While I appreciate that Spotify is mainly targeted at a demographic who does not listen to much classical, I have found the web streaming services to have an adequate enough catalogue to justify parting with money for premium service. In fact, for a long time, I thought Spotify really got it.
I initially switched to Spotify from Beats as I felt that the MOG -> Beats transition was handled poorly and I always felt that there was something off about the Beats files.
But there is one piece of Spotify that absolutely makes my blood boil; and it's classical tracks only available on heinously offensive compilation albums missing, randomly it seems, out of important albums. This Grumiaux recording is widely considered a reference recording of these Bach violin works:
https://play.spotify.com/album/6sSESsfTOAXxrSe4voYaKa
And it is missing the Chaccone from Partita 2 as well as a few other tracks.
Which I can play off of, and boy I wish I was making this up:
- #bach
- The Dark Side of Bach
- A Guide to Classical Music: The Violin
- The Great Works of Bach
- This is Bach
- The 50 Greatest Performances of Classical...
Now, as anyone who is not 12 knows, compilation albums are at best in poor taste. But when we are talking about classical, where individual "tracks" fit together as a puzzle rather than the sometimes (but hardly always) more clearly deliniated pop songs, is beyond the ****ing pale.
I do not, and no one who is actually paying money to listen to classical on this service, wants to listen to The Dark Side of Bach. I want to listen to Arthur Grumiaux play the 2nd Partita, or the 3rd Sonata, in its entirety. On the best mastered copy. Continuous, and uninterupted, you know almost like I'm paying for a premium service. This is a fine and recognized recording of a very popular piece (relative to the genre) and I cannot understand how there can be 6 copies in the Spotify library and NONE of them are on the two discs that actually matter.
For what it's worth, the Alison Krauss library was also in tatters for weeks, and 2 tracks of 19 off Molly Drake (my favorite album in recent memory) are all that I seem to be able to play.
Of course the reality of running a business where you are essentially at war with content providers who's only contribution to society is they figured out how to extract the money out of actually talented individuals is not lost on me, but I'd rather take my premium money and buy one CD a month if my alternative is to listen to have to make custom lists for albums already in the library or even worse have to listen to a hodge podge of tracks thrown together by some uncultured imbecile who thinks Grumiaux and Hogwood belong on the same CD.