Missouri Classical Music News

those who thought the Web meant a new future for classical music were right. Classical music is thriving on the Internet. It is just that, like many other things on the Internet, it is not thriving in the form people in the 1990's or early 2000's expected it to take.

You want to read about classical music on the Internet? There are dozens of sites, from ArtsJournal.com, which links to articles in every area of culture, to NewMusicBox.org, which has demonstrated that a serious online music magazine can indeed endure (with, yes, streaming of concerts). You want to listen to classical music? For opera buffs, Operacast.com has a complete list of broadcasts from around the world that you can hear on your computer. Want a reference? Operabase.com unfailingly tells who is singing what where, and the Metropolitan Opera Archives online database (www.metoperafamily.org) is a treasure trove for fans. Want to talk about music? There are message boards for almost every aspect of music. . . .

And for anyone dreaming of creating a business plan around classical music on the Internet, here's another fact: it sells. By conventional wisdom, classical music accounts for 3 to 4 percent of overall recording industry sales. But on Apple's iTunes, the leading site for music downloads, classical music represents 12 percent of sales.

"The percentage has held steady," said Joseph McKesson, a member of the original iTunes team . "If I only had the venture capital to open an online classical music store!"

In a recent Billboard article that should be required reading for everyone in the industry, Anastasia Tsioulcas, the classical music columnist, described the thriving state of classical downloads. She listed several new classical releases with significant percentages of sales through downloads, like the violinist Janine Jansen's recording of Vivaldi's "Four Seasons": 73 percent of its sales were through downloads.