Can You Hear Me, Major Tom?
This is a post for sound freaks.
Some you may know David Chesky as an “orchestra urban composer” whose Concerto for Bassoon and Orchestra was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2007 or perhaps as the composer of the operatic satire The Pig, the Farmer and the Artist which was voted one of the Best New American Theater Works of 2009. Some of you may be planning to attend the premiere of his Street Beats percussion concerto tonight at Alice Tully Hall.
What you may not know is that Chesky has a day job as a record mogul and operates the online music store HDTracks, which is the world’s only high-resolution music download web store that allows you to download CD quality (1411 kbps ) and DVD audio quality ( 4608 kbps) recordings. (By contrast, a standard MP3 is only 128 Kbps) It is probably the only download site that also provides you with liner notes.
The site features a big selection of modern classical labels such as ECM, Delos, Mode, Tzadik, New Albion, Cantaloupe, New World, Koch, Black Box, 2L, Harmonia Mundi, Pentatone, Chandos, and many more.
And because we’re giving him a little plug, HDtracks is offering all Seqeunza 21 readers a 20 percent off coupon on their first order. The discount code is HDseq21 and is good for one use per email address until May 31. (If you tried it last night and it didn’t work, try again. Should be fixed.)
Yeah, seriously. What are those other online music stores thinking? The cost of distribution is next to nothing, why stop with just text liner notes? Add audiovisual liner notes. Add interactive liner notes — man, there is just no sense of the future with most of those record companies. Same-old same-old, no imagination. Stripping the bits free of the physical disc opens up all kinds of possibilities for new types of liner notes. But no one sees ’em…
“It is probably the only download site that also provides you with liner notes.”
I think that this is a hugely important development, and hence should be of interest to all concerned with classical music composition, distribution, and technology in the twenty-first century; and not just sound freaks.
I had been awaiting such a development concerning liner notes for quite some time.
Thank you very much, Jerry, for this post.