Classical music in an MP3ifying world
There’s a piece today in the Philadelphia Inquirer about our favorite topic, namely the collision of MP3s and classical music. The gist of it is that, while download sales seem to be a significant contribution to the total sales of some classical albums, there are two major hurdles to its widespread acceptance.
One hurdle is the standard lack of quality issue: most of us (today “us” refers to classical music purchasers) are a bit suspicious of paying CD prices for sub-CD-standard audio. That’s likely to dissuade people who are somewhat knowledgeable about the medium (i.e., they realize there’s a quality hit) and the genre (they realize that it’s going to be a particularly bad quality hit because of the sonic nature of the music) from purchasing.
Secondly, there is the technophobic hurdle. There is (unless I’ve been wildly misled) a pretty strong correlation between appreciation of classical music and age, but technological savvy is probably pretty inversely age related (I know, I sound like an obnoxious kid spouting that out, particularly since anyone reading this is gonna be pretty technologically with it. You know it’s basically true though.)
It does seem that both of these problems are creeping towards resolution. The record labels have been inching toward higher quality downloads, which are becoming more practical for portability as the storage space on the players ramps up. And of course, technological uptake keeps on soaking up through society. My grandma sends me texts and has a facebook profile, I’m sure she’d be well more than capable of working out how to use an iPod.
September 24th, 2007 at 3:57 pm
There’s also the “song” concept which is ingrained in the download sales industry. iTunes has papered over this in the case of art-rock bands like Yes and Pink Floyd by having long tracks be “album-only” purchases, but the movements of a symphony don’t lend themselves either to per-song or per-album pricing, because they vary so much in length; the same goes for choral works, chamber music, and so on.
The logical solution might be to sell classical music on a per-minute pricing scheme, but that isn’t likely to catch on anytime soon with Apple or other online music retailers.
September 24th, 2007 at 4:40 pm
True, the iTunes pricing policies for classical music are absolutely inscrutable (to me, at least), but considering the convenience of instant gratification (which I indulge in rather too frequently, I’m afraid), the prices aren’t bad.
On the matter of sound quality, as I commented a while ago, the only way to get really good quality is to hear music live, but even the iTunes m4p’s (not mp3’s) sound reasonably good to me, given a good amplifier and speakers or headphones to push them through. But this is a subject of religious fanaticism that I refuse to get into an argument about. (When I was a kid, I listened to my mother’s 78s, so compared to them I’m certainly not complaining about today’s digital quality!)
Even cheaper music is available electronically, of course, by recording from radio with Audio Hijack or a similar application. I have done this for years with various tape recorders, but now that I can do it digitally, using a lossless codec, I am a very happy camper. Before long, though, I’ll have to get a bigger external disk to hold all the stuff.