A digital boon for classical music?

New high-quality audio files may entice audiofiles to buy classical fare on the web.

By Brian Wise | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor

from the June 1, 2007 edition

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When Amazon.com recently joined the push to sell digital downloads without copy protection, the implications were particularly meaningful to classical-music fans. By removing the layer of software known as digital rights management, or DRM, customers can not only play their music on any device they choose (PCs, Macs, and iPods), but they also may stand to benefit from improved sound quality.

Even with copy protection, classical music has surprised many doomsayers with its robust sales over the past year. On Apple's iTunes, which controls over 70 percent of the digital market, classical purchases account for 12 percent of sales, four times its share of the CD market. Last year, classical was the industry's fastest-growing musical genre, despite the closing of Tower Records, which represented 30 percent of the total classical market share (this bump was partly due to popular crossover acts such as the Italian crooner Andrea Bocelli and the operatic boy band Il Divo). Industry figures are hopeful that dropping copy protection – thus allowing for big, clear-sounding and noncompressed audio files – will generate even stronger interest in classical downloads.

"It will definitely draw more classical listeners to the download," says Mark Forlow, the vice president of EMI Classics US, whose catalogue includes such artists as conductor Simon Rattle and violinist Maxim Vengerov as well as historical recordings by soprano Maria Callas and cellist Jacqueline Du Pré. "For as long as recorded sound has been in existence, the people who buy classical music like to have the best sound."

A week prior to Amazon's decision, EMI announced it would become the first major label to drop DRM from its iTunes catalogue starting later this month. Mr. Forlow believes there is a strong demand for DRM-free music even though it will come at a premium cost of $1.29, which is $0.30 more than iTunes's usual $.99 rate.

Online retailers report that classical consumers usually prefer large audio files that eat up hard-drive space and take longer to download to compressed files that are smaller but sound inferior. At Magnatune, an independent online record label featuring artists such as the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, files come in five different formats, from CD-quality WAV files to compressed MP3s. Shannon Coulter, Magnatune's director of A&R, says the WAV format is the most popular choice. "Real classical music fans tend to be audiophiles," she notes.

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