Classical Archives Celebrates Its 20th Birthday with New Apps and Expanded Music Offerings
Classical Archives, the world's largest and oldest classical music website, is entering its third decade with an even larger number of music selections and enhanced features that include state-of-the-art apps for iOS, Android and Kindle mobile devi
Online, January 27, 2014 (Newswire.com) - Classical Archives, the world's largest and oldest classical music website, is entering its third decade with an even larger number of music selections and enhanced features that include state-of-the-art apps for iOS, Android and Kindle mobile devices.
Classical Archives currently offers 821,500 individual tracks from more than 400 leading classical labels that include Sony Classics, Deutsche Grammophon, and Naxos. There are 63,000 artists represented, performing the works of 16,400 composers. Classical Archives has set other records too. At age 20, it is one of the oldest websites in existence.
Membership in Classical Archives costs $7.99/month, or $79.90/year. For that fee, members can listen to unlimited streaming audio of all selections in the service's immense online library of classical music, or purchase and download tracks at discounted prices. Apps that allow unlimited listening on iOS and Android devices are included.
"Our vision is to continue to make the cultural treasure that is classical music available to both novices and experts," says Pierre R. Schwob, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Classical Archives. "To that end, we will continue developing ways to reach new audiences - such as with the great mobile apps we now offer. We are always negotiating with new labels, and we will be announcing some very exciting new additions soon. In the years to come, we might offer some new services for jazz, blues, world music, and other `complex' genres."
About Classical Archives
Twenty years ago, Pierre R. Schwob started Classical Archives as a hobby. Today, it's the largest classical music website in existence, with close to 1 million registered members.
One key to Classical Archive's success has been the unswerving dedication that Mr. Schwob and his team bring to diligent, thorough cataloging of all recordings. "From the very beginning," he explains, "we have been exacting in the way we catalog musical selections. It's a challenge, because the data that accompanies most recordings is not always clear or clean, and hard to organize. With the help of our Artistic Director, Dr. Nolan Gasser, who lead Pandora's Music Genome Project, we have developed what we call our Contextual Metadata Engine (CME). It helps organize and catalog the immense Classical Archives holdings, allowing the extremely efficient ingestion and cleaning of label data which is then mapped to our canonical database. As a result, lovers of classical music are able to find the music they want to hear, clearly and properly labeled, whether they search by composer, performer, or genre."
About Pierre R. Schwob
Pierre R. Schwob is founder, CEO and Chairman of Classical Archives. He has won recognition for his love of music and physics, his writings (chess, history, calculators) and expertise about computer science and other topics. His quest for knowledge about the universe has led him on many adventures, including a 10-day stint in a tent at the South Pole and another in the Andes. He resides in Palo Alto.
FOR INFORMATION, CONTACT:
Barry Lenson (973) 378-7915; barrylenson@]aya.yale.edu
Pierre R. Schwob (650) 330-8050; prs@prs.net