CANNOPY Partners with IDAGIO
Find out why we're delighted to welcome IDAGIO as the official sponsor of our Ensemble series!
WORDS BY GIANMARCO SEGATO
Back in the bad old days of the early noughties, a recording-obsessed classical music lover might have found cause for celebration with the advent of Apple iTunes. Finally, a digital space to access a potentially infinite supply of recordings both old and new, with the bonus of clearing one’s shelves of CD clutter. For anyone who tried, however, iTunes turned out to be terrible for classical. Uploading tracks from CDs took hours with even more time wasted putting them back in the album’s original order which iTunes somehow deemed as unimportant. Even more frustrating was the default “Artist/Album/Track” labeling ─ which works well enough for pop and rock ─ but is insufficient when it comes to accessing recordings of works that have been performed hundreds of times by a myriad of ensembles and soloists under different conductors.
Enter Berlin-based IDAGIO in 2015, now widely acknowledged as the top classical streaming service in the business. Tailored to classical, it attaches much more information to each track ─ the ‘metadata’ ─ making it easy to compare multiple versions of the same work. Looking for Herbert Blomstedt’s 1990 recording of Carl Nielsen’s Symphony No. 3 with the San Francisco Symphony? Type in a few keywords, and up it comes, along with the veteran Swedish conductor’s later 2014 recording with the Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra. What’s more, you’ll also be gifted with a list of over 30 other versions in the IDAGIO library.
In terms of its core business ─ streaming great classical music ─ IDAGIO has over 2 million licensed tracks representing 35,000 solo artists, 28,000 composers, 13,000 ensembles and almost 10,000 conductors. This vast collection is watched over by a lean team of 25 employees who take care of the platform’s product, content, marketing and operations. Even the techies are amateur musicians, alongside a unique group of highly trained musical artists, musicologists, arts administrators and new-music curious.
Always controversial when one utters ‘classical’ and ‘streaming’ in the same breath is the issue of sound quality. A full sized symphony orchestra, or trained singer with a three octave range isn’t always best-represented by compressed, digital sound reproduction. But even a free IDAGIO account streams music at 192Kbps which compares impressively against Spotify’s 96Kbps or Pandora’s 64Kbps. To put it simply, more kbps usually translates into higher audio quality because more audio data is recorded. IDAGIO’s paid account offers a CD-equivalent 16-bit, 44.1KHz sample rate, generally considered to faithfully reproduce the highest frequency range perceptible to the human ear.
As a test, and using equipment I had on hand, I listened to some IDAGIO tracks through my iPhone connected to an old school Danish Copland receiver hooked up to a pair of Finnish Jamo speakers. I sampled Sinfonia of London’s 2022 Chandos disc of Ravel’s orchestral works, including the enchanting Mother Goose Suite. Under their conductor John Wilson, Sinfonia of London are current media darlings due to a nostalgic connection to their namesake ensemble that made so many iconic recordings for EMI in the 1960s. With a basic pair of Apple earbuds plugged into my desktop, I experienced a bit of hissing, but with the stereo system, there was a beautiful concert hall ambience. For someone still married to piles of CDs, this was a revelation.
Beyond streaming, IDAGIO offers a level of curation, video content, and educational offerings that truly separates it from competitors like AppleMusic, Spotify, Presto, and Amazon. It has over 2500 playlists compiled by some of the biggest names in the business like Hilary Hahn, Vikingur Olafson, Yannick Nézet-Séguin. You can also access playlists organized on the basis of your mood, or explore great performers like Leonard Bernstein, Jessye Norman, or Jacqueline du Pré, as well as lists put together by noted journalists, artist managers, and noted musicians.
One of the disadvantages of many streaming services is the lack of access to the kind of detailed information that record companies include in their physical product, CD booklets. To bridge this gap, IDAGIO provides pdf links to satisfy even the most exacting audio geek who needs to know when and where the recording was made and read in-depth about the works they are listening to.
If you like to watch as well as listen, IDAGIO has an intriguing video library to explore that goes beyond the latest concert and opera releases, delving deep into a more historical archive. You can watch a vintage 1984 interpretation of Smetana’s ode to Czech history, Má vlast, with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under the great Czech conductor, Rafael Kubelik. Another unique offering is a set of videos from Paris’s famed Opéra Comique including Bizet’s Carmen and Baroque rarities like Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie.
Interested in what it takes to become an elite classical musician? IDAGIO also offers a series of masterclasses from France’s Saline Royale Academy, or you can join Fred Plotkin for his weekly chat with a host of today’s greatest classical artists like soprano Erin Morley, composer Missy Mazzoli, and stage director Nicholas Muni.
Anyone with even a casual interest in the music industry will be aware of the controversy surrounding streaming platforms and compensation (or lack thereof) to musical artists. IDAGIO pays artists per second of listening time, not insignificant in a classical context given that individual tracks can last half an hour. Mass-market streaming platforms like Apple Music or Spotify operate on a pay per-track basis which understandably disadvantages classical artists. Also, IDAGIO’s model is ‘user-centric’ meaning that more of a subscriber’s fee goes to the artists they actually listen to rather than into a general pool of funds.
As a one-stop listening, watching, and learning platform, IDAGIO has to rank as the top choice for classical music lovers with its vast catalogue and options to deepen one’s engagement with an ever-expanding art form.
INTERVIEW WITH IDAGIO’S FOUNDER TILL JANCZUKOWICZ
INTERVIEW BY MICHAEL ZARATHUS-COOK
