***Scroll down for updates***
Although my MP3 player contains several classical music tracks I find quite pleasing, I don’t listen to nearly enough classical music. The beauty of certain pieces is indescribable so I won’t even try. Classical music listeners know what I’m talking about.
Did you know that classical music was the fastest growing music category last year? According to the Nielsen music industry sales report (DOC file via Chris Anderson), classical music sales were up 23 percent in 2006, thanks to online music stores like iTunes.
(Listen to samples of classical music at Rhapsody.com.)
Go to any big chain music store, and you’re unlikely to find a large collection of classical music. According to Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More and editor of Wired magazine, brick-and-mortar record stores restrict choice. Why? Because shelf space is limited and costs money, so retailers stock what sells. The focus is on moving as much merchandise as possible, and classical music, a niche genre, doesn’t fall into the “hot selling” category.
But digital files are a collection of bytes, which take up “cyber” space, not physical shelf space, and storing them is relatively cheap. Digital sound file sellers can offer consumers near limitless choice, from mainstream fare to the most arcane. The Internet has fueled a “long tail” of products that may sell only one or two units per year. But in the aggregate, those sales are impressive.
This post was prompted by an article in the The New Yorker. Music critic Alex Ross discusses how the digital age is generating interest in and the sale of classical music and its subgenres. Good stuff. He writes:
The anonymity of Internet browsing has made classical music more accessible to non-fanatics; first-time listeners can read reviews, compare audio samples, and decide on, for example, a Beethoven recording by Wilhelm Furtwängler, all without risking the humiliation of mispronouncing the conductor’s name under the sour gaze of a record clerk. Likewise, first-time concertgoers and operagoers can shop for tickets, study synopses of unfamiliar plots, listen to snippets of unfamiliar music, follow performers’ blogs, and otherwise get their bearings on the lunar tundra of the classical experience.
…
Classical-music culture on the Internet is expanding at a sometimes alarming pace. When I started my blog, I had links to seven or eight like-minded sites. Now I find myself part of a jabbering community of several hundred blogs, operated by critics, composers, conductors, pianists, double-bassists, oboists (I count five), artistic administrators, and noted mezzo-sopranos (Joyce DiDonato writes under the moniker Yankee Diva). After a first night at the Met, opera bloggers chime in with opinions both expert and eccentric, recalling the days when critics from a dozen dailies, whether Communist or Republican or Greek, lined up to extoll Caruso. Beyond the blogs are the Internet radio stations; streaming broadcasts from opera houses, orchestras, new-music ensembles; and Web sites of individual artists. There is a new awareness of what is happening musically in every part of the world. A listener in Tucson or Tokyo can virtually attend opening night at the Bayreuth Festival and listen the following day to a premiere by a young British composer at the BBC Proms.
You may not find a wide selection of classical music at the local Tower Records (do they still operate brick-and-mortar stores?), but in the digital world, the pickings are plentiful, as are online discussions about classical music. The Internet fuels the long tail of retail, which in turn favors niche industries and products, independent artists (filmmakers, musicians), classical music labels, etc. Ross continues:
All the classical labels are eying digital sales as a way to renovate their business. Having wasted much effort in the nineteen-nineties trying to copy the pop paradigm of blockbuster hits–the singular phenomenon of Pavarotti was a will-o’-the-wisp luring them on–the labels now realize that they can make money by selling large numbers of releases in more modest quantities. Chris Anderson, the author of the contrarian business book “The Long Tail,” calls this strategy “selling less of more.” The “long tail” is the almost limitless inventory of CDs, books, movies, and other products that pours forth on sites such as Amazon.com. Some may sell or rent only once a year. Yet, Anderson says, “about a quarter of Amazon’s book sales come from outside its top 100,000 titles.” Classical music, with its thousand-year back catalogue, has the longest tail of all.
And anyone using a computer has immediate access to at least 30-second samples of music in that thousand-year back catalogue.
The forces driving the long tail are the “democratization” of the tools of production and distribution, and better filters (search engines, recommendations, rating systems, etc.). The long tail itself has “democratized” classical music, making it more accessible and less intimidating for us regular folks.
Later…Chris Anderson writes: “Indeed, it appears that every single part of the music industry except the sale of compact discs is up…So the problem with the music labels is not that music is an industry in decline, but that they have a too-narrow view of what business they’re in. Madonna’s switch from a label to a concert promoter should be a clue.”
Ed Driscoll writes mentions the long tail of jazz. I never acquired a taste for jazz. Perhaps I should listen to it more often.
Related posts:
