Those evil marketing MBAs at American Express offered to pay for my next 5 songs from iTunes. I'm sure that Amex will eventually make me pay for this indulgence, but in the meantime I now have these new songs on my iPod:
Hindemith: Concert Music for Strings and Brass, Op. 50
Wolfgang Sawallisch, The Philadelphia Orchestra
(Each of the 2 parts is one "song")
MacMillan: After the Tryst
James MacMillan, Ruth Crouch
Weill: Je Ne T'amie Pas
Ute Lemper
Purcell: When I am am laid in earth
Kirsten Flagstad
It's not easy shopping for classical music on iTunes. Information one would like to know, such as performers & recording dates, is often not available. There are also many catalog errors, such as pieces with incorrectly listed composers.
Those evil marketing MBAs at American Express offered to pay for my next 5 songs from iTunes. I'm sure that Amex will eventually make me pay for this indulgence, but in the meantime I now have these new songs on my iPod:
3 comments:
"It's not easy shopping for classical music on iTunes. Information one would like to know, such as performers & recording dates, is often not available."
That's the reason why I opted for 5 arias from one of Kaufmann's CD. Are you going to his recital next week?
Well, my sense is that those frequent errors in the listings you lament are because your friends at iTunes are trying to shoehorn information that requires 3 or more fields onto a system that easily accommodates only two: "Bob Dylan" and "Don't Think Twice, it's Alright" are the only items needed in order to catalog that song properly--probably because it actually is a song. But when your "song" is that Hindemith piece, for example, there's the composer, title, orchestra, and conductor. Since iTunes' cataloging process is, doubtless, automated, information is either ignored, placed in the wrong field, or both. Still, it's amazing that such a wealth of music (that is, "songs") is available--though, at this stage, there's still a large gap between what is theoretically available and what one can actually find and make use of.
y2K: I do not have plans to hear Kaufmann at Cal Performances, but people seem excited about him. Classical CDs that are compilations of shorter works do seem to work better in the iTunes store.
David: I wonder if there would be more on-line purchases if MP3 tags worked better for classical music. You are probably right that there is stuff on iTunes that I would like to listen to but that I have not been able to find.
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