Searching for Classical Music

 

WSJ - "Apple Wants to Solve One of Music’s Biggest Problems"

"You could just compare Taylor Swift and Tchaikovsky. For a Taylor Swift pop song, the essential pieces of metadata, or the taxonomic labels that categorize information, are title, album and artist. The metadata for a Tchaikovsky track can include not just the name of the work, composer and artist, but also the nickname, movement, key, opus number, orchestra, soloist and conductor. “It gets really nerdy and very specific—and very complicated,” said Ms. Gottlieb.

Another way of thinking about classical music’s biggest problem is distinguishing repertoire from recordings. A pop star like Taylor Swift is the recording artist for her repertoire. But one piece of Tchaikovsky’s repertoire has many recordings, as if every Taylor Swift single had thousands of covers. The streaming platforms are optimized for Taylor Swift and not Tchaikovsky."