Classical music is dead. Long live classical music.
Is classical music experiencing a resurgence in popularity?
The article “Check the Numbers: Rumors of Classical Music’s Demise Are Dead Wrong - New York Times” seems to think so. But while it made some good general comments, it is missing out on two very important factors in this resurgence.
1. Piracy of classical music has greatly aided this resurgence. Truly, this is one of the unsung heroes of reviving art. If people can get something for free, then they will try it out. And if they find out that they like it, they will seek out more of it. Since classical music is quite limited in piracy networks (very few works outside of the canonical reperetory), people are forced once they like an artist or composer to shell out money on iTunes or Tower. And since piracy is Internet-generated, people are able to consume it in privacy. This is important since some people wouldn’t freely admit to liking classical music…any mention of those words immediately has everyone pegging you as a snob. Besides, classical is intended as an intensely personal music, meant to be heard as the internal emotions not as outward bursts of physicality (see rock, hip hop, dance music, etc.). That’s why it works so well to score movies emotionally and that’s why it works so well pirated to an audience that didn’t even know that it liked it.
2. The Long Tail is the theory that in our new economy, there will be unlimited shelf space because we are more decentralized, less concerned with creating big hits than we are with creating niche hits that will consistently generate profits/audiences without needing constant marketing. In other words, it is the model of the current classical music market, where the relatively few big ticket items (Yo Yo Ma, Bocelli) make way for a plethora of lesser known titles that will never cease being sold because audiences are still finding them. And because the market is so big, the numbers for items that are in the tail can end up generating big numbers albeit much more slowly. Again, this is facilitated by the Internet and again it is facilitated by being consumable in private.
Gloria Cheng playing select Philip Glass works for solo piano
The above recording is free from LA radio station KCRW. The performance itself was free as part of a symposium held at the Walt Disney Concert Hall during the Minimalist Jukebox series. As mentioned in the NY Times, I don’t know if making 900 sales on iTunes is really something for the LA Phil to be bragging about, especially for their cutting edge Minimalist Jukebox series. Assuming each sales was about $1, that amounts to $900, 35% of which goes back to Apple. It is not impressive given the effort to make this available, but again with the Long Tail and piracy, these recordings will have a chance to live on and convert more people.
The Holy Grail for classical music is now the young audience. Maybe getting their attention is as simple as writing this blog.
