In this post, I'm highlighting four classical music home pages that do a nice job presenting their service. Compared to the public media news highlights, which need a significant amount of local content, a good music services appear to depend on ease-of-use and live streams, with local features and events an added bonus. The four sites I picked this time are mostly dedicated classical music sites, I found the multi-format or joint-licensee sites a little too overwhelming with competing promos and content, which made it difficult to quickly find playlists and streaming audio. I don't think it's impossible to bring the different worlds together, but I also wonder if these four sites offer a better model and service to their visitors.

WDAV (Davidson, NC)

In the page header, WDAV has a flash widget that offers the current playlist (with a little "buy it" button, a feature adopted by a few other stations) and a flash-based audio stream. The 4-item gallery below (which has a lively animation to it -- seen in progress in this screenshot) is pretty nice.

WBJC (Baltimore, MD)

WBJC features the current playlist on their home page, done very nicely. Although currently empty, I like the live events listings too, with options for today, 7- and 14- days. Links to live streams are prominent (although I wonder if the typical user cares about iTunes vs WMP). The navigation is also very simple and straightforward, just 5 links.

WETA-FM (Washington, DC)

I really like the set of "quick tabs" with the current song and links to the most relevant parts of the site. WETA has also done a good job bringing pledge and support features into the page (the quick pledge form is also a nice touch before subjecting the would-be-donor to the horrors of convio..)

KUAT / Arizona Public Media

I highlighted Arizona Public Media's earlier for their news coverage, and now with their classical site, which is nicely assembled with featured content and local information. I really like that they offer a 192kbps MP3 stream for especially picky classical listeners.