What is the point of iTunes if the companies behind it aren't more creative? Photograph: Oliver Stratmann/AFP
iTunes is a bit clueless when it comes to classical music, don't you think? Oh, it's fine for pop stuff, don't get me wrong: it caters for both the album and the singles markets rather neatly. It's just that when it comes to the square peg that is classical music, iTunes is very much the round hole.
Last night, I thought I'd buy myself a recording of Vivaldi's Gloria. To be fair, my search on iTunes yielded a decent number of options - even a couple of versions recommended in the Penguin Guide - but in the spirit of economy, I ended up downloading the cheapest one I could find, a Naxos recording with the Oxford Schola Cantorum.
Now, I was only interested in hearing Vivaldi's Gloria - and not Bach's Magnificat, which was nevertheless included on the "album" I was purchasing, acting as what we call a "filler". Fillers make sense on a CD, ensuring that when you pay the going rate for a chunk of polycarbonate you get roughly the same amount of music for your money no matter the length of the piece you're interested in. But what exactly are we trying to fill when we buy a stream of data rather than a physical object that is limited to an 80-minute playing time?
Naturally, iTunes gave me the option of selecting only those tracks that belonged to the Vivaldi piece, but here I ran into the second fundamental flaw in the iTunes model - Apple's flat pricing of £0.79 a track. If I only wanted to hear the opening movement of the piece, this wouldn't be a problem, but I wanted the Gloria, the whole Gloria and nothing but the Gloria. With 11 movements, I was looking at £8.69 for about half an hour of music. Unless, of course, I purchased the "entire album" for £3.15, in which case I got a whole extra piece of music I didn't especially want.
What is the point of this new digital medium if the companies behind it can't be a little more creative? Classical music is about works that are divided into movements, not albums that are divided into singles and B-sides. Is it really asking so much to group these works together into a structure that makes sense to a classical listener? It might seem trivial, but until this relatively straightforward step is taken, classical music collectors will remain sadly left behind in this digital revolution.
