[atlantaprog] Re: Fwd: [ARTNEWS] the death of classical music

Thanks for this. Puts some needed perspective to the article.

Brain21

Jeff Blanks wrote:

I checked this column out at the Web site, where the headline was "Look who's been dumped."

Read the first sentence again, people--"the classical record industry", not "classical music." In fact, you might be even more precise and say "the *major-label* classical record industry." If you read between the lines, you could say that an alternate thesis statement for this essay could be, "Naxos is eating the major labels' lunch by offering good performances at seriously cheap prices (six bucks a piece, last time I checked)--and the majors don't know what to do in response." Add to that the fact that this is Norman Lebrecht (a writer with whom I'm a bit familiar, having read parts of his book *The Maestro Myth*), who has, shall we say, a *highly personal* perspective, and there you go.

What would happen if major labels cut the prices on their catalog to match Naxos more closely?

It's interesting what Mr. Lebrecht says about digital recording. If the major label industry did collapse, could it mean a shot in the arm for *live* performance?

To give you some perspective, here's his latest column:

http://www.scena.org/columns/lebrecht/040107-NL-orchestrafuture.html





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