Records

I've been meaning to write a post about the record industry for awhile, and the appearance of a few recent articles makes it that much more appropriate.

First, from the pop world . It's been reported that many "legacy" acts such as Bruce Springsteen and the Rolling Stones are having difficulty selling albums even though they still bring in $1000 a ticket for live shows. The article says that rap is having the opposite problem, with healthy record sales but weak ticket sales. Only a few bands are managing to have their cake and eat it too: Coldplay, U2, Josh Groban and a few country artists. Classical music fans should be somewhat relieved that even the mighty Rolling Stones are having trouble selling records. The reasons are somewhat similar too: fans feel they have all the Stones records they could ever want and are hesitant to buy a new album, even if it's good. How many times have you been in the record store and seen an interesting looking recording of a Beethoven symphony and thought: "You know, I already have 3 recordings of this." This leads directly into the next article which discusses the end of the era of big-budget opera recordings with Placido Domingo's new recording of Tristan und Isolde. Record companies have (finally) realized that full opera recordings don't sell well, no matter how much money is spent on the production and marketing. I guess the future of opera recordings lies in DVDs with their bonus features, sub-titles and of course the visual element (which I think is essential to the appreciation of opera). Still, it is kind of sad to know that there will never be another blockbuster recording of Tristan; kind of like a major movie studio deciding they can't make big-budget epics anymore. I can only imagine the glory days of old when a major opera recording would arrive in stores every week. Of course, what's at play here is simple economics. There is an immense amount of money that goes into financing a project like this. Still, I think record companies are not doing all they can to keep the industry healthy. I am a bit baffled by the fact that the majors are not grabbing at the chance to digitize all their music and sell it online. There is much less overhead, out of print works can stay in the catalog and it cuts out the middleman (sorry, record stores). As much as I love I Tunes, why does it still have the lion's share of the marketplace? I suppose it's because of their technology, but still. Think about it: you could log onto Sony's website and have the choice of any recording released under the Sony umbrella. Naxos has done this a bit, where the user can pay a membership fee to stream any music in the Naxos catalog. This is good, but what if you want to listen to recordings in your car or on the train? I guess price is a bit of an issue as most record labels would want to charge more than the $.99/song at I Tunes. But by making the whole catalogue available in one place, they could have a much larger selection than I Tunes ever will and eventually cultivate a loyal base of customers. In addition, encryption technology has improved, so it is harder to make infinite duplicates of an album. So what's the hold up?

The last article talks intelligently about the crisis affecting Hyperion Records. It is sad to see such a wonderful label on the ropes financially. It would be shame if multi-disc projects like the absolutely brilliant Schubert Edition were never made again. Save Hyperion Records!