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Doublereed Archive - Posting 000054.txt from 2005/08

From: herb fawcett <herbgosia@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [DR-L] newspaper article--classical downloads
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2005 15:12:41 -0400

People who listen to fine music on computer speakers really deserve the
beating they get.
Herb

On 8/29/05 2:42 AM, "Grace Tice" <grace.tice@-----.net> wrote:

> This caught my eye. Thought you wouold all appreciate that somebody has =
a
> new angle. Apparently, it worked!
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> Aug. 26, 2005, 10:52AM
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> Downloading Dvor=E1k. Swapping Prokofiev.
> ---------------------------------------
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> Let's face it: if classical music is to survive, it's gotta be on the
> Net
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> By PAUL HORSLEY
> Knight Ridder Newspapers
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> Illegal Beethoven on your iPod? Scandale !
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> Future hope for the growth of classical music might indeed lie in that
> murkiest of netherworlds, the quasi-legal (and at times illegal)
> activity of downloading music from the Internet.
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> At least that's what a recent experiment by BBC Radio 3 suggests.
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> Earlier this summer, to promote an all-Beethoven week on the British
> airwaves, the service offered free downloads from its entire digital
> catalog of Beethoven symphonies.
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> Listeners young and old loaded individual movements and whole
> symphonies onto their computers, iPods and handheld devices and are
> still listening to the thundering Fifth, the bucolic Sixth, the
> triumphant Ninth.
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> The staggering success of this publicity stunt - 1,369,893 downloads -
> caused pundits to muse on a new future for an old art form.
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> Some might consider it ironic that an art form Americans consider prim
> and proper might ultimately thrive on the vaguely disreputable
> free-for-all we call the Internet.
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> But in the words of Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park, life finds a way.
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> Classical music is already thriving on peer-to-peer servers like Kazaa
> and BearShare, the same p2p sites that have gained notoriety as the
> place to "steal" pop music, movies and even television shows.
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> The BBC downloads provided a free and temporarily legal means for all
> manner of folks to listen to, evaluate and enjoy this music, unfettered
> by elitist prejudices, stuffy concert-hall etiquette or overpriced CDs.
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> Such initiatives are bound to fall on fertile soil in the United
> States, too. In the virtual absence of classical radio in America, the
> Internet can provide what radio does for other musical genres, namely a
> "free" means of hearing new and unfamiliar music, which if you like,
> you'll go out and buy.
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> But with the element of radio removed from the market structure, there
> are almost no places to randomly hear Beethoven's Eroic a Symphony or
> Stravinsky's Rite of Spring while driving home from school or work.
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> The Net provides direct access. With the stuffiness removed from the
> classical experience, people can hear just how glorious Stravinsky
> really is.
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> Kids especially gravitate toward anything that sounds interesting, as
> numerous studies have shown. Especially, for some reason, Bach.
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> All this underscores a point I've spent my life proclaiming: Classical
> music is intrinsically as interesting as anything in our culture - and
> far more interesting than Desperate Housewives - but through ignorance
> and fear it has become stigmatized as elitist.
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> Indeed, if these free downloads had been held up next to the pop charts
> that month, Beethoven would have made No. 1.
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> Of course, the record labels grumbled, having approved the BBC concept
> beforehand but later expressing vague regret that it attained such
> phenomenal success.
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> All some of these bloodless executives can think of is lost sales, of
> "stolen revenues," of people who heard Beethoven for free when they
> should have been paying through the nose for him.
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> (These are the same companies who 25 years ago promised us that the
> price of a CD would eventually go from $15 to half that. And we
> believed them!)
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> Don't they realize this is a cheap and easy way to revitalize a product
> that years of neglect, mismanagement and unimaginative marketing have
> severely imperiled?
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> I'm not advocating illegal downloads, of course. But I am thinking that
> everybody concerned with classical music's future had better get
> Net-savvy, and I mean now.
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> If we're going to feed kids' natural curiosity about all kinds of
> music, we'd better be coming up with some powerful alternatives
> posthaste.
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> Paul Horsley covers classical music for the Kansas City Star.
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> Brought to you by the HoustonChronicle.com
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