[Dixielandjazz] Downloads - changewave in the future of the record industry.

[Steve barbone]

CAVEAST: Long, about digital downloading music and concerts for I pods and
what some of the leading classical Symphony Orchestra's are doing about
making them available.

HOWEVER, also has interesting demographics for I pod users, and a surprise
about the SIZE of the classical music audience. E.G. "1.4 million downloads
of free Beethoven symphonies offered by BBC Radio 3 last June".

Also of interest are the sales charts of downloads (zooming upwards) vs. CD
sales (downward).

Could OKOM be in a similar situation?

Those list mates in the music business, and those who are inquisitive fans
or amateurs should find this article interesting. Everyone else delete now.

Cheers,
Steve


Music, Classical, Now Without the 300-Year Delay

NY TIMES - By BARBARA JEPSON - March 26, 2006

REMEMBER that Mozart concert you wanted to get to last month? No, not that
one. (Or that one. Or those other 10 or 12.) The one with Lorin Maazel
conducting the New York Philharmonic in the last three symphonies at Avery
Fisher Hall.

Well, that concert will come to you in high-quality sound on Tuesday, when
DG Concerts offers it for digital downloading via the iTunes Music Store
(itunes.com). What's more, two programs from the Los Angeles Philharmonic's
hip "Minimalist Jukebox" series, performed this weekend, are scheduled for
release through DG Concerts and iTunes on April 4. Although pricing is not
final, each live concert will probably cost about $10 to download, less for
complete individual works.

Both orchestras are part of a new initiative by the Universal Music Group
built on its Deutsche Grammophon and Decca labels. Christopher Roberts,
president for classics and jazz for Universal Music Group International,
says that DG Concerts and Decca Concerts will, between them, ultimately
service about 10 orchestras in the United States and abroad. Negotiations
are under way with orchestras in London, Paris and three German cities. The
current intention is for each orchestra to offer, on average, four concerts
a season for digital downloading, and one of the four would also be released
on CD. 

The project reflects a seismic shift in the way music is being discovered,
distributed and heard. In 2005, Nielsen SoundScan reports, sales of digital
tracks for downloading to computers or portable music players soared to 353
million units in the United States, up 150 percent from 2004. Downloads of
digital albums increased 194 percent, to 16 million. Although classical
labels arrived late to the party, they, too, are experiencing growth in this
area. While sales of classical CD's in the United States decreased by 15
percent last year, SoundScan reports, digital downloads of classical albums
grew by 94 percent. More significant, several labels are finding that the
classical share of the download music business is about 7 percent, more than
twice the share in physical retail outlets.

For the classical music industry, weary of alarmist talk about the graying
of its audience, the demographics are promising. "Ownership of portable
music players is generally highest among those from age 15 to their
mid-40's," said Ted Schadler, an industry analyst at Forrester Research in
Cambridge, Mass. But, he added, 84 percent of young online consumers listen
to music on their PC's.

Probably few of them are grooving to Chopin or Brahms, but the 1.4 million
downloads of free Beethoven symphonies offered by BBC Radio 3 last June
proved that audiences for classical music might be larger than anyone
thought. There is no guarantee that the digital revolution will bring a new
generation of iPod-toting listeners into concert halls, transforming
classical music institutions in the process. But the trend has brought a
glimmer of hope to the classical record industry, still grappling with the
impact of a shakeout that began a decade ago.

Digital jukeboxes like iTunes or subscription services like eMusic
(emusic.com) treat classical albums as just another genre, as easy to
explore as alternative or world music. "It's an opportunity to demystify the
classics for the causal buyer," said Tom Evered, general manager of EMI Jazz
and Classics in the United States. A prime attraction of download music
stores is the potential purchaser's ability to listen to free excerpts
before buying. In the rock arena, this practice has reportedly hurt sales in
traditional retail outlets. But in the classical market, more concerned with
sound quality, some labels are finding the opposite. "So far, downloading is
not cannibalizing our sales of physical CD's," said Chaz Jenkins, the head
of LSO Live, the small in-house label of the London Symphony Orchestra,
which derived 31 percent of its sales in the United States from digital
music last year. "What we're seeing is that new releases on CD do better
when there's also availability on digital music services."

Not since the advent of the CD two decades ago have record companies had the
opportunity to reissue great quantities of their products. "What I can do
now is use our library of over 85,000 tracks in proprietary collections,"
said Jim Sturgeon, the chief executive of Naxos of America, a leading
distributor of independent labels, whose total sales through digital service
providers were 8 percent of its total sales in 2005 and are projected to
reach 13 percent this year.

And since no physical store can stock entire catalogs, digital music
providers offer advantages to classical labels, whose products typically
sell slowly over the long term. Last year, to celebrate the 80th birthday of
Pierre Boulez, Deutsche Grammophon resurrected nearly a dozen of his
out-of-print albums for download only and produced a special compilation
showcasing him as conductor and composer. This summer, EMI will offer its
entire collection of operas and recital programs by the legendary soprano
Maria Callas for download.

The possibilities are exciting. So is the coming entry of potential rivals
to iTunes, which now dominates the digital music delivery business. In
collaboration with Microsoft, MTV Networks will unveil Urge, its own digital
music service, this spring. Urge will feature multiple genres, strong visual
elements and special programming and promotion in conjunction with the
network's popular MTV, VH1 and CMT channels, said by the network to reach
more than 165 million viewers in the United States. "We're going to give
classical as much love as we give hip-hop or pop," said Michael Bloom, MTV
Networks' vice president for digital music.

The digital marketplace is also stimulating fresh approaches by more
traditional music institutions. The New York Philharmonic, in its three-year
project with DG Concerts, is taking a financial gamble in the hope of
reaching a worldwide audience. As part of the contract, the Philharmonic
members chose a percentage of royalties rather than their usual flat fee up
front. The recordings remain the property of the Philharmonic, which has
licensed them to Deutsche Grammophon.

"For us, it's all about getting a foothold in the new media," said the
violinist Fiona Simon, the chairwoman of the orchestra committee that helped
negotiate the deal. "Downloading is probably the way that classical music is
going to be distributed in the future. The CD isn't dead yet, but it's
fading." 

By servicing orchestras that already have their concerts broadcast on radio,
Deutsche Grammophon and Decca avoid studio session costs, which run between
$100,000 and $250,000 for major orchestras. The orchestras involved in the
Universal initiative will provide the record companies with edited tape. The
labels will do the mastering, prepare the tape for downloading, supply
artwork and liner notes to the digital music services, and handle promotion
costs. 

The New York Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Philharmonic have each
identified candidates for the remaining downloads this spring, but digital
technology enables them to be spontaneous. A particularly memorable live
concert can be edited, mastered and uploaded on a digital jukebox in two to
six weeks. 

In this fashion, Roberto Sierra's Symphony No. 3 ("La Salsa") was made
available for download from iTunes soon after its premiere last fall by the
Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. With minimal publicity, 274 tracks from the
work on MSO Live, the orchestra's own label, were sold in the United States,
Britain and Australia during a two-month period.

"This brings new music that might have otherwise taken years to go into the
CD format to a wider public," Mr. Sierra said.

But nirvana may not have arrived just yet. Digital downloads still account
for only 6 percent of the overall music market. And sound quality remains an
issue. "Lossless" technology, still in the wings, is expected to improve the
quality of the download itself. Unfortunately, it will require faster
Internet connections and download times longer than the two minutes or so it
now takes for a symphony. And the sound will still be more compressed than
that of a CD, let alone a Super Audio CD.

"The audiophiles are probably never going to be happy with digital download
sound," Mr. Evered of EMI said.

But Alexandre Vovan, the director of sales and communications for the
independent Canadian label Analekta, disagreed. "If classical music
listeners have been satisfied for years with the CD," he said, "then they
will be more than satisfied with the newer breeds of MP3 or its successors
in the near future."

If he is right, technology could again transform the record industry.
Downloading got off to a rocky start because of illegal file-sharing, and
the industry is still suffering the consequences. But legal alternatives
offer a second chance.

"What happened with illegal file-sharing," Mr. Sturgeon of Naxos explained,
"is that the music industry basically said: 'We don't know how to stop it.
Let's figure out a way to sue them.' Instead of saying: 'O.K., people like
this approach. Let's monetize it, find a way to make it legal.' Run towards
it, don't run away from it."

And "run" may be the operative word. "What we're trying to do is stay ahead
of the times," said Deborah Borda, the president of the Los Angeles
Philharmonic. "Or at the very least, be with them."