To the Reader: with apologies, I’ve decided to catch up to some drafts which never reached publication. Or should I apologize to myself? By dumping several lengthy posts on the same day, I’m just about guaranteed less readership…
I’ve sadly realized my 7-10 year love affair with streaming music appears headed for the “let’s be friends” stage. I just finished listening to Adeste Fidelis recorded by The Choir of Westminster Cathedral and released in 1993 by The Musical Heritage Society, and now I’m listening to The Martin Best Ensemble’s album Thys Yool: A Medieval Christmas released in 1988 on Nimbus Records. I purchased both on CD, ripped them more than a decade ago, and I’m listening to them using MediaMonkey, my jukebox program of choice for over 20 years. Soon I’ll move on to another Christmas album, played again through MM instead of streaming it. Why is any of this important? Because I’m not streaming them, and I fell in love with streaming during the pandemic.
Finding both of these albums on Tidal (and Spotify before I switched) proved difficult. A search right now in Tidal using “Martin Best Ensemble” and variants produced no such artist. Only when I searched for “Thys Yool” did the album pop. I performed these searches on a desktop with a full keyboard—I would hate to do this on my phone or tablet. The former album doesn’t seem to exist on Tidal. I can find only four albums by The Choir of Westminster Cathedral, despite Discogs listing 91 distinct albums dating back to the 1950’s. All four seem to duplicate each other closely; in essence it’s four variants of one album.
I could mark these albums as Favorites, and in the case of Thys Yool I have done so, but it’s useless: at some point in the past year or so, the overlords at Tidal decided that the Albums collection will show users not only the albums they’ve specifically tagged as Favorites, but every album they’ve ever played, and in reverse chronological order! Thus, to find this album I would need to scroll through every album I’ve listened to since last Christmas. My year-end report from Tidal doesn’t tell me how many unique albums I streamed, only the number of unique artists.
And tagging the Westminster album as a Favorite wouldn’t do me any good since it doesn’t exist. Oh, sure, I could search for “Adeste Fidelis” — I’m sure it won’t produce too many hits, right? Okay, just to humor you, I’ll do it. There are 106. Scrolling through them…sonuva…there it is! Only took five minutes or so to find it. Didn’t pop because in this iteration the artist is “Westminster Cathedral Choir” not “The Choir of Westminster Cathedral.” Undoubtedly Tidal didn’t obtain rights to the MHS version of the album where the artist name appears differently.
No, I’ve reached that stage in any doomed relationship where you just can’t overlook the other’s faults and those faults loom large. I’ve just described my difficulties keeping in touch with favorite artists and albums from the 60 years I’ve been collecting music. During that time (pre-streaming) I’ve collected nearly 1700 albums over those 60 years of musical pursuit, and these hold about 19,000 unique tracks. Discounting about ten percent which I would never listen to and are there because my wife wanted them there, or they represent some passing fancy of mine, that’s around 17,000 tracks I want to stay in touch with. I can’t just surface some artist’s name or a particular song at will. This was brought back to me by a drive I completed December 30th from Fredericksburg, VA, to our home in Raleigh. We took a ‘back way’ suggested by Google Nav and at one point we drove a mile on Ghoston Rd. Suddenly a song called “Goshen Road” popped into my head. I came by the album Homespun by Richard Supa the summer of 1972. Until I got home and listened to the album, I hadn’t listened to it in years. Not surprisingly, I today I can’t find it on Tidal—I didn’t bother to try a couple days ago. (Dang! I need to update the S-R Ten! Only I guess it isn’t Ten anymore.)
Finding it in MediaMonkey took all of a few seconds once the program loaded. I have used MediaMonkey since 2005 because it handles large libraries with aplomb. Tidal, Spotify, whatever service you want to name, have interfaces which just aren’t as useful, nimble, and quick as a desktop-based jukebox program. (It does have a mobile version.) MM retains the old-school look popular with jukebox programs from decades ago, and I make it more so by choosing a classic look then modifying it further:
MediaMonkey layers database tools over a simple view of folders and files, similar to File Explorer. Judicious tagging when adding the music allows one to find music by genre, any of the performers, album title, and composer. MM really shines in the case of classical music, providing a more composer-centric set of tools and the ability to find music based on the conductor of a particular orchestra. Could streaming sites do this, and do it better? Yes, but the album/artist/composer/director has to be there in the first place! Reference my comments above.
When I ask MediaMonkey to show me music by artist, I get what you see in the left pane above. There are 43 artists listed there. (You’re welcome; now you don’t have to count them.) With a quick scroll of the mouse wheel I can see dozens and dozens more; I can jump to a specific location in the alphabet if I just drag the little slider on the right of that pane. You just can’t get through your Tidal artists that quickly. (It’s the same for Spotify, et al, so let’s assume every time I say “Tidal” I mean all of them.) I have over 2000 artists in my personal music collection. There’s no way I would ever “favorite” that many on a streaming service, but could I remember them to search for the ones I didn’t?
I’ve spent my life trying to NOT remember lists and lists of things. Even as a student in public school, if I didn’t look at a list, I didn’t know whether I had homework or not. I carried this to the many desks I’ve used in my life: if it ain’t on top, I better have another method for remembering something because just filing it away means I’ll never see it again. Likewise, I can’t surface the name of every artist, song, or album I’ve liked in my life. We’re all like that to a certain extent. Just think how someone will mention a TV show or song from 20 years ago, and your reaction goes something like, “Oh yeah! I forgot all about that! Gosh, I loved that [show/song].”
Streaming services want you to stream many, many artists, wending your way from song to song, artist to artist, discovering playlists you like…anything to keep you on the site. They create many barriers to any user who simply wants to listen to specific artists, albums, and songs. When they take away our ability to scroll through a list of favorite artists or favorite albums, or modify them to make it more difficult and less helpful, they also take away our ability to remember that we like these artists and albums. Sure, I can remember The Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, and David Bowie, to name a few of my top favorites, but I removed a name I almost typed over there, Rick Estrin & The Nightcats, because not long ago I remembered a song of theirs and couldn’t remember the exact name of the band. When a streaming service asks us to remember a name of an artist, album, or song prior to retrieving it for us, it excludes all of those artists, albums, and songs which we can’t remember right now. The jukebox program doesn’t have this problem. Simply scroll up and down your list of artists and the names slide by, each one saying, “listen! listen to me!”
Perhaps the worst aspect of streaming services when discussing how difficult it is to find albums is this: many albums just aren’t there, particularly classical recordings. And good luck finding a complete recording of most tribute albums. I suppose the service couldn’t get releases from all of the artists on the recording? Try finding Woodstock on any streaming service. Individual artist performances have been brought to Tidal, but not the original album (or the excellent Rhino Records 6-CD collection which came out in 2009 to mark the 40th anniversary of the festival). There’s a tribute to Elton John called Two Rooms containing some great covers, including a truly haunting cover of “Tonight” performed live by George Michael. The Michael performance can be found under his name, but the tribute album cannot be found on the site…at least when last I looked for it.
There. Thanks for allowing me to rant. When a relationship hits the rocks, a guy just needs a friend, a drink, and a chance to spew. I think I need a drink….
all the voices in my head 