A few months ago I took Norman Lebrecht to task for his editorial announcing the death of the classical record industry. So far the industry seems to be humming along just fine, thank you, but it occurred to me that on a deeper level perhaps there is a death worth discussing, although the tragedy (if such it was) did not occur as recently as many might suppose. I am speaking of the death of “the classics” as they are still commonly defined, marketed, and sold, and the funny thing is that it happened decades ago. Unfortunately, being so close to the event no one noticed at the time, and most still haven’t. Now lest we start rending our garments and loudly lamenting, let me say up front that this particular death is not necessarily a bad thing at all. Quite the contrary.
Before the recording industry existed, the concept of “classical music” was defined by the one factor guaranteed to create value in any system: scarcity. Full-time orchestras were few and far between, top-notch chamber ensembles catered exclusively to the wealthy, and most music-making took place in the home. The modest size of most of the older European concert halls and opera houses attests to the limited scale of this great cultural enterprise. The repertoire, accordingly, consisted of popular novelties and those few older works deemed worthy of preservation, all of which had to be accommodated in a short season consisting of but a few concerts or productions per year. The limitations of time, expense, local taste, and the number of major stages necessarily created the small basic repertoire of what we now refer to as “classical music.” Music lovers, if they were lucky enough to live near a major capital, might attend a mere handful of performances in a lifetime.
The advent of recordings changed everything. Slowly at first, but with the gathering force of an avalanche, recordings have steadily replaced live events as the principal source of music for the consumer. Meanwhile the immense post-War performing arts industry, supported by state subsidies, tax incentives, and intense nationalist competitiveness (especially in Europe) has succeeded admirably in destroying the class-based elitism of the 19th century. Virtually everyone in modern civilization enjoys affordable access to more concerts than they could possibly have time for even in the most leisure-prone societies. The record industry, at first a mere adjunct of the performing arts industry, has faithfully documented this explosion of more and more artists playing the same music over and over, reducing the value of what these artists do to approximately $6 a disc, if that.
Under these circumstances, it was only a matter of time before the repertoire also began to expand hugely so as to give all of these soloists, orchestras and ensembles something else to do for a change, and also not coincidentally to justify more and more recordings. These two factors: thousands of recordings of the “certified classics” combined with thousands of recordings of music no one has ever heard of, often in both cases by artists similarly unknown, have eroded the concept of a “classic” to the point where it no longer has any meaning whatsoever beyond the merely technical: a style or type of music different from other styles or types. The scarcity value has gone, completely and utterly.
The cries of the cultural elite and the performing arts industry to the effect that classical music has fallen victim to the evils of marketing, the hype of unscrupulous promoters, and the tastelessness of popular culture in our fast-paced modern life ring singularly hollow in this context. The truth is exactly the opposite: the performing arts organizations are the victims of their own success in demanding (and getting) ever more money to bring ever more music to ever more people. It is they who historically have insisted, and continue to insist, that their work be preserved through recordings, and they have shown themselves more than willing to pay for the privilege despite economic realities that prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that such activity is often inherently loss-making. The proliferation today of artist owned and/or funded labels speaks for itself in this respect.
Most of the problems facing the recording and performing arts industries come down to this basic fact: they are behaving as though their product has a high economic value, when in fact it has a very low one, lower in fact than most types of pop music. It costs more to see a Broadway show than it does to get a good seat for a symphony concert, and the average price of a new pop record routinely exceeds the price of newly released classical recordings, particularly as a function of dollars per minute of music. And yet this vast apparatus of subsidized entertainment, which guzzles ever more money from a public that for the most part couldn’t care less about what it produces, claims to be “threatened” and “besieged” by what it perceives as a failure of that same public to properly value what it does, to obediently and passively accept whatever it churns out with due reverence and gratitude.
Alas, the public isn’t stupid. You can’t hand someone a Coke, tell them they are drinking champagne, ask to be paid accordingly, and have them take you seriously. At least you can’t do it forever. The very idea of a “classic” is completely irreconcilable with the insatiable, institutionally-driven demand for more concerts, bigger salaries, and huge new performance facilities, not to mention the need to document through recordings as much of this activity as humanly possible whether anyone wants to purchase the resulting product or not. The only way to recapture classical music’s lost luster is for its availability to shrink–to return to the good old days when the rich went to concerts, the middle class and poor didn’t, and a new Beethoven cycle on disc by a major artist was a big deal because it wasn’t one of more than a hundred currently available.
I don’t think I’m alone, though, in not wanting to turn back the clock. Record collectors, however few they may be, have an unprecedented selection of performances from which to choose. Most of us would probably agree that the democratization of high culture has created an extraordinary flowering of talent and cultural achievement. Standards of performance have never been higher. Indeed, my primary quarrel with the arts people is simply that while they say they are out to preserve “culture,” what they often really mean is that they want to get paid more money than economic reality justifies. Take away this bit of fundamental hypocrisy–that the survival of high culture as we know it depends on its providers remaining permanently employed on terms of their choosing–and we can sympathize with the dilemma of a group which is the victim of its own success. In fulfilling a noble mission it has also destroyed the very thing, the value of “the classics,” on which its principal claim to legitimacy and cultural importance rests.
As I’ve said many times previously, this state of affairs does not necessarily mean that a crisis is upon us. But we are undergoing a period of great change, and this creates interesting opportunities for those who see the issues clearly and respond imaginatively. The signs of this happening are in fact all around us, and since I devote most of my time dealing with records and recordings, I would like to spend the remainder of this article talking about one particularly encouraging initiative: the Naxos Music Library. If you haven’t seen it yet, I strongly suggest that you have a look: http://www.naxosmusiclibrary.com/.
With foresight typical of what the label has shown so far, Naxos has put its entire catalog on the internet in streaming audio format. This is not the place to go into the specific economic model in question–of the value of pay-per-download as opposed to the subscription format that Naxos currently offers. The very fact that the entire catalog has been made available says something very interesting and, in my view, hopeful about the future of classical music and perhaps of the recording industry as well.
Record producers tend to be terrific at making records, and dismal at selling them. They have not yet learned that if you are going to make Coke, you have to sell it like Coke. Naxos has never had this problem (though it faces others, such as how to manage such a huge back catalog at the retail level). I hope everyone understands that by “Coke” I am not referring to artistic quality, but rather to the simple economics of supply and demand that govern what people are willing to pay for new recordings. They have always been comparatively cheap entertainment, and now they are cheaper than ever.
The most interesting thing, for me at least, about the Naxos Music Library is that it says to the public, “Here is music. Take what you want.” There’s no need to create stupid “crossover” projects or pitiful compilations assembled by some corporate geek attempting to adapt the product to his warped perception of the taste of the masses. The Naxos Music Library simply permits people to browse, listen, and pick exactly what they want, be it a whole work, or a single movement, and to mix and match as they please without being inhibited, preached to, judged or intimidated. It permits them to find music by mood or theme, to sample freely—in short, to exercise those normal rights that consumers have every reason to demand but which the classical recording industry has found it so difficult to grant them.
I am sure that this initiative has been very costly for Naxos, and I suspect that it will not become a major source of revenue any time soon. But its day will come, and more importantly the Music Library is going to provide Naxos with something that no other label has: real information about what people listen to. For the first time, a major producer will have the opportunity to interface directly with consumers and see what they really think about its products, absent the distortions and insanity of today’s broken brick-and-mortar retail sector. The value of this information strikes me as incalculable. It will permit Naxos to find the best possible way to navigate the uncharted shores of this new era, both culturally and technologically, and help the label to create products responsive to real demand, accurately gauging the likely success of new initiatives and investments. That means more music in the hands of more people, which I think we all agree is a good thing.
There is little risk here, particularly given the industry’s dreadful track record to date. All of the evidence that I see points to plenty of latent demand. The question is how best to capitalize on it. So far the response of most producers to the potential offered by new technology and the internet has been, to put it kindly, counterproductive. I mean, what would you do if you took the time and trouble to go to an expensive restaurant only to have the waiter rudely refuse to offer you a menu and tell you that you’ll eat whatever he decides to give you? How long could such an establishment survive? If it offers only world-famous specialties of the house available nowhere else, its business is secure. But if you can get exactly the same meal for less money at dozens of other similar restaurants that will also treat you with courtesy and respect–well, you can see the point I’m sure.
I personally have no fears for the survival of classical music or the recording industry. What we are witnessing is not an end, but a beginning, or perhaps more properly the coming of age of an industry too long stuck in a sort of economic adolescence. I have no doubt that many in the business, irredeemably wedded to the obsolete “four star restaurant” model just described above, are trembling for their jobs. Let them. We need not mourn the death of traditional modes of behavior and institutions that were, for the most part, snooty and decadent (as well as currently suicidal from a business point of view). This is why other labels would do well to follow where Naxos leads without delay. Of course they probably won’t, which will be a very good thing for Naxos, and more power to them. I can’t help thinking when I see the Naxos Music Library, “The classics are dead, long live the classics!”
David Hurwitz
