The classical music world has never been democratic - it dictates what you
should
want rather than what you think you want - and the latest decree is this: You
will
learn how to manage digital downloads. The penalty for not doing so is missing some of the most exciting recordings being made.
Consider, for example, Bartok's great orchestral showpiece, the Concerto for Orchestra, conducted by the Los Angeles Philharmonic's ultra-kinetic, newly appointed, 26-year-old music director Gustavo Dudamel. Even if the only motivation is curiosity, you're going want it - and want it bad. When the Berlin Philharmonic plays Mahler's Symphony No. 9 on Nov. 13 at Carnegie Hall, EMI will offer on the same day a download of the same orchestra's weeks-earlier hometown concert - and recent broadcasts suggest it will be conductor Simon Rattle's best recording in years. The Nonesuch label's Kronos Quartet is playing music from Iceland - that ragingly fashionable country - only on download.
So how does this blasted iPod work, anyway? Where do they put the "on" switch?
"We are forcing this issue," says Chris Roberts, classics and jazz president of Universal Music Group. "I don't think that's a bad thing."
Though classical music makes a respectable showing in iTunes, executives for compact disc purveyors from ArkivMusic to Brilliant Classics say their consumers are suspicious of downloads, fearing their music will be somehow swallowed up by their computer. Or, given the often-superior sound quality of compact discs, they don't see the point. Classical violin superstar Maxim Vengerov let his iPod sit in its case unused for a full year. Then he gave it to his girlfriend. At last report, he hadn't caved.
Yet given the low-margin, long-view profits that have made classical music almost un-American in its lack of market performance, the digital domain is the best news in years - especially since the demise of CD retailers that once sustained the classical industry, such as Tower Records.
"For us, a download is far more profitable than a physical CD," says Klaus Heymann, founder of Naxos. "When we sell a CD to our distributor in the U.S., we get $1.50. If iTunes sells an album for $7.99 . . . we get $2.80."
Though world-class-quality recordings are still expensive to make, the lower distribution cost allows Naxos to consider unusually adventurous projects, including a possible Beethoven symphony cycle led by different living composers who also conduct, such as John Adams and Tan Dun.
Orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic and Los Angeles Philharmonic issue three concerts on download through Deutsche Grammophon and one CD a year. Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center offered a concert that might normally have died after its last performance. Claude Debussy lived to finish only three sonatas in a projected cycle of six; 90 years later, Marc-André Dalbavie, Kaija Saariaho and Steven Stucky finished the job.
In some cases, recordings available only on download are a market-testing prelude to a CD release. Universal delayed the now-popular Janine Jansen recording of Vivaldi's Four Seasons until she had a bigger U.S. profile, but before then, offered it on download. The acclaimed young Argentinian pianist Ingrid Fliter will offer a short, download-only teaser album on EMI as a prelude to more formal recordings to come.
The combination of download and CD is especially important to young artists. Lang Lang's recent Beethoven concerto disc hit Billboard magazine's No. 1 position, selling a healthy 2,300 copies in its first week of release, half on download. Simone Dinnerstein's debut recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations, repertoire that might be considered too heady to be a chart-topper, topped the Billboard charts with one-third of its sales in download. New standard repertoire recordings, the likes of which hardly sold in the '90s because of a glut of already-existing discs, are the best download sellers.
"Are people still building a basic repertoire in iTunes? Maybe," Roberts says. "The feeling in the marketplace is that there's more going on, more focus, more attention paid to this. We have people believing in classical music in ways that are much different than even two years ago."
Still, isn't it just a bit cruel to dangle Dudamel's Bartok in front of some of the fustier, less tech-savvy noses in classical music? Maybe it's not fair to Dudamel, since download-only releases aren't eligible for the Grammy Awards. In this case, the download-only decision preceded Dudamel's highly publicized Los Angeles appointment. Also, the 35-minute Bartok piece isn't a full CD. In downloads, length considerations hardly exist.
Sound quality remains an issue: Critics complain the standard 128 kilobytes per second available on iTunes isn't good enough. And in the case of DG Concerts (of which the New York Philharmonic concerts are a part), iTunes has a six-month exclusive. Eventually, download providers - from iTunes to Napster to Rhapsody to Web sites set up by individual labels - are aiming more toward the compact disc quality (600-700 kb), and eventually even higher.
Even with an improved image, the download world will continue to be a potentially bewildering range of choice. With the Universal conglomerate, the back catalog is 15,000 titles. Heymann is establishing Classical Archives - downloads of LP records out of copyright, which in Europe is anything before 1957. So, commanding the focus of consumers for new releases isn't getting easier. That's why EMI's Rattle/Mahler timing is so important: The download's core audience will be at Carnegie Hall, and seeing ads in the program book.
Archival downloads that have never had a market presence, such as those the Philadelphia Orchestra offers on its www.philorch.org Web site, barely get noticed. The top-selling title is the Wolfgang Sawallisch-conducted Shostakovich Symphony No. 5, with a mere 209 units. The free-of-charge BBC download of the Beethoven symphonies by the England-based Gianandrea Noseda are largely unknown to Americans.
Industry executives are quick to say that downloads must be seen in conjunction with an overall image-building effort on the part of the performing-arts organization. Young artists may be received with more openness (rather than in comparisons with gods of the past). In other words, $10 downloads may be to our decade what $5 cassette tapes were to the 1980s, a convenience-driven addendum to a collection and not part of the usual quality hierarchy. "We're already seeing tech-savvy adult consumers that buy something with inferior sound - and enjoy it for what it is," says Mark Forlow, vice president of EMI Classics in the United States.
"I feel that there will always be CDs," says David Finckel, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center co-artistic director, who is also cellist of the Emerson Quartet. "It's hard to imagine, when I play a concert and we have a CD signing afterwards, the day when there won't be anything to sign. It's hard to imagine something that costs $10, but you can't see or feel it. It's hard to imagine that such a thing will hold its value."
Maybe, he says, the ultimate classical format is the next thing, whatever that may be.