehow, they'd make next to nothing if they relied on streaming.
It makes me sad that even buying digital musical may become obsolete someday.
Posted: 7/22/15 at 11:31am
ljay889,
It's called obsolescence. The record company is becoming irrelevant, because it is manufacturing a physical product that is becoming obsolete (in the same way that Kodak's film business became obsolete, as an example). When a company does not attempt to adapt, what that tells us is that it has essentially decided to simply ride its revenue into oblivion (as many, many have). From the standpoint of a musical's producers and creators, digital streaming results in much much more listening to songs because the number of people who actually buy cast recordings is microscopic under the best of circumstances. And that is their aim: they never made any significant money off these minor label recordings.
Posted: 7/22/15 at 11:37am
I agree, I'd like to see a lot more on the streaming services, but Fun Home and On the Twentieth Century are both on Spotify.
Posted: 7/22/15 at 11:59am
I was searching for cast albums in Apple Music this past weekend. A lot of recent things were not available (OTT, OTTC, The Visit, etc.), but what sort of surprised me was that the original cast album for MAME was nowhere to be found...despite the fact that most of the Columbia cast albums from that period looked to be available.
As far as making money from streaming services, Bette Midler tweeted this last year:
.@Spotify and @Pandora have made it impossible for songwriters to earn a living: three months streaming on Pandora, 4,175,149 plays=$114.11.
Posted: 7/22/15 at 12:17pm
You need to search harder on Itunes as all of those recordings are there.
Re the revenue to songwriters, without suggesting there is not room for improvement, it is worth noting that the real problem is with the record labels whose payout to songwriters is only a tiny slice of what they receive. And that underscores the obsolescence of the labels who are not performing the critical functions of manufacture and distribution they had/have in the deprecated technologies.
Posted: 7/22/15 at 12:47pm
Apple music is different than the iTunes Store.
Posted: 7/22/15 at 1:00pm
ljay889, I didn't know that-I assumed they were co-extensive. (I only use Itunes as a last resort and have never even looked at Apple Music.)
Posted: 7/22/15 at 3:03pm
What quality does the new Apple Music streaming offer? I know paid Spotify users can access higher quality streaming but I don't know how good the quality on either actually is.
THAT is my main problem with streaming/digital downloads. Their quality is usually just plain sub-par compared ti the CD counterpart (which is why I will always get the CD if I am actually purchasing a recording).
Posted: 7/22/15 at 3:16pm
The quality is the original/mastered for iTunes quality. It's the quality you'd get if you had purchased the song on iTunes.
Posted: 7/22/15 at 3:20pm
So 256 kbps.
Yep I shall stick to CD!
Posted: 7/22/15 at 3:25pm
It seems like the demographic for this niche market prefers physical media. PS Classics and Jay both state proudly that they cater to the consumer who cares about having a nice product. And their cds and packaging prove that.
Posted: 7/22/15 at 3:59pm
I agree with that about PSClassics but not Jay. The last two CDs I bought from Jay just came with these pathetic little inserts with little or no info about the show.
Posted: 7/22/15 at 4:28pm
I prefer the audio quality of CDs over streaming, but the convenience of having all of your music in the palm of your hand is great. I'm a premium Spotify member, so I get the higher bitrate (320 vs. 256 for Apple Music). However, both services use different encoding packages so it's pretty hard to tell the difference between the two from an audio perspective.
Now, if you really want to go all out, try downloading some of the high resolution FLAC files from sites like http://www.HDMusic.com There's not a lot of Broadway stuff available (I did recently download a 96/24 bit copy of the original cast album of ANNIE). You'll need good playback equipment, but chances are that if you can hear the difference between Spotify and the better CD, you will hear the difference between CD and the better high resolution FLAC file.
A number of companies, most notably Neil Young's Pono, make portable players that you can download to and then play through good headphones. I have a great device made by Sony, but there are many offerings. If you're going to play the files from your computer, you'll need a program like FUBAR (free) installed to handle the files.
While there's not a whole lot of Broadway, there's tons of "The Great American Songbook" (Sinatra, Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, etc.)...so you get a lot of Broadway stuff by default.
Posted: 7/22/15 at 4:55pm
I have a Spotify Premium subscription and tend to use it over the Music app on my iPhone and iPad in most cases. In fact, I haven't even signed up for Apple Music yet because I'm already satisfied with what I get from Spotify.
Maybe it's just a matter of luck, but I find a lot of great cast recordings and composers' compilation albums on Spotify that I probably wouldn't have discovered otherwise. They have a pretty wide scope of availability - Broadway, Off-Broadway, London, Live Concert Recordings, etc. You can even stream most of the BC/EFA Carols for a Cure albums!
Apple Music is still a new service, so one might imagine that adding new content takes time. However, Apple already seems to prioritize genres that are "high demand" while other genres seem to fall to the wayside, so I'm not so sure that their musical theatre offerings will ever outnumber their other offerings.
Posted: 7/22/15 at 6:52pm
Streaming and digital downloads are great in their way, but I usually prefer physical CDs. I tend to use streaming to try out CDs, then I'll buy the ones I love. I used to wait on CDs becoming available at libraries for the same purpose. Regularly buying blind has always been too expensive.
I hope that digital downloads, at the very least, persist in the future. Unlimited streaming, and constant access to the internet wherever you go, is not yet cheap enough or developed enough to be available to everybody. At least downloads (or CDs) are a one-off, more easily manageable expense, and you can then listen to that music whenever, wherever you like.
Streaming and downloads also place the consumer more at the whim of the record label. If the labels one day decide to change their policies and withdraw/further limit access to the music, consumers can get caught out. Physical CDs are harder to recall. (1984 ebook eg: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html?_r=0) I had an experience like that in the early days of digital downloads, when a) digital music policies were less user-friendly and b) I was too young to bother reading the fine print when purchasing. So I found that all my songs 'expired' and became unplayable a few years after I'd purchased them. (I investigated and apparently some instructions had been emailed to purchasers to enable them to extend the songs' shelf life, but I never received that email myself.) The only songs that still worked, ironically, were those I'd burned onto CDs and could then rip back to my computer from there.
Maybe in the future, rather than record labels existing as we know them, there will be label-neutral companies which will get a small profit from manufacturing small quantities of plain-packaging CDs from any artist on demand. Or something. (I imagine laws would need to change for that to happen; I'm no expert.)
Updated On: 7/22/15 at 06:52 PM
Posted: 7/22/15 at 8:26pm
Fan123,
I think there may indeed be side industries that eventually develop to produce physical CDS. There will also presumably be enhancements in streaming quality (and download quality) as technology and bandwidth improves. I understand that some people desire higher quality but I am sure that you also understand that the trend is away from physical CDs (as evidenced by the loss of many/most physical stores, if nothing else).
Regarding streaming and downloads, I think it is also more mind over matter. To me, access to anything on a whim trumps everything else, and costs way less. And once you get in the mindset, you don't need to "own" (i.e., download) anywhere near the 3000+ titles that Spotify allows.
Posted: 8/16/15 at 5:40pm
Anything new on Spotify? I can't find The Visit, Something Rotten, etc.
Posted: 8/16/15 at 6:18pm
If I really care about being able to listen to an album, I'll purchase a physical CD. My issue is that I'm paying for a subscription but Spotify doesn't register anything I've downloaded on my local files so I still have to pop in the CD when I want to listen to it.
