Musicians and orchestras love to pay lip service to the concept of promoting new music, but increasingly, composers are facing a world in which their services are viewed as optional. “Something fundamental has changed in the music marketplace: Where once patrons consisted of people outside the music business – church leaders, emperors, members of the bourgeoisie, impresarios – today they are almost always from within. The world of classical music is becoming self-absorbed, for it is the musician himself who commissions new music with the flickering hope of selling it as a commodity to consumers. Consumers, in turn, are becoming too obsessed with iPods, the Internet and video-on-demand to bother with live concert performances.”