“The market for CDs is in free fall and seemingly out of the music majors’ ability to do anything lasting about it. The American market is down 20pc so far this year on Main Street, but the wholesale market is even worse. As retailers panic, they are slashing inventories and returning CDs resulting in a wholesale market down 35pc.”
Category: music
EMI’s Dire Rvenue Report
Music recording giant EMI warns that its recording revenues will be down 15 percent for the latest quarter. “This unprecedented level of market decline has led to an exceptionally high level of product returns.”
Want A Music Career? DIY!
With thousands of young classical music students graduating from music school each year, how does one make a mark? Increasingly, it’s recording. And recording they make on their own. “It is self-evidently the way to go. With labels focussed on celebrity and the concert business on survival, new talent must fend for itself and some of it is doing so remarkably well.”
Majority Of Recording Execs Criticize Digital Locks
“The study revealed that about 54% of those executives questioned thought that current DRM systems were too restrictive. Also, 62% believed that dropping DRM and releasing music files that can be enjoyed on any MP3 player would boost the take-up of digital music generally.”
What’s Lost With The iPod
“When you’re ignoring the sounds of the city and you’re not even plugged into the same Top 40 hits as everyone else–when you are listening to your music, and only your music, all the time–isn’t something lost? A common cultural reference point? Something to talk about with your friends?”
NY Phil Expands Online Base (Ringtones, Too)
“Entire live concerts, or just a few minutes, can now be downloaded through iTunes. Five online ringtones also are available — including Mozart’s last symphonies — and more will be added.” “We were at the top of the iTunes chart — along with Madonna,” the Philharmonic’s executive director, Zarin Mehta, boasted at a news conference at Avery Fisher Hall.
Europe Vs America
“Since the beginnings of classical music in this country, since the Dark Ages before Ives, Cowell, and the arrival of Varèse, Americans (composers and audiences alike) have been consumers of European musical culture. As Americans, we know our Beethoven and our Schoenberg and our Debussy, but we do not feel them as a Boulez or a Lachenmann does; that is what it means not to be European. For the European Audience, speaking through Boulez, that makes the American Composer ‘WORTHLESS’; for the American Audience, it makes the European Composer inscrutable.”
Decades After Bayreuth, Soprano Silja Wows Met
Anja Silja, the “luminous and controversial soprano, sometimes called the ‘German Callas’ … had long expected to be retiring by this time. Yet here she is, giving a mesmerizing portrayal of Kostelnicka in the Met’s current production of Janacek’s ‘Jenufa,’ which opened on Jan. 29.”
And Now, The Classical Grammys
Composer Osvaldo Golijov picks up a pair. Best Classical Album and Best Orchestral Performance were both picked up by Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony for their Mahler 7 disc.
How The Major Recording Business Is Dying
“We figure that the value of CD sales will be 50% less in three years than it is now. We predict digital growth of 25% per year, but it is not enough to replace the loss from falling CD sales. By 2010, we will be 30% behind in terms of revenues. We have to reinvent. We are running our businesses like it is 1982 … a model that is so out of date, it’s not true.”