
Concertmaster – Classical music front-end for Spotify - msvan
http://getconcertmaster.com/
======
adrianosbr
Hi, Concertmaster developer here.

Thanks for trying the app. Very surprised by the repercussion!

Well, the current version of Concertmaster has a known bug which freezes the
app in its first run. (This issue will be solved in a major update January,
but I’m seriously thinking of releasing a fix today or tomorrow.)

Please try closing the app and running it again. It may work

~~~
cannam
Tried this with the Linux version, no luck. (I'm using Arch Linux but
unpacking the .deb reveals an executable that appears to run, it just gets
stuck on Loading as you describe.)

I really look forward to trying this out when that's fixed, or if you can
suggest a workaround. It's a subject I'm very interested in both as a listener
and a developer. I spent a while thinking about this problem a few years ago,
in the hope of making a music player that could tell you things like "what
other recordings of this work are there?", "what else can I listen to that is
arranged for cello, violin, and piano?", "suggest one recording of each of
Carl Nielsen's symphonies", etc. Or even apparently very simple things like
"play the symphony from this album, but stop when you reach the end of the
work, don't play the overture they stuck on the end to fill up the CD". At the
time I was still imagining something based on a mixture of local CD rips,
things available on download services (which could be suggested but not
necessarily played), etc.

Anyway, I didn't really do anything -- I got only as far as throwing together
this messy RDF dataset
[http://dbtune.org/classical/](http://dbtune.org/classical/) \-- and I haven't
returned seriously to the problem since. It's remained on my mind though, not
least because I would still love to be able to use such a thing, and I'll be
very interested to see how you're approaching it.

~~~
mafrasi2
I fixed the loading screen bug like this:

    
    
        sudo pacman -S asar
        cd Concertmaster/resources
        asar e app.asar app
        rm app.asar
        printf "1018a1019\n>                                 var listul = '';\n" | patch app/js/lib.js
    

I was able to start playing something, but then it freezes. Currently looking
into that...

~~~
adrianosbr
Fun to see other people looking into my code. Great job :)

Concertmaster is built over Electron and, as such, it is 100% JavaScript. In
fact, it's not a more convenient website only because of Spotify's
limitations.

It would be possible to make Concertmaster open source, but it's far from
professional - it's more like a hobby I'm keeping for 3, 4 years.

(Concertmaster is more than the client. It has several server-side functions
as well.)

~~~
mafrasi2
Don't worry about code quality, it's perfectly readable. Although I only have
very limited javascript knowledge, I would love to contribute if you make this
open source. It's really a great project!

After a few seconds, it still freezes for me, so that's one thing I could try
to fix :)

~~~
adrianosbr
I use Concertmaster all the time on my Mac, with no problems at all. Which OS
are you running?

~~~
mafrasi2
I'm running Arch Linux with spotify version 1.0.67.582.g19436fa3. It gets
stuck at this screen as soon as I start playing something:

[https://i.imgur.com/WJZKiUA.png](https://i.imgur.com/WJZKiUA.png)

After that, the GUI elements just don't respond at all. There is no CPU usage,
so it's probably not an infinite loop.

I enabled logging, but don't see anything significant.

------
adrianosbr
FIX RELEASED! Please download the new versions at:

Win:
[http://getconcertmaster.com/latest/?os=win](http://getconcertmaster.com/latest/?os=win)
Mac:
[http://getconcertmaster.com/latest/?os=mac](http://getconcertmaster.com/latest/?os=mac)
Linux:
[http://getconcertmaster.com/latest/?os=linux](http://getconcertmaster.com/latest/?os=linux)

~~~
frereubu
Thanks for making this, it's wonderful and will make a _huge_ difference to my
listening on Spotify. For example, I've got a thing about Ravel's Piano
Concerto in G and I've found a whole load of new recordings I knew nothing
about. A few comments and suggestions:

Pieces are sorted strictly alphabetically, which means that lists of "String
Quartet number X" are sorted like:

String Quartet no. 1 String Quartet no. 10 String Quartet no. 12 String
Quartet no. 13 String Quartet no. 2

Not sure how complicated that is to change, but it would make browsing a
little easier if they were listed numerically.

I find the horizontal listing of composers a bit unintuitive, and would prefer
a vertical list (probably to do with ubiquity of vertical scrolling in apps
and browsers), perhaps between favourites and list of works. Really like the
fact that it includes images and isn't just a dry list of names though.

Seems like there are a number of not-so-esoteric composers missing, such as
John Luther Adams (a different person from John Adams), Gavin Bryars, Jacques
Duphly and Gérard Grisey, despite the presence of composers that I'd never
heard of like Orlande de Lassus. I guess this is a limitation of the data
sources, but would love to see some more of those included too.

Searching for "Jana" doesn't return Janáček - presumably because of the
accents. Would be great to ignore accents for easy typing on British English /
American English keyboards.

The small application icon on Mac - for example the installer disk image icon,
and the icon in Mac notifications, is a frazzled multicoloured square rather
than a proper icon.

Sometimes a message comes up saying "This isn't available on Spotify -
bummer!" but doesn't explain why. I didn't think to check when it happened,
but I guess it might be that it's not available in my territory (the UK), and
I have Spotify set to show tracks that aren't available. If there was a way to
have a bit more explanation in that error message somehow that would be
helpful - for example, if it's to do with my setting to show tracks that
aren't available, a sentence to say that toggling that setting would make that
not happen.

A tiny, tiny thing - clicking Apple + A when in the search box doesn't select
all text although double-clicking does.

~~~
adrianosbr
Amazing feedback, thank you so much :)

I’ll carefully analyze your suggestions for our next releases.

The Spotify message is not related to territorial restrictions. Putting it
shortly, Concertmaster database wasn’t pre-checked; it checks the availability
of each recording in real-time, after user’s request. That's why Concertmaster
keeps showing recordings that don’t exist at all on Spotify.

~~~
wahhill
Just jumping on here to give my own feedback.

This is brilliantly implemented so hats off for that. It's something I always
had on my backlog of personal projects but never got round to doing, but
you've managed it far better than I could ever have hoped to.

One thing that would noticeably improve the experience for me: Being able to
sort a given series of works by opus/[equivalent catalogue number] or date. It
seems at the moment the only sorting method is alphabetical, which is often
not particularly helpful (for example, as someone else noted, when 10 appears
before 1).

~~~
adrianosbr
Thanks so much for the feedback :)

I'm studying the sorting thing. Opus/catalogue number: not so easy because the
data comes from sources that treat this information as strings. But I can
think of a text parser, for example. Year of composition: doable.

------
sravfeyn
This is great! I wished something like this existed for Indian classical
music, since in it also a composition can be performed by multiple artists
differently and multiple performances can be created with with different
permutations of the rhythm and melody. This player, as is, doesn't account for
compositional units of Indian classical music (obviously because it's designed
for Western Classical music).

Language is also something that is missed in mainstream music players.

~~~
d13
Yes! Where can I find a good source of Indian Classical Music on the web? Do
any of these streaming sources have good (and by that I mean deep) catalogues
of ICM?

------
jajahallo
Everyone struggling with the "Loading..." launch screen on Mac:

Try clicking the Concertmaster icon in the menu bar, and click "Open
Concertmaster". That solved it for me

------
adrianosbr
I’ll release a fixed version of Concertmaster tonight. Sorry for that and
thanks for your patience, folks!

------
hkmurakami
This would be a serious game changer for me if it actually does what it
promises. It has been so frustrating as a user that I'd been tempted to join a
product team on one of the streaming service providers just to fix this.

------
stereo
It looks fantastic from the website! On my mac though, it’s stuck at
“Loading…” on the launch screen.

It’s also a pity it’s not open source, it would be great to be able to
contribute composers.

~~~
rareglove
Same here. I've got the latest Spotify version, but it still can't get past
loading.

~~~
binarymoose
Same. :( I've reached out to the facebook page. I don't know if the project is
still active or not.

~~~
gessulat
same here ;(

------
apaprocki
Another app that is very nicely done and has excellent classical music support
is Roon: [https://roonlabs.com/](https://roonlabs.com/)

I'd be interested to see if there is any feature difference between the two in
case anyone has used / does use both.

------
aphrax
Can get into the app ok but tracks will not play. Linux Mint 18.2. Looks great
though, will keep an eye on it.

------
jvandonsel
Very nice, and will be much nicer when the bugs are worked out. It looks like
the catalog Concertmaster is using is rather limited, though. For example, for
Thomas Adès only 5 pieces are listed, though Spotify has many more.

------
masonkay
This is great, I have been waiting for an app like this! Though I've
experienced the install hang-up on Win 10 Fall edition. I'll keep an eye on
the update build.

------
fladrif
Wow, this is something I was just complaining about today, how I had to turn
off shuffle because it would mess up the movement order.

------
rmchugh
great idea, I was just thinking today that the Spotify interface is deficient
for classical music. Will try it out asap. Thanks!

------
michieljoris2
Works fine on ubuntu 14.04. Radio is a nice touch. Missing composer is
Charles-Valentin Alkan.

