The reviews of Sooloos have eulogized about the user interface and display. However, the comments are only relevant to popular music. The same is true of the other music server systems that have been reviewed. Everyone knows that the metadata demands of classical music are very different to popular music. For instance, the composer and the work are the main selection criteria, not the artist, album or track and album art is relatively uninteresting and not valuable for sorting and playlist creation. Why don't reviewers tell us about how the music server systems cope with the tagging needs of classical music and how easy or difficult it is to create and maintain good classical metadata . It's a really big deal if you have a large classical music collection like me (over 7000 CDs). Its not OK to defend the reviewers by saying they only consider the audio aspects of the systems they review, because they always comment on the display, sorting and tagging aspects of the systems - that is in relation to popular music. From a larger viewpoint the pathetic state of classical music metadata and player software (just look at the Ipod) will further marginalize classical music. There is a real problem here that no one is addressing. Where are the champions of classical music that will make it easy for the next generation to appreciate classical music? Is everyone asleep? Sorry to be critical but the opportunities for great classical music systems is tantalizing. I love comparing on the fly, all the different versions of the Goldberg variations for instance. Consider if the librettos were available (just like pop lyrics) or even scrolling scores, How amazing would that be, Jeremy
The reviews of Sooloos have eulogized about the user interface and display. However, the comments are only relevant to popular music. The same is true of the other music server systems that have been reviewed. Everyone knows that the metadata demands of classical music are very different to popular music. For instance, the composer and the work are the main selection criteria, not the artist, album or track and album art is relatively uninteresting and not valuable for sorting and playlist creation. Why don't reviewers tell us about how the music server systems cope with the tagging needs of classical music and how easy or difficult it is to create and maintain good classical metadata . It's a really big deal if you have a large classical music collection like me (over 7000 CDs). Its not OK to defend the reviewers by saying they only consider the audio aspects of the systems they review, because they always comment on the display, sorting and tagging aspects of the systems - that is in relation to popular music. From a larger viewpoint the pathetic state of classical music metadata and player software (just look at the Ipod) will further marginalize classical music. There is a real problem here that no one is addressing. Where are the champions of classical music that will make it easy for the next generation to appreciate classical music? Is everyone asleep? Sorry to be critical but the opportunities for great classical music systems is tantalizing. I love comparing on the fly, all the different versions of the Goldberg variations for instance. Consider if the librettos were available (just like pop lyrics) or even scrolling scores, How amazing would that be, Jeremy