I'd like to take a slightly different view of this whole situation,
and perhaps a longer one.  I won't deny that the mechanics of record
distribution and the recording industry are important.  It's a topic that
needs attention, but it isn't the only topic under the heading "the effect
of technology on classical music".

Another aspect is the question of the effect of digital recording and
distribution on classical music as a culture, or sub-culture.  Right now
the channels for works to be distributed which are less familiar or new are
cntrolled, to a great extent, by artistic politics and market ambitions.
It is easy enough for someone who is the darling of the critical and
academic establishments to get a recording and about a year and a half of
broad exposure, and record companies are toiling away looking for the next
big cross over success - but beyond that circle, which amounts to no more
than a few artists per year, there is a vast silence.

Only in classical music is a person expected to spend hard money just to
try something sight unseen.

As a culture this means that what holds us together is, ironically, words.
Not music, not scores, not the techniques of performing, but words about
experiences and opinions on those experiences.

With the advent of digital distribution of music it is possible, but by
no means inevitable, for that to be shifted 180 degrees.  And if this were
to happen it would be part of the salvation of classical music.  Spin can
be manufactured, it is easy enough to create buzz around this or that
composition merely by pushing it, and knowing that there will be a chorous
of people who will be enthusiastic about it - so long as the right
buzzwords are used in its promotion.  But the notes cannot be faked, they
are there, or they are not there.  A composition will, if heard and played,
find its own level, its own level of support.  That level of support will
not be what people say about it, but what people do about it.  Beethoven
lives on not because many people say he's great, but because many people go
through the work of making his music.  The same is true of Schoenberg - or
any one else.  While it is possible to press activity in the present with
political pull and dollars, this fades with the people doing the pushing.

This change would be ultimately of incredible use for classical music
discussion.  I cannot count the times that someone has mentioned a work or
a recording, and I wanted a sample of it.  Words are so bad at describing
music, and often someone writing words about music is not really writing
about the music at all.  25 seconds of sound would tell the tale of many
posts.  Again with digital distribution this becomes more possible, if we
could then also link, not to whole works, but to places in works - this
would be an incredible boon for talking about any work.  Not just the new,
but the old as well.

- - -

Hence while I don't want to discourage the questions about "how does this
change the business of classical music", I would also like to encourage a
bit of thinking on what a world is like where instead of having a short
list of people who are pushed, that we could have the same priviledge that
people in pop have - a broader range that we can sample free first.

This question interests me because, ultimately, the recording industry
sees digital distribution as a way of cutting out the expensive and capital
intensive parts of their business, while not reducing the amount that is
paid to them by one penny.  Let the consumer deal with the fuss of things.
In fact they are hoping to leave the consumer with less ability to make
copies of music, less ability to hold on to older equipment, less ability
to hold on to older recordings.  I could go into details about how this is
going to be done, but this is not quite the place for it.

Stirling S Newberry
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