By Bill Heck
Introduction
Terminology: to save my typing and your patience, I here
use the term “laptop” to mean a desktop or laptop computer, tablet, or
smartphone. Unless otherwise noted, you can use any such device in the context
indicated. For brevity, I also use the term “pop” to refer to all types of
music other than classical and jazz.

Amazon, Tidal, Qobuz, Idagio, Primephonic: all premium
streaming services, but differing in focus. Amazon, Tidal
, and Qobuz aim to be everything to everyone.
Idagio and Primephonic aim solely at classical music lovers: no pop, no jazz,
no country, no anything but classical. So how might these services work out for
Classical Candor readers?
First, just what is a streaming service? Those familiar with
such services can skip ahead to the Streaming Criteria section below.
For those still reading here: do streaming services have to do with trout
fishing? Perhaps freshwater supplies for small cities?
Don’t worry, you already know what streaming is. You’ve used
it: you’ve surely watched videos on YouTube or Facebook; or you’ve followed
links in John Puccio’s News of the Week columns to find websites where
you listened to musical selections; or you’ve clicked on the link at the end of
a review in these pages to hear a sample.
All those are examples of streaming: sending an electronic file (a video file,
a music file) to some device for playback. Is that like downloading an MP3 file
to your smartphone? Yes, but in downloading, the file is saved on your
smartphone for later use. In streaming, the file is read and used – played – on
the fly, not saved for later.
So a music streaming “service” is a business that streams
music to you. You already know that you can receive and play that music on your
laptop, but you probably want to hear that music on your home audio system. To accomplish that, you could plug your
laptop into your preamp, and some people do so. But a simpler, more convenient approach is to use an audio component designed for the purpose, and there are many such devices
on the market. We’ll discuss all this below.
Finally, what music do streaming services offer? Unlike
YouTube or typical websites, streaming services offer the content of huge
libraries of commercially available recordings – the equivalent of CDs from a
large selection of labels. In other words, using a streaming service is like
having a very, very large CD collection without having any physical CDs – a
good thing, because you probably don’t have space to store a hundred thousand
CDs anyway.
But all those music files are just hanging out on a file
server somewhere. How does the server know which music to send to you? That's
the other half of the streaming service: an app for your laptop that allows you
to find the music that you want. Once you find a work that you want to hear,
you click a button and voila - music plays.
Streaming Service Criteria
We have three different considerations when selecting a
streaming service. The first two are obvious: the music side – what music is
offered in what format(s) at what cost – and the app side – what features are
offered in the app and how easy is it to search for the music that you want?
The third consideration is whether and how the service can be easily used with
your audio system, which can be trickier than you might think.
Let's start with music, or rather file, formats, simply
because that will help us eliminate some services. Readers of this blog are
likely to own decent audio systems and listen critically to them. Thus, said
readers will be interested in services that offer at least CD quality sound –
MP3-only services need not apply. This
restriction eliminates some of the most popular streaming services, such as
Spotify and Apple Music. The major players left standing are Tidal, Qobuz,
Amazon (a recent addition), Primephonic and Idagio.
Turning to the other musical consideration, which of these
services offers a large selection of classical music? In theory, all of them.
Tidal, Qobuz, and Amazon advertise that they have millions of “tracks” in all
genres. But a complication arises: they don't all necessarily have the same
tracks, and there's little predicting which service will have which tracks.
Moreover, it is difficult to compare advertised numbers: a service may have
millions of tracks, but how many are classical? And if a “track” is similar to
a track on a CD, the count will be inflated for classical works: is an album of
Chopin’s Etudes one track (the entire album) or 27 tracks (one per etude)?
On to the second aspect of comparison: what features are
offered in the apps, and how easily can you find what you are looking for? All
of the services have some sort of “featured music” displays on the home page,
most provide lists of new (to them) artists and releases, most provide “curated
lists” or collections of various types, and so on. All provide a search
capability allowing you to enter something like “beethoven symphony 5” and (we
hope) returning a list of performances of that work. All allow you to make the
search more precise, e.g., “beethoven symphony 5 furtwangler”. It would be nice
if you could make searches even more intelligent by asking for recordings made
with, say, period instruments or even specifying the record label; sadly, such
meta-terms do not work.
Now about this connecting to your audio system business…. If your use case is playing music through
your smartphone as you work out at the gym or through your laptop as you write
music reviews for Classical Candor,
it’s easy-peasy: fire up the app and hit
the play button. But connecting to your real audio system?
In the old days, meaning a few years ago, the most common
connection method involved using a laptop connected to the audio system by a
USB cable. More specifically, you would connect the laptop to a standalone
digital to analog converter (DAC) or to a receiver or preamp containing a DAC.
While this works, it is less than convenient: either you dedicate a computer
for this purpose (perhaps an older one that you have lying around or, if you
are really into it, a dedicated, specially tweaked standalone computer), or you
must plug and unplug your laptop every time you sit down to listen to music.
(And perhaps have a very long USB cable if you want to have the laptop in your
lap!) That’s not even counting potential tweaks that some audiophiles recommend
to “improve” the USB connection.
You might suppose that with modern cellphones, you could
connect wirelessly using Bluetooth. Technically, that sort of works, but
Bluetooth generally has issues with transmitting high quality sound.
Not long ago, meaning last year, another method that
audiophiles used was to download the music that they wanted and store it on a
computer or music server/external drive. (Also, some audiophiles believe that
they can obtain better sound by downloading a file than by streaming it.) The
music could then be played through the audio system via a permanent network
connection. I say “not long ago” as it’s becoming more difficult to do this.
Primephonic used to offer downloads, but that option is gone. Qobuz allows
subscribers to purchase downloads, often in high resolution, but I cannot say
whether that’s possible for their entire catalog. Idagio, Qobuz, and
Primephonic allow downloads for offline listening only in their Android and iOS
apps. Regardless, I assume here that readers really, really want to be able to
listen to music as the spirit moves them, without fiddling around with
downloads in advance.
At last we come to the far simpler
and more convenient method: buy a purpose-built audio streaming device and find
a streaming service that “natively” integrates with it. No cables needed! But
there’s a catch (you knew that was coming): not all streaming services
integrate with all (or even many – or even any) streaming components.
It’s a little like finding apps for your smartphone: you cannot expect to load
apps built for the iPhone onto an Android phone or vice versa. Fortunately, both streaming services and
equipment manufacturers list the counterparts with which they integrate, so you
can look up which services work with what equipment. Note that these lists
change as vendors develop new integrations.
Finally, a clarification: I
mentioned earlier that you could use any type of “computer” with each service,
anything from desktop to smartphone. That’s true for the basics. However, you
may want to use different computers for different purposes.
With a desktop, laptop, or even a
tablet, you can access the services through a web page. Because these devices
have large screens, this method provides the richest experience for exploring
each service’s offerings of recommendations and articles about music and
performers.
While you can play music directly
from any of these devices, it’s likely to sound a lot better with external
speakers that you might have connected to your desktop computer.
Some services allow you to save
music for later offline playback, and you probably have more space available on
your desktop or laptop than on your phone.
If you are listening on the go,
including while in your car, you obviously will want to use the app on your
smartphone, or possibly a tablet.
If you are controlling a streaming player in your
audio system, you will be using an app that communicates directly with the
player, and that app will be on your smartphone or tablet.
The Choices
With these considerations in mind, let’s look at several
different services.
Idagio

A good place to begin is with Idagio, which focuses solely
on classical music – just what we need. And indeed, Idagio does offer much to
classical music lovers. To begin with, playlists found on the home page could
provide hours of listening pleasure, even if you never bothered to search for
additional works. There are collections of featured albums, new releases,
performances by young artists, “weekly mixes” – the list goes on and on. Some
provide only movements from larger works, which may or may not appeal, but many
list full albums
. There are “Idagio
exclusives,” albums available only on this service, 30 recent recordings as of
this writing
. Finally, Idagio
subscribers can join “Idagio Live” Events, which feature various artists
discussing performance and compositions. Attending the live events requires
purchasing a ticket, usually around $10, but you can view past events for free
through the Idagio website. The little touches go on and on: for example, on
the web player, you can click on the photo of an album cover to see the liner
notes. (That does not seem to work on the smartphone app, probably because the
screen is too small.)
When I searched for specific items, results generally were
appropriate; the work that I wanted was usually somewhere near the top of the
search results list. Oddly, however, search results differed between searches
performed on the website versus inside the app; on these admittedly rare
occasions, the app searches were less helpful. Perhaps the highest hurdle was
that I often had to figure out which performance was which by squinting at a
tiny thumbnail of an album cover on my phone, which in turn meant that I might
need several tries to find the right performance.
Idagio has plenty of works and performances to choose from,
but – based on random searches for obscure older recordings – it seemed that
the catalog is slightly less comprehensive than that of Primephonic or Qobuz
(see below). Not wanting to rely solely on impressions, I tested by searching
for the most recent twenty CDs reviewed in Classical Candor. In this test, Qobuz was slightly ahead
of Idagio, i.e., Qobuz found more of the CDs for which I searched. Meanwhile,
both slightly trailed Primephonic. Then
again, when I searched for “bwv 565”, Idagio returned a list of 100 soloists
(!), some with multiple performances. However, keep in mind that none of this
is really scientific, that my searches are mostly biased toward romantic and
later musical periods, and that some performances are found on one service and
not the other.
Idagio offers three plans: Free (supposedly with ads, but I
used it for a few days and don’t recall any ads), Student, and Premium at €5
and €10 respectively, the latter offering CD quality. Idagio does not offer
high resolution. Until someone reminds Idagio’s accountants, it’s even cheaper
than that in the US, as I am being billed $10, not €10 (about a 13% discount),
for Premium. For the paid plans, music is streamed at CD quality; no
high-resolution option is offered.
Idagio does integrate with several audio operating systems, including Bluesound, Burmester, and Nativ. Sadly, that’s not a
very large list, which means there’s a good chance that you will need to
connect your laptop to your audio system via a USB cable for the best
sound. Luckily my NAD C 658 streaming preamp (review forthcoming) does use
Bluesound, and the connection worked perfectly.
Primephonic

In many ways, Primephonic was the most appealing service of
the bunch. Like Idagio, it is strictly focused on classical music and offers
many of the same benefits in terms of home page content, such as list of new
releases and recommendations. Indeed, the similarities between the two largely
outweigh the differences, although I did find Idagio’s various lists and
features a little more impressive than Primephonic’s.
Claiming to have 2,500,000 classical “tracks” available,
Primephonic’s catalog obviously is huge. In both my random searching and Classical
Candor tests, the number of albums found on Primephonic was greater than
that on Idagio and Qobuz, although not by a large margin. Another point in favor of Primephonic is their “Fair Payout
Model” for musicians. Streaming services
are notorious for paying incredibly low amounts to the musicians whose work
they use. As a former musician myself, I find Primephonic’s attempt to do
better appealing.
Speaking of payment, Primephonic offers two plans: Premium,
which is not premium at all in offering only MP3 quality, is $10 (or $99
annually); the Platinum plan, which provides up 24-bit (without mentioning bit
rate, but surely at least 96) is very competitive at $15 ($149 annually).
So can we simply declare Primephonic the winner and go home?
Not quite: Primephonic integrates only with Sonos, which has minimal
penetration in the audiophile market.
Instead, Primephonic recommends using a mini-jack or RCA interconnect – meaning
that your laptop will do the digital to audio conversion, bypassing the
multi-hundred (or multi-thousand) dollar DAC in your audio system. That’s a non-starter for even the least
dedicated audiophile. Fortunately, you still can use the USB cable connection
method. Primephonic says that they are working on integrations, but they are
rather late to this particular party. However, if you don’t mind the cable
connection, this may be the service for you.
Qobuz

Qobuz offers all type of music, but with a clever twist: on
the home page of the web site or within the app, you can select “classical”,
among other choices, as a musical genre
.
When you do so, Qobuz presents its lists (New Releases, Recommended, etc.)
based solely on classical music, thus giving it much the feel of a
classical-only service
. Thus restricted,
the home page also includes sections with articles about and interviews with
performers and composers, among other goodies.
Given that Qobuz has all kinds of music in addition to
classical, I worried that search results would be clogged with irrelevant
entries. In practice, though, this was not a significant issue. Entering, say,
a composer’s name and the partial title of a work was enough to exclude
unwanted results. Moreover, Qobuz is smart enough about classical compositions
to show when multiple tracks on an album belong to different works. Idagio and
Primephonic do this naturally, as it is a common case with classical albums.
In terms of catalog size, my impression based on my random
searching and the Classical Candor test is that Qobuz is in the middle
of the pack, slightly ahead of Idagio but slightly trailing Primephonic. But to
show how hard it is to assess such things: my search for “bwv 565” returned a
measly 39 performances – but Qobuz was the only service to have the entire set
(or any) of Chapuis’ traversal of the Buxtehude organ works.
Of all the services covered here, Qobuz is the most
aggressive (in a good way) in offering music in high-resolution. The base plan,
“Studio Premier” at $15, streams all music in the highest resolution available:
high resolution (24/192) when available, otherwise CD quality. The “Sublime”
plan at $249 annually adds a discount for purchases of CDs and high res
downloads.
In terms of connecting to audio systems, Qobuz integrates
with a host of audio equipment brands. There’s an excellent chance that you
will be able to avoid the hassle of cabling your laptop to your audio system.
The Bluesound integration that I used worked perfectly.
Finally, keep in mind the Qobuz offers a huge selection of
music other than classical. I know, I know: in this article, we’re considering
services for classical music lovers. But loving classical music doesn’t mean
that you can’t love other music, too – and maybe even listen to some once in a
while. Old guys like me can pull up
tunes form the Beatles, Buffalo Springfield, or Jefferson Airplane or jazz from
across multiple styles and eras. Meanwhile, your kids can listen to the latest
from Beyoncé or Jay-Z or Taylor Swift or… (but if your kids are truly hip,
they’ve moved on from those names). Anyway, you get the idea.
Amazon

Amazon, the 800 pound gorilla of streaming services and
everything else, is a latecomer to high resolution streaming. Now that it has
arrived, how does it work for classical music lovers?
In short, not very well. It goes without saying that Amazon’s
catalog is huge. But the Amazon music home page gives equal weight to a wide
assortment of musical types and styles, so finding anything relevant to
classical is, to put it mildly, difficult. Amazon does offer “stations”, which
are curated playlists, but their very names suggest that the curation is of the
airline seatback entertainment variety: nothing offensive, but hardly designed
for the serious listener. For example, my click on “Ultimate Classics” started
something playing – but what was it? It sounded vaguely like late Renaissance,
but there was no description, no indication of a composer or performer, just
music playing. Suddenly another track started, this time an orchestral
movement, late romantic – maybe something by Liszt? You get the idea.
Well, we still can search for works or performances. Sadly,
searching on Amazon Music is particularly maddening. Unlike searches on all of
the other services discussed here, typing in a search does not show partial
results. Instead, one needs to complete the entire search string, hit the Enter
key, then select either Amazon Music or My Music, and finally hope that your
typing was not in vain. Amazon has way more software engineering talent than
such a primitive search would indicate. In addition, searches seem to fail for
no obvious reason, even though very similar searches find the desired works.
Once a work is found and selected, the results are presented
as single list of tracks, with no indications of any grouping. In many cases,
that’s acceptable, but for albums containing multiple works, the user has to
figure out where the divisions are. Consider the tracks on the album “A State
of Wonder” which contains Glenn Gould’s 1955 and 1981 performances of Bach’s Goldberg
Variations. Quick, where in the list of tracks do the 1955 performances end
and the later ones begin?
The good news is that Amazon Music Service integrates with
audio equipment from a boatload of manufacturers. The HD Music plan is
reasonably priced at $15. However, other similar plans that are more
classical-friendly are similarly priced and probably more appealing to readers
of Classical Candor.
Tidal

Tidal may be the best known of the major services. It offers
all types of music, including classical. However, my experience with Tidal is
limited: I quickly found several issues that, in my opinion, made it less than
ideal for classical music lovers, so I soon moved on.
First, the Tidal home page feels less than welcoming to
those whose interests lie outside of current pop music: the visually
overwhelming array of current artists invoked a gut level feeling that this was
not the place for me. But unlike Qobuz,
Tidal seems not to provide a way to restrict the home page to classical works.
Thus, listings such as “new releases” were useless in terms of classical music
only.
Second, Tidal’s explanation of what was in which plans is
just opaque. It’s quite clear that high resolution (better than CD) is
available only in the HiFi plan. What’s confusing is whether CD quality is part
of the standard plan: my best guess is that it is not. In any case, high
resolution, and maybe CD resolution, is
available only in MQA format, which is not supported by all DACs and is
somewhat controversial in terms of its ultimate audio quality. MQA does have
the advantage of using less data for high resolution files than standard high-res streaming, but this is irrelevant for
home use with a high-speed Internet connection.
On the positive side, Tidal claims that it provides higher
payments to musicians then do its competitors. That’s a worthy goal, but
unfortunately, it’s unclear how this works out for classical music and
musicians given Tidal’s “payment by song” orientation.
Having said all this, Tidal does have a huge catalog,
and it does integrate with equipment from a long list of manufacturers. If you
already have Tidal, or if you have other reasons to prefer it, or it is the
only service with native integration to your audio equipment, go for it.
Otherwise, it may not be the service for classical music fans.
Caveats
I should point out two things that we have not
discussed: internet requirements and sound.
The internet requirements are simple: you need a reasonably high
speed – but not crazy – connection. These days, the minimum speed offered by
cable and DSL providers should be fine. If you live beyond the reach of these
services, satellite services might work, but try first. Several of the
services recommend a wired (ethernet) connection to your router, but in my
experience WiFi is fine, provided that the whatever you have a strong WiFi
signal to the streaming device. If the signal is so-so, there are ways to
improve matters, but that’s beyond the scope of our discussion.
It may seem strange that I have not talked about the sound
quality of each service. But other than the question of resolution, when the
services receive and stream the same files from the record companies, the
results should sound the same. (Tidal’s could sound slightly different because
of MQA encoding.) The sneaky issue here, though, is that with large numbers of
reissues floating around, it’s hard to say which services received exactly
which versions of which recordings. If someone tells you that service X sounds
better than service Y, the services could be playing different releases of the
same performance.
Summary
So which service is right for you? Here are a few thoughts:
Personally, I want the convenience of native integration
with my audio system, so Idagio and Qobuz are on my list. Let’s hope that
Primephonic gets its act together soon, and for that matter that Idagio extends
its integrations to other manufacturers as well.
If you want to select from every last recorded performance
known to humanity, the size of the catalog makes a difference. In practice, if
you already have your favorite performances on CD and are more interested in
using a steaming service to explore, catalog size may be less important.
If higher-than-CD resolution is a must, Qobuz and
Primephonic are your choices. But keep in mind that most of the music available
on all of the services is at CD quality – and there is some controversy about
how audible higher resolutions really are.
For those fearing that high resolution streaming will eat up
the data plan on your cell phone, no worries:
you always can switch to a lower resolution on the fly when you use your
cell phone on a data plan. That’s true for all of the services.
My best advice is to try any and all that sound interesting.
All of these services offer free trials of from 14 days to 30 days. Most of the
trials, except Qobuz, are for lower resolution plans. But in all cases, you can sample the entire catalog and
explore all of the extra features, knowing that you will have at least CD
resolution if and when you pony up. If you have a particular area of interest, e.g., early Baroque madrigals or
contemporary American composers, you can evaluate each service’s catalog
relative to that interest. If you just can’t decide, these services have become
so inexpensive that you could keep two of them! What do you have to lose?
BH