I’m trying out Tidal and have used Deezer. I’m wondering what the opinions are as to the classical music offerings from other streaming services. I’ve heard Naxos, Idagio and Primephonic mentioned.
I did a bit of searching and Naxos had quite a few titles that are not available in the US.
Aside from which service has the most titles, I’m wondering what the experience has been relative to hi-res material as well as metadata and searching.
The cross searching between opus, composer, performer and conductor make the classical genre significantly more difficult to research than rock and jazz.
i don’t know if you have access to qobuz, it has excellent classical coverage but also includes the other genres as well. if you can get it there is a one month free trial. i used to subscribe to tidal but have recently switched to qobuz. using naim i didn’t have mqa unfolding and have found the hi-res music on qobuz a significant improvement -it just sounds more real. mostly it is 24/96 and although available on nearly all new classical releases the back catalogue is mostly cd quality - they have dropped their lower quality offerings. for me the most significant missing label is hyperion - but i believe it is not avaiable on any streaming service.
metadata is a bit patchy - often the composer doesn’t show on the track info - very annoying on multi-composer albums but qobuz has the huge advantage of having the cd-booklets available to download on nearly all new classical releases.(via qobuz app - not currently avail on naim app)
searching is fairly good -e.g. conductor + composer usually gets you to a shortlist quite quickly. if there are a number of soloists the last named is usually a good bet. any uncommon names get you there very quickly. if you are looking for a recent release it usually comes up first. older releases by prolific artists can mean looking through pages of images -it helps if you know what the cover image is. generally searching by the most specific terms works best. most albums come up on 1st search, if it doesn’t come up on a second search i assume they don’t have it.
I would add my vote for Qobuz (also good if you like jazz). It has the added benefit of being Intergrated with Roon, unlike the purely classical streaming services.