Music Publisher Sites - Part 2

More with this look at different sites of a musical variety.

Peters again is a site which (like universal) from the front page looks very impressive, stylish and well laid out. This continues into the composer sections. My only drawback is that once you get to a composer, tabs to then move onto the next section are all massed together, rather than separating, performance categories from other things like the German Biography or Upcoming performances as Boosey does. However this is a minor squabble, and whilst it's just pipped to the post by Boosey, it's definitely up there for best of the rest.

Breitkopf & Härtel, the last publisher I want to look at has an immediately confusing layout to its homepage, its not very obvious where information is kept and one has to a bit of digging to find composer information. This continues into the composer sites. For example I searched for Bach and it presented me with a list of 300+ pieces, without categorisation (which by now i hope you will have realised I'm a bit of a stickler for). Yes, I hear you cry "but Nick, you can use the search facility" and I answer yes that's true, but I would still rather information be easy to find without the search. For example, I could be looking for a piece but not know its name. Breitkopf & Härtel fails on this unfortunately, which is a pity, as its new editions are lovely (and also very well edited as well)

Basically this post was to air a bit of frustration, and to praise Boosey for a well thought out site. Boosey isn't the be all and end all, I really think they should adopt the Schirmer OnDemand system (well them and all publishing companies), and maybe the composer sites could be a bit more stylised. But many a time these past few weeks have I been trying to find information out, sighed to myself and muttered, "if only they were published by Boosey..."