Tag: FLAC audio files

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Classical music streaming no longer plays second fiddle | CNet

A streaming service that works for classical: Thomas Steffens, CEO of Primephonic | Bachtrack

From the horse’s mouth

Primephonic

Product Page

My Comments

Most streaming music services like Spotify focus on popular music. There is not much classical music in library and these services don’t support the kind of metadata associated with classical-music works like composers, multiple-movement works or performers. As well, they adopt a royalty-payout model that only works well with the three-minute song.

A streaming-music service that supports classical music needs to allow searching and browsing in a “composer-then-work-then-performance” approach so you can find recordings of a particular piece. It also has to handle the reality that a significant number of classical-music pieces have multiple movements, where there is the ability even to call out a particular part of a movement like the “Ode To Joy” chorus within the fourth movement of Ludwig van Beethoven’s 9th Symphony (Choral) rather than having the whole movement. In the case of musical theatre like opera, you may have to call out a particular aria, duet or chorus without the need to have any bridging music.

There is also a want to allow a particular piece, including a particular movement, to be identified by different names such as language-specific names or names brought on by particular applications. A good example of this is Mozart’s Piano Concerto 21 which ended up being known as the “Elvira Madigan” concerto thanks to a film adaptation of the Elvira Madigan story created in 1967 which featured the (very romantic) second movement.

A significant number of works in the classical-music canon are performed and recorded by different combinations of performers. For example, a concerto would be performed by one or more known soloists and a supporting orchestra conducted by a certain conductor. Here, it may be desirable to look for works performed by a particular performer or orchestral works played by a particular orchestra or conducted by a particular conductor.

Of course there is the desire to look for works based on particular eras like the Romantic era or the Baroque era. 

There is also the fact that a movement can play for a very long time such as some of Beethoven’s popular concerti having a first movement that has a duration of at least 20 minutes. Here. a “per-track” royalty payment approach typically used for popular music that is based on the three-to-five minute song is not economically viable in this domain. Instead, there has to be a sustainable economical approach to pay out arrangers, living composers, music publishers, performers and record labels their royalties for use of pieces in an online music service.

Thomas Steffens who runs Pentatone, the company that was formerly the well-known Philips Classics music label, discovered the limitations concerning how classical music can be enjoyed on online music services.  He conceived the idea of an online music service in 2016 and built up Primephonic as a streaming music service that answers the needs of this class of music.

The music catalogue that supports Primephonic is based on the mainstream classical-music labels alongside some niche labels. Genres are curated and catalogued by musicologists and classical-music students and the service allows for searching also by mood. There is the support for various themed playlists which is very similar to a compilation album based on a mood / occasion , composer, instrument, era or other factor. Users can also have the ability to listen to the parent work of a movement that they are currently listening to in a playlist.

Primephonic stays away from Amazon-type artificial-intelligence “recommend-music” algorithms based on like music or “critic’s choice” lists that are narrowed down to particular performances of particular works. This is to encourage users to work across the whole catalogue and discover more music. But a significant number of classical-music listeners will think more of particular works by particular composes and choose any performance of that work, but they may focus on a particular performer if they are interested in their output.

During playback, Primephonic will show up as a Web page details about the composer, work and performer so you have a similar kind of rich learning experience that was feasible with the notes written on the back of an LP record’s outer sleeve or in a booklet packaged with a CD. There is even the ability for users to know of a local performance of the work if local performers, orchestras or venues register these performances with Primephonic. It can then lead to the idea of providing a link to the box office that is associated with that performance to encourage listeners to book tickets for the event.

Primephonic offers the music as FLAC-based high-quality recordings and costs US$14.99 or GBP£14.99 per month to subscribe. They pay out time-based royalties to the people and entities who have a hand in recording the works that exist on the service’s catalogue.

Alongside the Web-based user interface, Primephonic offers an iOS and an Android mobile-platform app. But what they need to do is work with consumer-AV names to allow this service to work tightly with their equipment. This is more so where the equipment has its own user interface.

Once Primephonic and others get on board with a high-quality classical-music streaming service that supports people who love this kind of music. It could even complement Spotify or TiDAL as an on-demand service for classical music.

A lot of Millenials are preferring to use Spotify or similar “online jukeboxes” as their main music source, having the music play out of a wireless speaker or a network-capable audio system that supports these services.

What are these online jukeboxes?

Spotify – the preferred only music source for many Millenials but can be used as a music discovery tool

These “online-jukebox” music services all work work primarily on a subscription basis where you don’t effectively own your music library, rather you stream down the music from these services after you pay a nominal amount per month or year to use these services. Some of them offer a free ad-supported variant of their music service, usually as an on-ramp to the main subscription-funded service.

But some of us, like myself, use the above-mentioned “online jukeboxes” more as a music-discovery tool so we can identify musical content that can fit in to our library. Examples of this include playing playlists that convey particular musical styles or moods, or discovering and “trying out” artists, albums and tracks that pique our interests.It includes situations where a company may offer a branded playlist with songs that represent what they are about.

In my case, I showed some interest in one of the “yacht-rock” playlists on Spotify and there had been a few songs that piqued my interest, some of which would be hard to find on CD in Australia. What I had done was to visit one of the transactional download-to-own music stores that is run as part of a platform’s app store and subsequently bought these songs as audio files that I could download. This meant I could add them as part of a personal playlist that existed on a microSD card as well as on a NAS that is available on the home network.

How can the “download-to-own” music services fit in

iTunes – still going strong as a download-to-own music store

The way some of us add this content to our libraries is through a transaction-based “download-to-own” service like iTunes or Amazon Music. Increasingly most of the app stores associated with particular regular-computing or mobile platforms like the Windows Store and the Google Play Store are adding “download-to-own” music as part of their offerings.

Such services allow us to buy songs or albums as common media files to download to our computers or NAS drives, with a similar experience to buying the physical media where we effectively own it, but in a digital form. There used to be many of these services before the subscription-based music-streaming services took over the online music marketplace.

Microsoft Store -Microsoft’s latest entry in to the “download-to-own” scene, providing music as MP3 files

What used to be an advantage was for these services to sell most of the songs as single tracks rather than require the user to buy a complete album. This was very similar to the era of the 7” 45rpm single where people could buy these records for cheap if they are after a particular song. This appealed to people who were buying to build up playlists of particular songs typically to set a particular mood.

There is also the value that you are not dependent on whether the content you like is still available at the online streaming music service or whether you have burnt up your mobile download allowance by streaming your music while on the road. Some of the online music services provide for offline listening but the files that are stored are kept in a proprietary form that can’t be readily played with anything other than the software provided by the online service.

Viable niches that these services can answer

Some of these services still exist but could be taken further to support a range of viable niches whether in the form of content types or audio-reproduction standards.

Answering new and upcoming talent

The typical answer to this issue is to offer these services as an “on-ramp” for upcoming talent like new musicians, basement bands and DJs. Here, these artists who typically have a handful of content but aren’t discovered could be able to sell their content through these services. They offer a simplified “on-ramp” for this kind of talent and may even provide the promotion that it needs to be exposed.

You may find that some of these “download-to-own” music stores will have their “artist and repertoire” teams who “suss out” local gigs, buskers and community radio to hunt down the new talent whose material they can sell.

Supplying particular kinds of content

To the same extent, there are some suppliers who sell particular kinds of “download-to-own” music that suit particular tastes.

Beatport – the dance-music download-to-own store

One of these is Beatport who sell electronic dance music to DJs and those of us who like that kind of music. This is similar to how some dance-music record stores like Central Station Records in Australia existed, catering to this user class and were pulling out the stops to hunt down the latest beats.

Sometimes some record labels that specialise in particular kinds of content may run their own shopfront instead of or alongside the traditional distribution channels. It may be seen as a way to bypass import controls that some distributors and retailers value highly for controlling what is available in certain markets. As well, this approach effectively provides direct access to the talent the labels represent.

High-quality file-based audio

Another way would be that file types that represent high-quality audio could be available either as a standard or premium option. This can appeal for those of us who value high-quality audio or regularly use a top-notch hi-fi system. As well, there could be the ability to obtain high-quality masterings of the recordings that are available, including the ability to obtain a version prepared with or without high dynamic range.

Here, such recordings can be seen as a premium option for those of us who want something that is more special than what the online streaming services offer. An example of this has been the PonoMusic store that Neil Young started out with but is undergoing some renovation.

How can they complement Spotify and co?

But to continue making sure that these services maintain popular appeal, “download-to-own” music stores that want to cover a large market base have to have access to the current and back catalogue offered by most, if not all, of the major labels across the world. This includes being able to sell these recordings in to other countries, which may raise concern with music labels who don’t like the concept of parallel-importing of content in to other markets.

Similarly, they could partner with the likes of Spotify to offer the recordings that these subscription-based “online jukeboxes” provide for playback as a premium download-to-own option. For example, a media-management program that works with a “download-to-own” store and one of the “online jukeboxes” could offer a “buy this playlist offline” function where you can effectively buy your own copy of a playlist. Here, it would check which of the songs are downloaded or “ripped” from your CDs, then allow you to buy the remainder of the playlist from the “download-to-own” stores.

Conclusion

What has to happen is that, like the way radio and packaged pre-recorded music complemented each other, the download-to-own music services and the “online jukeboxes” of the Spotify kind need to be positioned in a manner to complement each other in the file-based music world.

This high-end Naim NDS network audio player is an example of equipment that can handle the lossless FLAC file type

If you work with audio content, whether to “rip” CDs to the hard disk or home network, or record speech or music content for audio projects, you may have been dealing with various compressed filetypes like MP3 or AAC as your main recording format.

But most of these filetypes work on a lossy principle where data is effectively lost and when the file is played back, the software reconstitutes that file to make it something to listen to. Now an open-source file format has been released to allow for lossless compression of audio content.

This recently-issued format, known as FLAC or Free Lossless Audio Codec, has answered many audio technicians’ prayers because the sound is encoded in a manner as to prevent the loss of audio content through recording or playback. This is in a similar manner to how a ZIP or RAR “file-of-files” is prepared in order to conserve disk space or bandwidth. You still have the advantage of a compressed file not taking up too much storage space or transmission bandwidth. Being an open-source free codec, it means that audio applications can implement this codec without the need to pay royalties to particular organisations and there are very few other encumbrances on that codec.

FLAC – a better archival format

One of the best analogies that I came across for using FLAC in the audio-archival context is that it is like if you are a wine collector and you purchase a premium wine-cellar to keep your collection. Here, the wine-cellar is keeping the wine collection at an ideal temperature and humidity for long-term storage. But when you want to serve that drop at the dinner party, you have the bottle sitting on the sideboard and resting until it is at the ideal serving temperature.

Previously this required a user to download and install a FLAC codec on their computer to be able to record, play or edit these files. Then the Linux and Android operating systems had native support for this filetype built in to tie operating system and various audio applications provided application-level support for working with these files. Similarly, high-end sound cards and USB DACs furnished this codec as part of their software. Now Windows 10 has provided native support for FLAC files including ripping CDs to these files.

How can I use FLAC in my audio workflow

Creating your digital-audio content

If you use a computer or a file-based digital-audio recorder (including some digital mixers) to record audio content, make sure that you record as a PCM form like a WAV or AIFF file; or as a FLAC file. You may find that some equipment like a lot of the digital mixers with integrated USB recording abilities may only work with USB hard disks or solid-state drives that use high-speed data transfer if you have them record to WAV or similar files.

Then you use an audio editor like Audacity, NCH WavePad, or Rogue Amoeba’s Fission; or an audio converter program like NCH Switch, dbPowerAmp or Foobar2000 to convert the WAV or AIFF file in to a FLAC file. You may find that some video converters may offer audio-to-audio conversion for the FLAC file.

dbPoweramp Music Converter – one of the audio converters worth using out there

You could do this to your audio file once you have that file in “master-ready” condition – you have edited it and applied any audio transformations to that file to get it sounding right and it is ready to distribute. On the other hand, you could also create a “raw” FLAC file from the WAV or AIFF you have recorded before you perform any of the editing and audio transformation work. In this situation, you then use this “raw” file as your reference file if you needed to approach the editing in another way.

Even if you are salvaging audio content from legacy media like LPs, open-reel tapes or cassettes, you can still use FLAC as your audio filetype for these efforts. Here, you can use theses FLAC files simply as the digital archive for this media.

As you create or edit a FLAC file, you can add metadata about the content you recorded to that file and, like with MP3 files, that data which describes the song title, performer, genre, album and other attributes stays with that file. This will work properly with smartphones or media players that play these files; along with DLNA media servers that distribute these files across small networks – these servers can index them and have them found according to the metadata that describes the content.

Distributing your FLAC-based audio content

When you distribute your content, you can then use the FLAC file as your source file – you could simply copy that file if you are targeting newer FLAC-compatible  “open-frame” equipment like Android or Windows 10 smartphones or Windows computers, or convert to MP3, AAC or Apple Lossless for Apple and other equipment that doesn’t support FLAC. Similarly, most current-issue DLNA-capable NAS units can work from FLAC files especially if you have FLAC-capable playback equipment on the network.

The FLAC file is also useful as a “master” audio file if you are creating an Audio CD because it is a compressed audio file that has has the same audio qualities as a PCM WAV or AIFF file. Similarly, you may have to convert the FLAC to a WAV or AIFF if you are importing it in to a video editing program for use as part of your video project’s soundtrack.

Conclusion

Once you use FLAC as your main file type for audio recording and editing or simply convert legacy audio files to FLAC, you are then ending up with a digital-audio file that can be used as an archival or distribution-master form.

You can use Windows 10 to re-rip your CDs to allow network media players like this Naim NDS to sound their best

Previously, I had covered the fact that Windows 10 has native support for the FLAC lossless digital-audio codec which is seen as the way to go for best-sounding file-based audio. But I thought this was limited to Windows 10 natively playing any FLAC file you throw at it. This is important if you connect your computer to an audiophile-grade USB DAC or use network media players that are up-to-snuff for your top-notch hi-fi system.

But I discovered for myself when I ripped the “Too Slow To Disco 2” CD to my computer’s hard disk that Windows Media Player does rip to FLAC and have set it up that way. This will lead to sound that is properly CD quality from any of your CDs that you “dump” to your computer’s hard disk to transfer to your DLNA-capable NAS or FLAC-capable open-frame smartphone or media player. For that matter UPnP AV / DLNA does support FLAC audio files in a de-facto manner and most, if not all, hi-fi network media players that work to UPnP AV / DLNA standards will stream FLAC files.

Rip Music settings in Windows 10 Media Player Options menu

How do you set Windows Media Player to rip to FLAC

1. Start Windows Media Player in Windows 10
2. Select Tools then Options
3. Click on the Rip Music tab
4. Change the format option to FLAC (Lossless)
5. Adjust the Audio Quality slider to “Best Quality”

If you are about to rip a CD like I was, click on “Rip Settings” when you see your CD’s track list in the window. Then click on “Format” and click “FLAC (Lossless)” to have it ripped in FLAC.

Rip Settings menu when you are about to rip a CD

In this mode, if you were playing a CD and you wish to commence ripping it, the music will stop playing until the rip is complete. This is to achieve best results. As well, I would prefer to rip to the computer’s local storage to provide for increased stability and better sound quality. These files then can be copied out to your NAS so you can have them playing on your network-capable CD receiver.

FLAC re-rip of Mick Jagger’s “She’s The Boss” CD

If you re-rip your CD collection to FLAC, each re-ripped album will be marked as “FLAC” on the album cover. But Windows Media Player doesn’t make it easy to update playlists and have them point to the new FLAC files. Instead, you have to go through each playlist and identify tracks from the albums you just re-ripped, add the tracks from these re-rips, move them next to the original track and remove the original track from the playlist.

There are ways Windows Media Player could go about this better. One way would be to create copies of each playlist with references to all the member tracks. Then as you re-rip your CDs, it then discovers the FLAC files  The copy could be tagged as a “FLAC” playlist while your existing playlist could be kept as a MP3 or WMA playlist which you could then use for portable equipment. On the other hand, Windows Media Player could work through each playlist and have them point to your FLAC re-rips.

Those of you who value open-frame computing can get on board with Windows Media Player in Windows 10 as a way to get your CDs on to the higher-quality FLAC format to see if it is right for you before committing to more expensive CD-ripping software.