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July 22, 2005

Beethoven beats Bono

Andrew Dickson wrote an article on his blog in The Guardian about 1.4 million downloads within a week for all Beethoven symphonies compared with 20.000 downloads for Bono's version of St. Pepper in the iTunes Music Store (iTMS). Although the two aren't really compareble (read the article) it is interesting stuff.

The amount of downloadble classical or contemporay music is appalling. I search for it regularly and I do find music, but it is limited never the less. And with iTMS as a benchmark for the moment we have to fear the worst: they offer only fraction of classical music compared to the more popular genres and the way of finding your way around is inadequate.

The prejudice against people like me is that we aren't in to computers and internet. I know some people for whom this is true. But I know more people who are fully aware of what developments are taking place and where it might lead (see my last week's entry).

The major labels are only interested in peak sales, which is kind of stupid, because the large profit is to be gained in the long tail.

This short eyed approach induced by salesexecutives who know all about numbers and profitmargins and little about culture leaves all of us with lack of sufficient music to choose from. For them it is still shelve space that counts, where harddisk space, bandwith and equipment that is easy to handle for non-techies would be more appropriate.

In the meantime the BBC Beethoven downloads show people are interested. I am curious what the BBC will come with next on BBC3 and the internet.

Posted by Renske at 07:36 UTC | permanent link