# With So Much Music Available Where Do You See The Future of Classical Music Headed?



## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

When all the world had were LP's [and no glorious youtube] there was really not much music available. Today everything and anyone is available. So my question is, how do you see this affecting the future of classical music? One thing is certain, things are going to change, things _are_ changing, but how, in what direction, in what way? Share your thoughts.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Having everything available is great, in my opinion. In the old days, I couldn't afford to be adventurous. If I wanted to try out something new, I'd either have to purchase it outright and hope it was good (usually after waiting a week or so for the order to come in) or drive to my local university and take up a listening space or call in to our once-weekly classical request show. Most times I wouldn't bother. 

Now if I hear of someone or something (usually here), I can YouTube it or find it on Spotify and find out if I like it. I'm able to be more adventurous with my listening. And that has led to more purchases, because I'm more confident in what I'm getting.


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## mstar (Aug 14, 2013)

Music availability certainly has provided unprecedented opportunities for the modern world to access and frequently listen to a wide variety of music. Nevertheless, we must remember that the great majority of people today listen to popular music, and the youngest generations are generally oblivious to the classical music that is "out there". Thus, future development of classical music depends not only on accessibility, but primarily on how many people are listening to it.


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## Guest (Mar 5, 2016)

1) Listen to the Donaueschinger Musiktage recordings, from the earliest archival ones, to the 2014 box. Completely, and in chronological order.

2) Think about it.

I just finished doing that recently. That should give you a reasonable sense of where it's going in Europe, at least.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

I'm afraid I can't accept your premise. "When all the world had were LP's", there really was a lot of music available. Because the world also had radio. If you lived within range of some good radio stations, as most in larger metropolitan areas did, you had a splendid assortment of music, including classical. Nowadays there is even more music available, I concede. But there is a whole lot of other stuff out there, too, good and bad. Overall, I think that's a good thing, as long as we don't forget that surfing the 'net is not a substitute for giving our children a real education, including one in music.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

It is quite true that classical music choices were limited in the LP days (I was there). You could pick through the Schwann catalog so find LPs of the more popular works, but you could never tell which could actually be bought, or at least found at the record store, or were OOP, and so forth.

There is absolutely no comparison at all between the choices today and what we had then.


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## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

KenOC said:


> It is quite true that classical music choices were limited in the LP days (I was there). You could pick through the Schwann catalog so find LPs of the more popular works, but you could never tell which could actually be bought, or at least found at the record store, or were OOP, and so forth. There is absolutely no comparison at all between the choices today and what we had then.


But the real question is what does this large variety mean? Perhaps nothing? Perhaps we are all living in the shadow of that which has been eclipsed?

I fancy such a large variety may well mean the greater fracture of classical music. So far from contributing to its cultural success, perhaps it will contribute to its cultural failure? "After a while it all becomes the same noise."


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## Harold in Columbia (Jan 10, 2016)

The advent of the audio recording had the effect that fewer people learn to read music. The advent of digital music has the effect that techbros talk about what an awesome unspecified effect it's going to have.


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## Richard8655 (Feb 19, 2016)

A big impact to classical music is the medium. Not only are LPs gone (except for a tiny percentage of high-end audiophiles), CDs are also disappearing in favor of digital music you load on your iPod or home computer's hard drive. I don't think this bodes well for classical and instead encourages short popular pieces that have an obvious melody and deep bass that come across well over your earbuds. I might be overgeneralizing a bit, but that's one of the trends.


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## Harold in Columbia (Jan 10, 2016)

I wouldn't know, but I bet _Music for 18 Musicians_ works fantastically well through ear buds while on the go.

Probably _The Rite of Spring_ works pretty well too.

And any fast instrumental music from the High Baroque.

Basically anything that with a fairly consistently fairly intense degree of rhythmic activity.


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## Richard8655 (Feb 19, 2016)

I'm trying to imagine Rite of Spring on someone's earbuds while working out on a treadmill. You never know, I guess.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

I think we value more what is somewhat more difficult to get. In the era of LPs, limited funds, and the nearest record store as source, which may not have had much of a selection, there was, on my part, an attachment formed to my slowly growing collection of records and pieces. There were a few classical music stations to supply new ideas, and friends lent each other records--that's how I first heard the newly-issued Shostakovich 2nd piano concerto; a friend lent his copy to me and said you gotta hear this! Now supply (of recordings) can meet any demand; there's YouTube, etc. But it seemed a little more special when one worked harder to get it. Purely subjective. But the music itself remains.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

There will always be an awareness of classical music in general. My professor commented that there has been more, not less, performance and study of classical music (especially older music/periods) than ever over the last three decades. (She is over fifty years old).


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## Richard8655 (Feb 19, 2016)

ArtMusic said:


> There will always be an awareness of classical music in general. My professor commented that there has been more, not less, performance and study of classical music (especially older music/periods) than ever over the last three decades. (She is over fifty years old).


Not to disagree, but I'm sure that's what a music professor would say. They live in an insulated world of their own profession. The question is what's the trend in the average, typical world.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

*Concert Band Music*



Klassic said:


> When all the world had were LP's [and no glorious youtube] there was really not much music available. Today everything and anyone is available. So my question is, how do you see this affecting the future of classical music? One thing is certain, things are going to change, things _are_ changing, but how, in what direction, in what way? Share your thoughts.


I have no idea but for a band junkie it is great. During the LP era the only band music out on vinyl, other than Sousa marches, were the classic recordings of the Eastman Wind Ensemble. I checked my library and found I had over a two hundred recordings of concert band works including all of the band works of Percy Granger.

It can not be bad.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Richard8655 said:


> Not to disagree, but I'm sure that's what a music professor would say. They live in an insulated world of their own profession. The question is what's the trend in the average, typical world.


I find it preposterous to suggest that music professors live in an insulated world. My music school is heavily involved in new music, old music (research and performance), promoting music awareness and advice to leading orchestras locally, and the professors are at the very center of it all. Fact.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

Richard8655 said:


> Not to disagree, but I'm sure that's what a music professor would say. They live in an insulated world of their own profession. The question is what's the trend in the average, typical world.


I have lost track on how many times I have been slammed for citing what my music professors taught me.


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## Richard8655 (Feb 19, 2016)

I don't mean to slam anyone, just giving my opinion. Music professors associate with people and places of their profession. The question isn't what music processors think or know, but what the real world likes. It may be very different than what your music professors think. They don't necessarily have a pulse on the rest of society that doesn't attend music school.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Richard8655 said:


> I don't mean to slam anyone, just giving my opinion. Music professors associate with people and places of their profession. The question isn't what music processors think or know, but what the real world likes. It may be very different than what your music professors think. They don't necessarily have a pulse on the rest of society that doesn't attend music school.


That may very well be true, but ArtMusic said, "My professor commented that there has been more, not less, performance and study of classical music...." Music professors would seem to know more about the the number of performances and especially the study of music than other groups. After all, that's what they do for a living.


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## Richard8655 (Feb 19, 2016)

mmsbls said:


> That may very well be true, but ArtMusic said, "My professor commented that there has been more, not less, performance and study of classical music...." Music professors would seem to know more about the the number of performances and especially the study of music than other groups. After all, that's what they do for a living.


Yes, they say there may be more classical performances and study. But that's what they do for a living. That's what they hope is happening. Who's to say their view isn't biased? And why is it that because a professor says it, it must be true? Especially when the subject is about their own field? I'd have more faith in an objective sociological study that surveys all people's tastes, not what music professors say.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Klassic said:


> But the real question is what does this large variety mean? Perhaps nothing? Perhaps we are all living in the shadow of that which has been eclipsed?


An interesting question. If it costs less, is it worth less? Maybe, maybe, yes. Surely, in terms of "real" dollars, I would never pay for an album what I used to pay in the LP or early CD days. So for me, the value of the music has grown less.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Richard8655 said:


> Who's to say their view isn't biased? And why is it that because a professor says it, it must be true? Especially when the subject is about their own field?


Professor's statements obvious are not always true, but when they comment on their own field of study, I would generally believe them over those not studying that field for a living.



Richard8655 said:


> I'd have more faith in an objective sociological study that surveys all people's tastes, not what music professors say.


I assume you wouldn't survey plumbers, accountants, and lawyers to find out whether more journal articles are written about classical music today compared to 30 years ago. I would ask music professors.

I have to think we're talking about different things here.


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

I think the traditional models of production and distribution are going away unless governments around the world decide to allocate greater funding to the arts, which I can't see happening any time soon. Although the internet will continue to bring greater exposure to classical music, through free services like YouTube, no money goes to the performing artists through this means of consumption, so the music benefits but the industry does not. For this reason I can imagine that companies like Deutsche Grammophon are going to become too great a burden for their parent companies to sustain, and will be let go, their catalogues gradually entering the public domain, their platform of distribution then becoming one of the legal uses of BitTorrent and p2p services. 

I think it is entirely possible that the funding situation both for composers and for ensembles will return to patronage of one form or another, most likely on a per project basis via crowdfunding, and that live performances, especially of large scale works, will become increasingly rare owing to the high costs involved. It follows that computers will become much more popular for the purposes of realising what was previously the domain of orchestra, and that this technological paradigm shift will influence the direction in which new music develops. However, for all the openness and therefore widening of appeal this, in addition to the suggested models of production and distribution, implies, I can't imagine a time when composers will be just composers, they will have to find alternative means of supplementing if not generating income, because it seems that idiosyncrasy will also increase, and this entails in fact the narrowing of appeal.

Maybe this sounds like hell to you, I don't know, it's just what springs to mind when I think of music 50-100 years from now.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Crudblud said:


> Although the internet will continue to bring greater exposure to classical music, through free services like YouTube, no money goes to the performing artists through this means of consumption, so the music benefits but the industry does not.


I'm not sure about that. I read somewhere that Naxos, to mention one example, gets a significant amount of its revenue from Youtube. I assume that some of this trickles down to the artists, though I have no idea how much--though the percentage of money going to artists from a new cd purchase is also small.

I'd be interested if anyone has good facts and figures about how companies are profiting from free music streaming.


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

Blancrocher said:


> I'm not sure about that. I read somewhere that Naxos, to mention one example, gets a significant amount of its revenue from Youtube. I assume that some of this trickles down to the artists, though I have no idea how much--though the percentage of money going to artists from a new cd purchase is also small.
> 
> I'd be interested if anyone has good facts and figures about how companies are profiting from free music streaming.


If Naxos is making money from YouTube it's probably from redirects to their proprietary subscription service. Their YouTube channel has only a few hundred subscribers, which, unless they are bots that constantly refresh Naxos videos so they can watch and click adverts all day, aren't going to bring in much revenue. Naxos has a couple of other channels which, between them, have less than 100 subscribers. I don't know what Naxos is actually reporting, but I doubt they're using typical YouTube monetisation models if they're getting anything worthwhile out of it.


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## Alydon (May 16, 2012)

Klassic said:


> But the real question is what does this large variety mean? Perhaps nothing? Perhaps we are all living in the shadow of that which has been eclipsed?
> 
> I might be in the minority, or it might be looking back with nostalgia, but I believe I enjoyed my music as much if not more in the era of LPs and Radio 3. With a small selection of music available - the core repertoire as far as I remember in my parents house - each piece of music was relished and each new discovery was heard with wonder and gave you a very good grounding. Later it was a special trip into town to select another record - two if you were lucky buying one of the budget labels - DG was for millionaires or only purchased if it were a very special release. Also libraries were available to order sets of records to loan and you had to wait a week for them to arrive, and had the pleasure of keeping them for around three weeks when they were returned half worn out. Radio 3 was the greatest source of new discoveries, but now and again you would hear another wonderful work and be called away, never to find out what it was until you might hear it again. The Radio Times was another essential buy in the pursuit of new works, and finding out what was being played; the anticipation of looking forward to listening to a 'live' concert was sometimes unbearable.
> 
> ...


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## Richard8655 (Feb 19, 2016)

mmsbls said:


> Professor's statements obvious are not always true, but when they comment on their own field of study, I would generally believe them over those not studying that field for a living.


The issue here is we're not questioning music professors in their knowledge of their field - classical music. It's whether music professors are objective and knowledgeable about what the rest of society is doing and interested in. Would you ask a car engineer who spends his days at Ford headquarters whether the public continues to like buying cars? And expect an objective answer?



mmsbls said:


> I assume you wouldn't survey plumbers, accountants, and lawyers to find out whether more journal articles are written about classical music today compared to 30 years ago. I would ask music professors.


It's not objective to ask anyone in a particular profession to evaluate how the rest of society views their profession, be it plumbers, accountants, lawyers, or music professors. There's a built-in bias to always give an optimistic response since that's what they do and it's human nature. Talk to any sociologist or demographic statistician and they will confirm that asking people how popular their specializations are will almost always result in an inflated and exaggerated opinion. It requires a neutral third party for objectivity.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

ArtMusic said:


> I find it preposterous to suggest that music professors live in an insulated world.


I think that most folks, including professors, live in an insulated world. When I was in college, my world was relatively liberal and imbued with educational fervor. As a real estate appraiser, the world became much more conservative and empirical.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Richard8655 said:


> The issue here is we're not questioning music professors in their knowledge of their field - classical music.


That's exactly what I was talking about and what I thought ArtMusic was talking about. Clearly you and I are talking about 2 completely different things.


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## Richard8655 (Feb 19, 2016)

mmsbls said:


> That's exactly what I was talking about and what I thought ArtMusic was talking about. Clearly you and I are talking about 2 completely different things.


We might be talking 2 different things. But I think I'm very much on topic The OP posed this question: "Today everything and everyone is available. So my question is, how do you see this affecting the future of classical music?". It wasn't about music professors' knowledge but rather the future of classical music. I don't know how or why professors got into this.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I suspect that eventually the cheapness ("availability") of recorded music will make live performance more valued, not only in classical music but in all other genres as well. We'll see.

I also believe that the music of "Davos people" will in the future be fusions of classical music, jazz, folk, and world musics. That may have happened already. Anyway, that is going to transform classical music.


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## Harold in Columbia (Jan 10, 2016)

If the Davos people's taste is useful for anything, it's for identifying which styles that may have been fertile ground in the recent past are now completely dead. (Which, hey, is exactly what "fusions of classical music, jazz, folk, and world musics" is.)


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## Dedalus (Jun 27, 2014)

Crudblud said:


> If Naxos is making money from YouTube it's probably from redirects to their proprietary subscription service. Their YouTube channel has only a few hundred subscribers, which, unless they are bots that constantly refresh Naxos videos so they can watch and click adverts all day, aren't going to bring in much revenue. Naxos has a couple of other channels which, between them, have less than 100 subscribers. I don't know what Naxos is actually reporting, but I doubt they're using typical YouTube monetisation models if they're getting anything worthwhile out of it.


I don't know anything about what Naxos gets either. However, people like Valentina Lisitsa who take advantage of this technology, make their own page, create a lot of good content, etc... This seems to me to be one great direction for people to go in. If Naxos only has 100 subscribers it's because they don't have any good content. I'm sure (or at least assume) hundreds of recordings produced by Naxos are already on Youtube anyway, so they might as well just release them on their own channel so they can get some money out of it. Basically what I'm saying is that Youtube isn't going away any time soon, and I really think people and organizations should use it for their benefit rather than just let it hurt them.

Actually while I was looking for examples of classical pieces with millions of views, the first thing I typed in was Beethoven's 9th. We all know that's a super popular piece even, or especially, among non classical fans. There's a video with 2 million views, performance by Muti, and the channel is ChicagoSymphonyOrchestra. So I assume they're making some sum of money from that video. So yeah... It just seems like a good idea to go ahead and release things orchestras or performers do on youtube on their own channels so at least some of the right people get money. Most classical videos on Youtube are just by random content providers who upload this stuff and make money off of this stuff that other people composed/performed/produced.


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

Dedalus said:


> I don't know anything about what Naxos gets either. However, people like Valentina Lisitsa who take advantage of this technology, make their own page, create a lot of good content, etc... This seems to me to be one great direction for people to go in. If Naxos only has 100 subscribers it's because they don't have any good content. I'm sure (or at least assume) hundreds of recordings produced by Naxos are already on Youtube anyway, so they might as well just release them on their own channel so they can get some money out of it. Basically what I'm saying is that Youtube isn't going away any time soon, and I really think people and organizations should use it for their benefit rather than just let it hurt them.
> 
> Actually while I was looking for examples of classical pieces with millions of views, the first thing I typed in was Beethoven's 9th. We all know that's a super popular piece even, or especially, among non classical fans. There's a video with 2 million views, performance by Muti, and the channel is ChicagoSymphonyOrchestra. So I assume they're making some sum of money from that video. So yeah... It just seems like a good idea to go ahead and release things orchestras or performers do on youtube on their own channels so at least some of the right people get money. Most classical videos on Youtube are just by random content providers who upload this stuff and make money off of this stuff that other people composed/performed/produced.


Oh, I'm very positive about YouTube's role in cultivating interest in classical music among people who, say 10 years ago, wouldn't have had much opportunity or initiative to check it out, I think it's great. And you're right, plenty of great music is getting millions of views there, however, YouTube/Google doesn't pay people to have their videos watched, it pays people to have other people watch and click on advertisements attached to their videos, so if no one wants to bother with the advertisements it doesn't matter how many views Beethoven or whatever else manages to get.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Bulldog said:


> I think that most folks, including professors, live in an insulated world. When I was in college, my world was relatively liberal and imbued with educational fervor. As a real estate appraiser, the world became much more conservative and empirical.


I wouldn't generalize professors studying art. Their job is to be at the forefront of their field and art is one of those where modern development and research put them at the forefront. If it is insulated from economic struggles of the artistic world, that's a different story but I'm talking about the artistic development and understanding of art. The latter is on a higher level.


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## Haydn man (Jan 25, 2014)

There must come a point, if we are not already there when we reach saturation for many of the most popular works.
Music is now available via media that don't wear out and is copyable, hence it gradually has decreasing retail value. How many more Beethoven cycles do we need, with so many in the catalogue and more importantly available instantly to be compared with the multitude of others.
I feal the future belongs to virtual reality where my investment in classical music will be into 3D or some form of virtual concert experience, that is radically different from the traditional hi fi approach. Otherwise we might simply be left with a handful of orchestras performing to live audiences supplementing this with recording yet another cycle of the old reliables. I can just imagine a future where I am listening to the latest interpretation of Beethohen's 9th, performed backwards on the penny whistle and spoons which has now been shown definitively to be how the composer intended, thus making all that came before obsolete.


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