Yesterday, I stumbled across Open Opus, a collaborative project to create a library of metadata about composers, works and performers (I also mentioned Open Opus in a post in the Metadata forum). Developers can use Open Opus's library and connect it to music streaming services to retrieve recordings and play them. In that way, Open Opus becomes a classical search interface for generalist streaming services.
Right now, there are two such apps, Concertmaster for Spotify and Concertino for Apple Music. Both work on a variety of platforms (mobile and browser) and Concertmaster also has a standalone app for Windows 10 and 11. The apps are free but you'll need an account on Apple Music or Spotify Music to use them.
The main app interface focuses on composers, but you can also search by genre and period. One of the delightful things I discovered is that when you use the Radio feature, the apps play complete works and not just the "popular" bits. What a blessing!
So far, Open Opus has 220 composers and their complete works fully catalogued in its library.
Very interesting. Thank you for this research. I will test this out to see how it works with Spotify today!
OK, just tested the "Concertmaster" front end web-app for Spotify on my laptop and it works! Interface isn't ideal in terms of it's limitations, but obviously, it's work in progress. I'll definitely keep trying this (although in addition to keeping Adagio).
I’m intrigued by this, thanks @capriccio, and may take a trial of Spotify just to try it out for myself.
It puts me in mind of a rather different database, Gracenote, that I (and many others) used to provide a first attempt at populating CD metadata when I ripped my CD collection to iTunes. It was a mammoth task and, as I ripped each CD, I’d edit the metadata for the previous one to have a consistent format for composer names, etc. Thanks Gracenote for making this task possible 🙏🏼
It’s funny to recall all of this now; I haven’t ripped a CD since Primephonic was born. But my own digital library remains of great value to me.
(And that’s why, as we’ve discussed elsewhere, I’m keeping a distance from Apple Music, at least until I have a strategy to ensure Apple does not attempt to ‘improve’ my metadata 😳)
