A Revolution in Music Appreciation

Dayjay, No need to apologise and certainly no need to resort to alcohol to deal with the shame.

If you are partial to a bevvy or two, please come to my pub and you can sample a pint of my finest real ale on me!

Now you are talking, iif I ever get the opportunity I will be there.  Much appreciated!

Well, I've consumed way too much alcohol tonight, and it has nothing to do with this debate.  I have also been attacked mercilessly by....creatures...of the blood sucking type; they have a naim, but I've forgotten how to spell.

I don't use internet streaming as an extended library, only for finding new music.

For me the biggest limitation of the internet streaming services is the limitations of their search filters.  I know that manual detailed tagging in a way that is meaningful to the majority of people is an impossible goal, and that software to classify music with a numerical likeness rating to another track is currently very unreliable.  At the moment I don't see how this can be radically improved until substantial advances in music classification software evolve...  Unless I've missed some possibility.

At the moment, when I've tried browsing through list of supposed to 'similar to artist XXX' I find that often over 75% of the returned hits seem to have almost nothing in common.

So I find the services of limited use - I'm not going to wade through tens of thousands of almost randomly selected tracks / artists just because they're classified as "Female Vocal" or some other generic tag.  I feel I need something in between the wide generic and the unreliable specific.  I'm not belittling their efforts, just that as yet I don't find the search facilities to be a sufficiently mature technology for my specific needs.

To quote Marx, "Close, but no cigar".

Anyone who cares for music can compile a card index of the collected recordings.

Manually tagging the music is merely the same as a card index, but easier, because it is typing.

I have manually tagged over 7000 individual tracks in iTunes. Those too lazy to do similar do not have my sympathy. Thus my iTunes search engine is razor sharp!

ATB from George

I have have not really explored the 'similar to' type suggestions via streaming services to explore new music. From cursory observations of such 'suggestions' there appears to be little relationship to the searched album/artists. Suggested other albums/songs by the same artist aren't helpful because that is an obvious further exploration that one can carry out without some algorithm generated prompt.

So far I have simply relied on fellow music lovers suggestions and subsequent search based on that information. In most cases these suggestions provide sufficient information for successful searches. It is strange however that a recommendation by an individual can lead to a wonderful new find, yet another recommendation by the same individual with in the same genre can leave you completely cold. So even with the benefit of 'like-minded' fellow music-lovers, there is no guarantee of  achieving that magical find. It still requires leg work, but nothing worthwhile is ever easy.

It just goes to show we are all different when it comes to tastes in music. Vive la difference. (By the way I failed my O level French). 

Sorry George, are you implying that people who can't be bothered to tag 7000 tracks are not music lovers in the same way? Maybe some of us love music are really really stretched for time.

Not suggesting any such thing. Just play your gramophone records on the shelf in alphabetic order. But if you want to access digital files for classical records from a digital library then some work is required. I sorted out nine tenths of what I have in iTunes in six weeks, five years ago. Since then I have corrected each CD's tags on ripping it ...

Not hard.

Otherwise you will not find what you have so painstakingly ripped. I guess this is what the suppliers of streaming services are relying on. Lazy b-----rs, who cannot be arsed to catalogue their already purchased recordings.

It will be interesting to see if the streaming service providers start to develop algoritms that successfully 'learn' individual tastes in music. Clearly that 'learning' can only develop the more the consumer uses the service. The abilty of algorithms to learn is also dependent on the ability of the streaming service providers to tag artists/songs/performances with some rather subjective/ephemeral/creative/stylistic markers. I am having trouble describing it let along the challenge of implementing it!

Having mentioned the obvious difficulties involved in tagging music with 'soft/subjective' markers, from the amount of very well targeted e-mails I receive from Amazon, it is clear they have successfully carried this out with 'hard/objective' markers based on my searches and purchases from their site. I suspect they would like to delve further into our preferences and desires by analysing the softer, more implicit side exibited in our on-line behaviour. Taken to the extremes I guess this could become rather manipulative by encouraging us to buy more of what we want rather than what we need. 

But when it comes to music it is all about what we WANT to hear. So developments in learning algorithms by streaming services that provide better suggestions, more tailored to our individual tastes can only be a good thing. I say a good thing unless it leads to us spending far too much of our disposable income (and time) on music!

George,

You've completely missed my point...

I can't manually tag ALL of Spotify, Quobuz or Tidal's online catalogue, the one used by their online search engine, only they can do that.

They won't do it with the fine grained information I'd be looking, for as they'd be looking at manually tagging millions of tracks with multiple subject tags selected from many thousands of possible tags to use (currently they seem to only use about 100 different tags at most).

I do manually tag my own music collection.

The services are trying to do this, however before being able to do this successfully you have to be able to classify the music accurately, with metadata that has sufficiently fine grained selection criteria.

To get the fine gained metadata requires many thousands of subject tags form which the applicable tags are selected.  As the complexity of this selection geometrically expands with the number of available tags, the work is too onerous for humans and needs to be done by computer.

The computer algorithms to classify music are in their infancy and currently don't work well.  This is where the problem lies - generating the classification data.  Using it to provide targeted selections is, as you say, a problem that's already been solved by the advertisers.

Typing the name of the artist and making your own playlists appears to work pretty well.

H

And wrogly targeting lots of things someone isn't interested in would be annoying and a turn-off

IF you already know the name of the artist.

It doesn't work so well for finding new artists. 

That's what I've been doing over the last few days, since getting Tidal up and running.

However, it seems that early on, whilst familiarising myself with the interface, I managed to save a complete album to "My Music", rather than a playlist, and now can't work out how to do it this way again. 

Any ideas?

I should add that i've been using the Naim app, rather than the Tidal one.

Cheers,

Dave.

To put an album in your playlist, search for the album on Tidal within the Naim App by tapping on the magnifying glass, when found, tap on it and it will list all the tracks on that album, then tap on the three large dots and it will come up with a menu of alternatives, tap on 'New playlist' , then tap on 'Done' and it will add the entire album to your play list named as per the album which can be found listed under 'My Music' when you tap on the four diamond Tidal logo within the Naim App. 

Thanks Nigel,

That's what I've been doing so far, and the albums saved do indeed appear under the "playlists" heading, displayed with a multiple image of the album cover.

However, under the "albums" tab, there's an album, complete, with a single larger image of the cover.

It's not crucial, as the music available is the same in each case.

It's just that it looks neater with the single image, but I can't figure out how I managed to save the album in this way. 

Regards,

Dave.

Dave, I see what you mean and I have just figured it out.

When you have searched for and selected your chosen album, instead of tapping the three dots, simply touch the empty star on  the left had side and it turns to white. Go to My Music and select Albums at the top and you will see your album saved under a single image. I have been saving albums as playlists so far.

I suppose Playlists come up first on the left in My Music because the youngsters like to create them whereas an old git like me is still old school and prefers to listen to albums.

You live and learn I guess! 

Ta Dah!

Nice one Nigel. (And I'm with you on Playlists........for exactly the same reason) 

I suppose many of us "old gits" remember the days when concept albums were common place, when an album was a work of art unto itself, created as a whole by the artists (rather than being a mere collection of short pieces that happen to have been brought together merely for commercial distribution).

I prefer to stay (largely) consistent to the artists original intent.  However there are also some things in my music library that are collections of individual pieces, and with these I am rather more likely to 'dip in and out' to select individual items.

Yes, I guess us "old gits" are from the pre-download era, and, speaking with some of the "younger gits",  it seems that very few ever download a complete album, but prefer to cherry pick the tracks which most appeal.

Mind you, I have managed to impress some of them by the mere fact that I, (sort of), understand and use streaming at all! 

It's all good,

Dave.

Agreed. Albums to me were, and are still, more than a collection of (unrelated?) songs but rather an artistic endeavour as an entire piece. I agree that some songs may be more appealing than others on the same album but it can be a mistake to cherry pick and exclude the 'less attractive' songs. The reason is that over time playing entire albums I have grown to like and appreciate the so called less attractive tracks. Additionally as you improve your system some of the more challenging song/tracks/pieces start to make more sense as their reproduction in the home improves.

So youngsters, cherry pick at your peril.

+1 with rock music, at least the stuff I like is mostly constructed by the album, and in many are 'concept albums' wher I simply have to play the whole album, all the way through as made, in a continuous play - a bit like going to the theatre, where you wouldn't just go and see Act 2  of a 3 Act play.

Ditto opera.

Ditto classical works - not necessarily albums, as some albums contain several different works, sometimes by different composers.

however I do have a few 'best of' type albums, generally to fill in a band I either don't know well, or only like some of. Those I can dip in and out of, but don't usually do.

Random play is a bit like radio, where single tracks are played (apart from BBC R3 for classical), and I find that best for discovering new things simply because it is random from a vast potential repertoire, and in that respect far better than using an online streaming service, the latter for me only being of use in deliberately trying something specific, e.g. when recommended by someone whose taste is similar to mine.

Good thread Nigel, and agree these services are a great way of discovering and re-discovering great music.

If you have not found it already, try the Start track radio option in Tidal.  Tap the three dots next to a track and it generates a playlist of similar stuff.  It's a bit random, but throws up some nice surprises from time to time.  

David