# Unfairness in Classical Music Recording Industry



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Have you ever wondered; Why are there hundreds of recordings of [a work by a famous composer] when many of obscure composers' works, even their significant major works, never get recorded, and there's currently no hope in sight they'll ever get a recording in our lifetime? What justifies this phenomenon? Do we really need hundreds of recordings of the same work? Wouldn't it be reasonable to give a few of those slots to obscure composers?


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

More than a few obscure composers do get their shots even though most of them don't deserve it.


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## SuperTonic (Jun 3, 2010)

There are some labels that explore less well known composers' works (Naxos, for example or regional labels like BIS). But sadly their resources are limited and there are far more neglected composers than there are opportunities for recordings.


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## Malx (Jun 18, 2017)

The basic rules of economics mean that even those worthy independent labels who are likely to promote and support recordings of less commercially viable works have to record the 'biggies' to make the cash to proceed with these ventures - thats probably why there is a multitude of recordings of the same old cash cows.
Sadly $£$£$£$ are necessary for any commercial enterprise to succeed.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Hyperion has published/recorded hundreds of rare works. (Edit: even Michael Haydn )


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## golfer72 (Jan 27, 2018)

$$$


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

How to get a small fortune in the classical music industry - start a company which makes a lot of recordings of obscure works by obscure composers. Of course you have to start with a large fortune for this to work because it's doubtful that more than 5% of the recordings will earn back more than 5% of their investment.

It's worth noting that the up-front cost of recording and releasing a full orchestral CD is in the $50,000 to $100,000 range. Now think of how many CDs that has to sell to recoup the cost.


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## Andrew Kenneth (Feb 17, 2018)

There are also famous composers with neglected works.

This Mozart opera was last recorded 50 years ago in 1972 (included in Philips complete Mozart edition) ; there's also a 1956 recording on Myto.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Becca said:


> How to get a small fortune in the classical music industry - start a company which makes a lot of recordings of obscure works by obscure composers. Of course you have to start with a large fortune for this to work because it's doubtful that more than 5% of the recordings will earn back more than 5% of their investment.
> 
> It's worth noting that the up-front cost of recording and releasing a full orchestral CD is in the $50,000 to $100,000 range. Now think of how many CDs that has to sell to recoup the cost.


There's no way most classical labels recoup recording costs from direct sales. Especially today when CD sales are less than one tenth compared to 20 years ago. They have to rely on a number of revenue streams including licensing, royalties, concert promotions of their exclusive artists, and merchandising. And even at that I scratch my head when I look at all of the labels and the hundreds of releases in their catalogs.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Andrew Kenneth said:


> There are also famous composers with neglected works.
> 
> This Mozart opera was last recorded 50 years ago in 1972 (included in Philips complete Mozart edition) ; there's also a 1956 recording on Myto.
> 
> View attachment 178669


To be fair, that opera is a revised German language version of K.196, of which there are plenty of recordings. 
I'm not talking about "works that have been recorded, but are still neglected".
I'm talking about "works that never get any chance to be recorded and there's still no hope in sight it will ever in our lifetime".


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

DaveM said:


> Hyperion has published/recorded hundreds of rare works. (Edit: even Michael Haydn )


Thanks for the info, but I know every single recording ever produced of that composer's music. (telling you this just so we're on the same page, regarding my OP. )


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## Prodromides (Mar 18, 2012)

I agree with the OP. I have no urge to listen any further to Tchaikovsky or Beethoven. Rather, I still await album programs on composers such as Lars Johan Werle, Leonard Rosenman, Tolia Nikiprowetzky, Serge Nigg, Pierre Jansen, Antoine Duhamel, Don Banks, Daniele Amfitheatrof, etc.

I don't recall encountering any albums of concert works by Duhamel or Rosenman, for example, and most of the others tend to have a single work of theirs as a companion piece on multiple-composer compilation albums.

I'm sure there are hundreds of other composers as well - besides the handful I mention - whose situations are similar.


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## Neo Romanza (May 7, 2013)

Thankfully, I don't have to worry about any of this --- I just buy the recordings. There's always going to unfairness in the record industry. It's just the nature of the beast. There are labels like Naxos, Chandos, BIS, Hyperion, CPO et. al. that have done wonders for classical music, especially in regards to unknown repertoire. I think instead of pointing fingers we should be grateful that there are still some labels out there that have the capital to risk and this is no doubt to their releasing or reissuing one of their Beethoven symphony cycles for the umpteenth time. If this helps keep a label afloat (and not to mention the other things that Starthrower pointed out), then I'm all for it.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

hammeredklavier said:


> Have you ever wondered; Why are there hundreds of recordings of [a work by a famous composer] when many of obscure composers' works, even their significant major works, never get recorded, and there's currently no hope in sight they'll ever get a recording in our lifetime? What justifies this phenomenon? Do we really need hundreds of recordings of the same work? Wouldn't it be reasonable to give a few of those slots to obscure composers?


The reason your obscure composers are unrecorded is that no one cares about them apart from a few nerds - not the performers, not the listeners, not the impresarios and concert managers, not the press and academic establishment, not the traditional recording biz - nada, zero, zip, zilch interest. The cream always rises, as they say.

The industry has changed fundamentally over the past 10 years, because it’s now very cheap and easy to distribute a recording on, for example, Bandcamp, Spotify, YouTube, Soundcloud. So it’s no longer a question of large multinationals maximising profits. It is entirely due to a lack of interest.


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## Boychev (Jul 21, 2014)

Why would you need to release a CD when it's a rapidly disappearing format anyway? Get recording equipment and a camera. Find a work that has never been recorded. Find ANY conductor and orchestra that will play it and record them. Put the recording on a YouTube channel, open up a donations page, aggressively advertise as the "Unknown Classics" channel or something, maybe shake up a bit of controversy by talking about how big boring orchestras only ever play the same big old tired classics over and over again, keep pumping out content - at least a couple of videos per week. Performance quality wouldn't really matter since yours will be the only performance available of the work in question, all you need to make sure is that the recording is decent. Sell merch like Michael Haydn shirts maybe for extra revenue. Get Adam Neely and David Bruce and Nahre Sol and other internet celebrities to recommend your channel. Talk about how you're democratizing classical music. Put on pieces by LGBT composers and composers who aren't white men. There are many things you could do to expand and popularize those less-known works.

The "nobody cares about those composers" argument is problematic, I think. If the works aren't easily available, it's very hard for anyone to care about them in the first place. Your random person types 'classical music' in YouTube, clicks on the first video and 9/10 times gets the Moonlight Sonata or The Four Seasons or something like that. They don't know anything beyond that because nobody has marketed it towards them - or in the case of unrecorded works _there isn't even a product to market_.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

It's a not a phenomenon, it's the market. The reason mediocrities don't get recorded is no one will buy or listen to them. I read reviews every day in major CM publications of music by composers I don't know. Often the reviewers say they have unearthed a great new gem. When I listen to it I know why no one has ever heard of it. A current "phenomenon" is this vein is the 19th century American composer Florence Price, a black woman whose time has apparently arrived. To me much of her work is warmed over Dvorak. Some think the reason she was never played before is her gender and ethnicity. Those probably were reasons, I agree, but one our current fascination wears off she'll be forgotten again. Meanwhile the world will keep on playing, recording and listening to the top 200.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

It's all economics and marketing. I haven't seen stats lately, but back in the real heyday of CD sales, it wasn't unusual for a disk to sell only a couple of thousand copies world wide. So those companies hope for a big seller to help subsidize the cds with less interest. Back in the LP era, companies like Columbia were run by trained, classical musicians, in this case Goddard Lieberson. He knew the reality: if you want to record great classical music you really push the pop/rock side of things to underwrite the classical. That model worked for a long, long time. The classical side did it's share too: Arthur Fieldler and Andre Kostelanetz sold far more records than Charles Munch or Leonard Bernstein. We are very fortunate to have the extraordinary recorded legacy available and we need to support current outfits that scrape by but still bring us wonderful music. 

In the case of the really obscure composers, very often some foundation underwrites the costs. Sometimes the orchestra does it. I played in a recording that was released on Naxos a couple of years ago; the players got nothing other than bragging rights. We spent hours rehearsing and then two days recording to make sure there were no flubs. And the two viola concertos were very obscure repertoire.


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

_"In the case of the really obscure composers, very often some foundation underwrites the costs. _",

indeed, and governmental funds, but this seems to be less obvious to some.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

It's actually amazing how much comparably obscure stuff HAS been recorded, quite a bit already in the late 60s/70s (e.g. on Vox, Bayer Records and similar labels), an then later in the CD age on BIS, hyperion, ASV, cpo, etc. This is often financed by sponsors like foundations or public radio stations.
But you need some musicians (or label executives or very rich people convincing musicians by giving them money) to get sufficiently interested to record it, even before the question can be asked if such a recording will ever make money (or not lose so much).


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

hammeredklavier said:


> Do we really need hundreds of recordings of the same work? Wouldn't it be reasonable to give a few of those slots to obscure composers?


The answer to the first question is a resounding NO as far as I'm concerned. We are overloaded with recordings of the Beethoven symphonies, the New World Symphony, Tchaikovsky's 6th...and does anyone really believe that any performer today is going to do better than the greats of the past? I don't. It frustrates young musicians to no end that they realize they will not be able to lay down their vision of the Mahler 9th to posterity. I understand their frustration. There are some younger conductors who are staying away from the over-done standard repertoire opting to play more obscure literature and that's a good thing. Now, if some stupendous paradigm breaking new music reproduction system was developed, one that could actually replicate a live concert in a real hall in the comfort of your living room, then I can see a mad dash to go back and re-record a lot of things in the new format. That's what happened when the LP supplanted the 78, and then stereo came along and all that stuff in mono was re-done. Then came cds. What's next? Probably nothing.

The '80s and '90s were a time of tremendous exploration of the unknown music and three things timed it just right: a) digital recording made the process much easier, especially editing; b) there were enough record producers who were genuinely interested in unknown music (Marco Polo!) and c) after the fall of the Soviet Union, eastern European countries and orchestras were in dire straits financially and anyone could rent an orchestra for a recordin g session for a few hundred dollars. The orchestras were good enough but never world-class. Those days are long gone, too. Now we are blessed with the German radio orchestras which have the time and curiosity to record some odd stuff and we get to hear it on CPO.


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