A digital boon for classical music?

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

from the June 1, 2007 edition

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Similarly, the Philadelphia Orchestra sells downloads of its performances both as traditional MP3s as well as noncompressed FLAC files, which feature double the encoding rate. Christopher Amos, the orchestra's director of electronic media, says that about half of all sales are in the FLAC format. "We're dealing with a very sophisticated audience," he says. "We've had a lot of traction with specialists."

Others are more skeptical that die-hard classical fans will abandon CDs in favor of downloads, compression or no compression.

"Generally speaking, with classical music there are so many physical discs that you can buy for $8 – uncompressed CDs with liner notes," says Eric Feidner, the president of ArkivMusic.com, an online classical CD store. "It doesn't make a lot of sense to spend the same amount or more for a digital download, which is inherently inferior."

ArkivMusic recently surveyed 4,700 of its customers about their purchasing habits. Nearly two-thirds said they don't listen to music on an iPod and three quarters have never purchased classical downloads. A full 82 percent have never bought music on iTunes.

Many industry analysts say that ultimately, stores like iTunes and eMusic serve the newcomer well, but are less geared to the enthusiast looking to delve deeper.

"Classical-music fans are deeper fans and they feel frustrated with being serviced by traditional retail," says David Card, a senior analyst at Jupiter Research. At the same time, he believes that classical represents a low-risk genre with which to experiment with DRM.

"Labels are concerned that DRM won't jump-start the market enough. If I'm a label, I'm not going to go DRM-free with the latest Shakira song. I'm going with some classical stuff and see if I can command that $1.29 premium."

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