This channel and your person Dave makes me no longer feel alone in my passion for classical music. This is my safe spot that I return to regularly. Thank you
Dear Dave, I run a small classical music store in Italy. Last year was awful, to say it straight. With this video you really made my day. Thanks a lot.
Thank you, Dave for your forthright comments. I’m old enough to remember when major-label classical LPs were expensive and precious. My parents bought me Solti’s Götterdammerung for my 14th birthday. A major event. It cost $36. Almost as much as a bicycle. (Adjusted for inflation about $300 today, according to Google.) The sheer amount of stuff available today for very little money simply boggles the mind. And then there’s RUclips…
In high school, I went down to a record store on a tip from a classmate and bought that same recording, used but like new, for $18. Those were the days (mid-1960's.)
I scrimped and saved from odd jobs for a couple of months to buy the Solti Siegfried. Five full-priced discs was real money then. I bought it ahead of schedule, though, because there was a sale! Your Götterdämmerung was SIX discs. Back when a brand new Ford Mustang was only $2700.00.
I was also 14 years old in 1980 when my Mum offered to buy me a box set of Mahler symphonies. I went to great lengths to find out which of the available boxes - Bernstein, Kubelik or Haitink - was the one to buy. I opted for Haitink - £25, which now would cost with inflation £108! But deep appreciation and love of the records, the notes, the entire package (product). Nowadays with downloads, it's just another product which never gets the love it deserves because there is too much _quantity_ ; too many CDs, downloads, not enough time to listen" My 14 year-old self is shocked by the shallowness of what I am today!
Your point about our stinginess is very well made. When I first starting collecting music in the early 50s, a full price LP (e.g. HMV red label) cost a scintilla under GBP2 in the UK, which according to Google equates to about GBP 71 in present day money (roughly = USD 89 and EUR 82). I used to save up my pocket money for several weeks in order to buy 1 LP giving 60 minutes music at most. It would be unthinkable nowadays for me to pay EUR 82 (or even half that) for a CD giving up to 80 minutes of music. Very many of my CD purchases come at well under EUR 10, such as some single discs of Holmboe Chamber concertos, which I ordered yesterday. An extenuating circumstance is that I am a modest pensioner with another interest which is much more expensive than music, namely wine. Wine values have moved the other way, making many once reasonable purchases now totally inaccessible. Perhaps I should sell some wine in order to buy more music, especially from living musicians!
The real cost of the recorded medium has fallen greatly with one innovation after another, beginning with the LP record. I rememer when RCA Red Seal LP records had the digits "0498" or "0698", suggesting MSLP. In real cost, compact discs were quickly less expensive in real cost than $4.98 in the 1960's or $6.98 in the early 1970's. The CD used less material, but the packaging was more expensive. But that is technology, doing much the same with lesser cost.
A few personal rules: 1) I only burn a copy of a CD to use in my car; never to give away. 2) I listen to performances on-line; but, to determine if I want to buy it on CD. Never record off of the internet. A comment about opera gaining new audiences. People just coming to opera have a vision of what the work is like, based on the story and history of the work. So many new productions ruin this for newcomers. If I have listened to an opera, and then go to see it; I want something visibly related to what I expected. If I listened to Das Rheingold and then spend big bucks to see it for the first time; I do not want a stage full of storm troopers. I want forests, caverns, rainbows.
Yes indeed; Opera companies bitch and moan about not attracting new audiences while alienating their current ones and doing nothing to entice new ones; does anyone really believe That, pretending something visually ugly and stupidly conceived, is the way to go? Apparently so. There are creative ways to present things in a new manner without relying on some half baked,usually leftist view. And I say this as a leftist myself.
My friend has a nightmare tale of driving three hours to see Carmen, and all the singers were wearing jeans. It's become the new low we hold all productions to. Even the first Pagliacci I saw that was 1930s themed. Why??
I worked in a record store in the 80s-90s and many classical CDs sold for about $18, which is about $43 today. Many collectors (including myself) thought it was a bit excessive. Fast forward to today...The recent Ansermet 88 CD box at those prices would be almost $3,800. So today's prices don't seem so bad.
In 1987, I paid $17 for one of Claudio Abbado’s new Beethoven discs with the VPO. In 2021 dollars, that’s about $40. Since I was in grad school (Early American history), my income was near zero, but I wanted a few classical (= music without words) CDs for my new portable CD player to help me study and read and write. Ultimately, my interest in getting an advanced degree petered out, and I went to work in computer support, a new field at the time. It required no programming or engineering skills or degrees, and paid appropriately. 30 years into my career as a software support engineer (it’s now a career), I bought Abbado’s VPO box (58 discs) for $122.50, 3 times in 2021 dollars what it cost me for a single disc in 1987. My current income is infinitely higher than it was in 1987, so the example is not perfect. My point is that I am drowning in classical CDs, and watching your RUclips channel is a factor (I don’t blame you, because I’m kind of easily led that way). Do I listen to everything? Of course not. Do I occasionally listen to Abbado’s okay VPO Beethoven? Of course! Thank you.
All true and well said, and yet ..... the fact remains that we are living in a Golden Age of Classical music. I am happy to pay the asking price for concert tickets (partly because I feel I can see that a good chunk of it goes directly to the performers). I am also happy to pay £25 for a newly released CD if a certain gent by the name of Dave Hurwitz tells me it is the absolute Best. But meanwhile, I have developed this other habit, which is to buy and lots and lots of second-hand CDs because the same Dave Hurwitz tells me about them and they are so dirt cheap. Where does that leave me? Hypocrite? Stingy miser? Gullible consumer? Or just a plain ol' music lover who is happy with life?
Haha, well that's the challenge, isn't it? Getting Dave to read an emailed pitch or listen to an album appears to be a herculean feat (probably for all critics, considering the volume of submissions they field on a daily basis), even if the album is so good that, upon hearing, he'd immediately go out and write an enthusiastic review (or gush about it here).
Loved the post. I know I spend far too much money on classical music given my budget but I'll never regret it. One of the greatest joys. All I can say about the miserable, miserly, misanthropic, penny-pinching group pf cheapskates is... too bad! 😁 Thanks.
Thank you Dave for helping me get the best value for my money for 20+ years. I learned I could trust your reviews and I always enjoy hearing your thoughts on topics like this. I am a musician myself and I completely agree, the value in the good recordings is often way higher than the price point. This makes me think of Radiohead's experiment when they released their (excellent, highly anticipated) 2007 album In Rainbows for download and let fans set the price. Like a true sucker, I paid what I would have for the CD. Most fans downloaded it for free. What to do, when the actual value is great but the perceived value is $0?
$20 for a CD is a steal when it can be heard repeatedly for decades compared to what would be charged for hearing the performance once in the concert hall.
i absolutely agree. im from the younger gen z here, and usually i get my first listening experiences from spotify, and if i like the album i am hearing, i will buy physical product as a show of support for their work.
Not sure that’s a good comparison. I started out listening to CDs, and it took me years before I first set foot in a concert hall. A live performance really is something quite different from a recording, and for me, very few recordings come even close to the effect a live performance can have on you. A few concerts were absolutely live changing. Can’t say that about recordings. At least that’s my experience after thousands of recordings and a few hundred concerts.
One cannot simultaneously be a conspicuous consumer and purport to be an anticapitalist. That’s just someone who wants a free ride. All told, prices for just about everything in the classical music world are affordable save for the best concert seats at the fanciest orchestras. If we want to continue to hear good music, someone has to pay for it.
As thought provoking and entertaining as always. Alas, the problem of people not being prepared to pay for the true value of things applies to lots of areas besides classical music
Dave. Amazing video. Artists need to get paid and are entitled to make great livings. I for one pay for all my music - box sets, digital downloads etc. we are so lucky to live at this time. Amazing music. Affordable music. Great great video. All of us on here have an obligation to buy our music and support the labels and artists who are making this fantastic stuff.
I never complain about the cost of CDs and I buy lots of them. In fact, when you look at the cost per CD of most large boxes (conductor boxes in particular) it is incredibly inexpensive. The only issue is considering whether $25 for X CD is worth it when compared to $20 for A and B CDs. Indeed, I once paid over $80 for a 2 CD set that I particularly wanted and I don't regret it one little bit.
Couldn’t agree more! Besides the obvious payment of the players for their labor & time, you have to pay engineers & tech support, you have for the studios or halls. And taxes…. I’ve always payed for my LPs & CDs, and I still love to buy music and hear it home. Lately Warner Classics released lots of great CDs Box Set with budget prices, and some very expensive. It’s wonderful! Keep listening 🎵🎼🎶
Thank you. Well said, Dave. I taught college for a while and I admit that my favorite perk was getting a free desk copy every time I ordered a book as the class text. But I also realize why book publishers could no longer maintain that practice.
Got a chuckle out of the "small portions" Borscht Belt joke. In the film "Annie Hall" Woody Allen used it as a metaphor for life, and it works just as well here.
I helped keep in business Tower Records, Phantasmagoria, Yesterday & Today Records, Olsson`s Records and Books, and Joe`s Record Paradise. It was a list price blast! My favorite one was when I was flipping through the Biber section at Tower and came across a gold colored CD….”Missa Salis-Ber-something”. I`d not heard of it. If it’s in gold, must be good. I bought it, popped it into the player, heard two neat fanfares in the distance, turned up the volume some, an audible breath then whoosh……this titanic sonic tsunami plastered my ears to the wall. What a rush. I was hooked.
Thanks for this video. Artists have a difficult time already without us "appreciators" complaining about musicians who feed our love of classical music. It annoys me that classical music "lovers" upload entire videos or CDs to RUclips. The labels don't take those videos down, but harrass Dave? I can understand how such access can help with a new audience, but we shouldn't tolerate theft. Creators deserve our support. Besides, box sets that Dave has mentioned on this channel are steals at rarely more than $2 per disc.
Thanks Dave, excellent video. I’m not reluctant to pay substantial sums for streaming services, CDs, LPs and don’t resent it, these purchases bring me great joy. My hefty outlay for season subscriptions to the Seattle Symphony is another story. It has been TWO YEARS since conductor Thomas Dausgaard left and the symphony has still not hired a replacement or deigned to explain why not. Seems reasonable to me to expect a little reciprocity with one’s patrons.
10:40 I remember growing up in the 70s and going to the record store to buy an album. Do I buy two or three budget label albums, which were generally pretty decent, or a known artist on Deutsche Grammophone. Whatever I bought, overtime the records would develop “pops,” and if a scratch occurred they became unlistenable. Then came CDs, still the same choices, but they would last. They rendered vinyl recordings obsolete. Like it or not, CDs are now going obsolete, thanks to MP3 apps like Spotify. I have thousands of CDs at my disposal for about 11 bucks a month. I am a performing artists and I don’t know a classical listener who pays 20 or so dollars for one almost obsolete CD. I don’t know whether artists get their appropriate compensation through a medium like Spotify. I hope they do, but I will never go back to spending 15-20 dollars on a CD.
Iv'e followed your advice on CDs and enjoyed a lot of great music. Although I've steered clear of the big boxes, I have acquired some of the smaller ones. I have, however, been tempted to order the Cleveland Quartet box and it will arrive any day now. So I expect that I won't surface for a long time. Best wishes for the New Yeat.
Thank you, Dave, for another intriguing video. New classical music CDs in New Zealand cost $30.00 each on average and I'm still happy to pay that for a recording I hope I'm going to treasure. I admit I am in the position where I can afford to pay that whenever I want to and I realise that many people can't. There have been rare occasions when I've been disappointed in what I've bought, but I suspect that applies to most people.
Streaming won't save the classical music industry. In the streaming world only the big stars make money from streaming, meaning millions of streams. In my opinion buying CD's or downloads is the way to go (and provide meaningful information in the tags). When CD's came out they cost NLG 50 (about €25) or$27.50 in 1982, nowadays they are even cheaper and it's 40 years later. This isn't sustainable. I agree with David, we have to pay for the quality we get!
I came along at the time of CD re-recordings, and always thought that a video re-recording might be the next wave, but it never happened. Of course you are right about 'free' streaming. In many ways the lack of profit in the recording industry means that live performances are back as the most important income stream. I also agree about the price of a cup of coffee - if I buy a used CD, that's what it costs - being so easy to justify [for me]. I do worry that the 'bums on seats' programming doesn't work. I'm not going to turn out for yet another Beethoven live cycle, but I would turn out for rarely performed works - not obscure 'forgotten' pieces, as those are usually junk, but big pieces that aren't lollipops, maybe Ravel Piano Concertos, or a Shostakovich 2, 3 or 4. By the way - and thank you for allowing my sudden and multiple comments without taking offence - the classical music industry you frequently allude to means, I think, in your terms, the recording industry. Personally I'm all in favour of letting the recording side bounce back off any reinvigorated live performance resurgence. Keep them coming. Your videos are really entertaining, and equally informative.
I agree with everything you said, Dave. My purchasing pattern is very much to the benefit of the industry, I believe. I subscribe to qobuz, Apple Music and frequently buy SACDs. Not having unlimited funds either, I justify those additional physical purchases to myself using the multichannel layer that I don’t get from streaming, while actually I only want to own great recordings. Then I also purchase CDs from time to time, while I haven’t found a proper justification for said behaviour yet 😊 I’d say you are directly responsible for the outlay for quite a number of titles that I’d never have come across without you. I cherish each and everyone of them.
Sadly, I have to agree with you. For me, a live performance is a small luxury that only happens once a year or two. When I hear the orchestra, I hear and appreciate the fruit of years of practice and hard work, and I also realise how little the players are paid. The CD's seem expensive, but then I bought a Kpop CD for my niece for Christmas - $35 for 35 minutes of music!! Now I remind myself that classical music is a bargain (and I'm thankful that none of my kids want a Swift concert ticket!).
I grew up buying music CDs in the early to mid 90s, and those tended be 15 dollars or so. This leaves me with two general attitudes: I want to own my music and can't stand subscription fees; and I don't think paying $10-13 for a FLAC download from Presto Classical is outrageous at all (many older and budget releases are in the $8 neighborhood as well). When you add to that the bargain prices for CD box sets (often in the range of $2-$4 per disc), I don't think there has ever been a better time, at least financially speaking, to be a fan of classical.
Thanks for asking, but no, I have no plans to see the movie or review it. I really just don't care about composer/artist biopics, and I really don't like it when the music appears as an adjunct to some theoretically more important topic.
I got sucked into this attitude when Naxos CDs jumped overnight from £7 to £11. I still kept buying the CDs but just less of them and I was perhaps less experimental with new composers as a consequence. Back in the day I bought all the unknown Bax symphonies partially due to price and partially due to the Classics Today 10/10 Dave Hurwitz stickers. I had little money then. I have more money now and would happily pay for classical CDs if our record stores actually sold any. HMV are a joke with their classical section. It is miniscule with almost no new recordings at all unless it's Andre Rieu. Independent classical CD stores have all died and the last decent CD section in an Edinburgh bookshop has been ripped out. There's almost nowhere in Scotland now to have the luxury of moaning about the price of a CD. Almost everything needs to be ordered online now. Even when visiting London I found a decent classical section in one bookshop but that's it. Oxford Street, the home of HMV and which in the 90s had the enormous HMV and Virgin megastores does not even have a music store at all. The price of CDs is almost minor compared to getting your hands on one in the first place. I'm beginning to sound like my grandparents moaning about the end of a golden age.
I usually stream my music but over the years I have found some great classical CDs at thrift stores - they are often early digital recordings which I know aren't always the best sonically but still some great performances.
Many years ago, I turned up for a piano lesson with a newly purchased copy of the manuscript of book 1 of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier. My piano teacher was shocked at how much it cost. I could not believe that someone could hold something in their hand of infinite value and think such a thought.
Any chance you can do a video on the ASV label and potential options to re-issue their stock, especially their "Gaudeamus" line which is basically what Veritas was to Virgin and L'Oiseau Lyre was to London/Decca? Please do a video on the ASV label.
I pay for records and downloads as I'm old-fashioned, and because my collection has grown to where I may not live to listen to it all, so streaming would seem like a distraction. All my music-loving and audiophile friends and acquaintances use streaming services, I realize I'd have more choice (albeit not necessarily my favorites) and probably be spending less overall…
Your money-back discussion resonates specially when it comes to concerts where artists cancel (be it conductors or soloists). It's a bit of talking out of both sides of your mouth. Organizations market the concerts by putting the artists' names front and center (not the repertoire) but when the artist cancels they just say "oh, nevermind, we're showing someone just as good". So what is it? Do you want me to attend the concert BECAUSE of artist x or does it not matter at all in which case why was that the selling point to begin with?
In my hometown, they had the chutzpah to replace an orchestra that cancelled due to travel restrictions with a saxophone quartet. No refunds. It’s a joke sometimes. Then again, when certain people are scheduled, I already expect them to cancel.
Perhaps the hypocrisy is strongest among the jaded. When I think about my initial plunge into Russian concert music back in the late 1980s, I remember that I paid $20 to $35 per CD for less than stellar Melodiya recordings. And I was ecstatic to even be able to hear works I’d only read about! It seemed a bargain to rummage through bins at every Tower Records location I could find and locate even one recording of a work on my ever growing list of obscure works I read about in Grove’s or Rimsky’s _My Musical Life_. It was hard work to research the first and second Russian Nationalist Schools by buying out of print books from a mailing list, visiting university libraries, and gleaning scraps from liner notes. That taught me to be thankful and happy to pay for good (and even historically noteworthy mediocre) music.
Take, for example, that exact box of Bach Cantatas by Rilling, the one sitting just over your left shoulder. I got it for ca. $80 at Amazon a few years ago. Okay, now it's listed for $108; it's still a screaming bargain. Less than $!.50 per disc, and people still complain about the price!
I'm pretty sure that the only time I ever paid $25 for a CD was for a fundraising charitable enterprise. Usually a noncommercial historical release. The really high-priced music now is, ironically, on vinyl, those heavy virgin vinyl repressings. But when cd came out, $16.99 was a not uncommon price, and we paid it. I think people ought to count their blessings. During the 1930s, the Depression mind you, a full-priced classical disc--generally with not much more than eight minutes of music cost $2. A Tchaikovsky symphony would have been $10. That's over $180 now, yet ordinary music lovers managed to buy them. The only free music was on the radio. Heard once and never again.
I see this with classical vinyl collectors especially: they're so used to inheriting boxes full of old classical LPs (usually the collections of people who died, and their wife just wanted to get rid of them) for like $0.25 each that they're offended if they're asked to pay more than $1-2 for a record. (Never mind that a new vinyl album might have a total manufacturing, (bulk) shipping, mechanical license royalty, etc. cost of maybe $10 per album to the record label or performers who paid to put it out, not even counting the hall rental, recording, mixing, mastering, photography, writing, graphic design, project management, marketing, promotion, advertising, distribution, etc. costs.) They must think record labels or performers are making $29 profit on a $30 record, when in fact they're actually losing money. Most of those collectors are well in the upper half of the income spectrum, so it's not like they couldn't afford to actually pay a reasonable price for an album. Even CDs aren't necessarily that cheap to manufacture, when you include mechanical licenses for copyrighted works (again, not to mention all the other costs of making the recording, the cover art, and all the rest). One that I put out has a gross cost of around $4.50 per (2-CD) album just for manufacturing and mechanical license costs. Oh, and there's this: in around 9.5 months, I've sold a total of barely over 50 CDs online (plus around 30 paid downloads), despite a number of positive reviews (including from Classics Today). People must think these things are flying off the shelf, but getting someone, even a diehard fan of the artist, to actually shell out even a single dollar is like pulling teeth. (I have heard the average sales of a classical album is around 100 copies, so the result isn't too surprising.) And no, Spotify, Apple, etc. do not make up for it. I think the average total among all those has been maybe around $20-30 per month.
This didn't resonate with me. If I want something, I buy it at the price offered. I wouldn't qvech if it costs a fair bit. But, true, it often seems inexpensive. Is that MY fault? Should I add a tip?
I bought a lot of Naxos CDs - plus a ton or two of others; whenever I had a bit of money, it went on CDs, and books. Naxos had work I'd not seen before, with orchestras I'd not encountered before - even the least stellar were good value for money; then I subscribed to the BBC's classical music magazine, which had a CD with every issue (probably still does, I had to cancel when I just physically ran out of space). You will be impressed - no, no, you will - to read that I have never yet complained about the cost of classical music CDs; yes, I listen to classical music, and some other, on RUclips - got to confess to that; but that's partly because I don't always know what to look out for; and I like to listen to music I may have on disc, but not with the performances on offer here, which can differ for better or for worse. So I plead a firm "in the sense of the indictment, I declare myself not guilty", just as they all did at Nuremberg but with, I think, a touch more justification. But for Naxos, I might never have encountered the organ music of Scheidemann, Muffat, Rheinberger, Dupré, to start with - so trawling their display stands, in a local bookshop, was exciting - and the price didn't hurt either. I'm grateful to them.
Of course I don't want to pay for it: I already paid for it. I paid for it when it was on LP, then I paid for it on cassette, then I paid for it on CD, then I paid for it on Apple's crummy mp3s, and now I'm expected to pay for it on streaming? Haven't these guys ever had enough of my money?
Why on earth did you pay for crummy mp3s if you already had the CD? Other people are not to blame for that kind of choice, if you live somewhere where format-shifting is allowed (most places these days).
The whole "I'm not paying for it because it should be free" issue sadly does not just involve classical music. It has become an issue in pretty much all mass media - music, TV, movies, books, games. And in the internet age, the ability to just make a few clicks and download something has changed the way all media is consumed. The market needs to adapt to the changing mood of the consumer or it won't survive. Classical music as a business and industry isn't going anywhere. Neither are pop music, literature, film, television, and so on. The problem is that when the product is considered a service, the consumer does not have the ability to retain a copy of what they have paid for. I fear that the industry may push back so much that physical media may indeed become such a boutique item as to become too expensive for the average person, therefore encouraging illegal downloads. There is a happy medium somewhere.
I don't think the classical music crowd is more miserable about CD prices than any other crowd, everybody wants more music for as little as they have to pay, that's why most frequent listeners are on streaming platforms. Also, symphonic music is just a small portion of classical music that's published, and I'm not sure that symphony orchestras were able to rely on record sales for a significant portion of their income even in the pre-internet era. Gone are the days where artists from pop to classical through rock could rely on record sales to sustain themselves, that's why the entire industry is reinventing itself and that's why your initial idea, Dave, about the possibilty of getting one's money back or to attend another concert is one of the steps in the right direction for a more reasonable economic model and marketing policy.
I like having the booklet with commentary and track listings that actually make sense. But the sheer availability of music through, say a streaming membership, is amazing, especially when you can link the sound to your stereo system.
Dave, I agree completely. You know I am a big fan of vinyl. I buy LPs too add to my collection and I am more than happy to pay for them. I don't like to stream music because it doesn't sound as good. I am happy to pay for the real deal.
Not only can you purchase a top performance for very little money; you can listen to that performance as often as you like. It's like having your own personal orchestra. Think of how much it cost Prince Esterhazy to employ his own orchestra!
It was a great hobby for a long time. My wife could never understand why all these people came.over to look at my records, but we rarely played them. I tried to explain than some are not to be played, like a sealed.RCA shades dog . She said "you collect records but not music". The money we all spent, only to have them become pretty worthless. Especially CDs. Could not give them away.
One of the last remaining classical and jazz music stores in the south of England closed 5 years ago and I asked the owner why he was going and he said ''cos you guys who come in for a coffee and a chat check out my prices and then go home and download it for free'' He then proceeded to show me how file sharing sites coupled with various free software programmes enabled anyone to obtain complete box sets of Beatles, Stones, Taylor Swift, Bernstein and Karajan etc. etc. My jaw hit the floor... Hollywood films anyone? Netflix or Amazon productions? just at the click of your mouse... Even new classical releases can be had on yt
Guilty as charged. I know several persons who don't look at price tags. A revelation. But it isn't me. I have been a classical performer and totally appreciated getting paid but haven't had the illusion that I could make a living at it.
Before recorded performances existed, the only way for performers to make a buck was live performances, and many of the public never had the chance to hear great orchestras at all. What a wonder it was then to be able to hear the greatest players in the world, especially once truly high fidelity stereo recordings were available for the cost of an hour or two of common labor wages. After Edison, and before the internet, it was a golden age for record companies, and orchestras. Now were back to the concert hall being the primary revenue source for musicians. Maybe that isn't so bad. Nothing is quite like hearing the orchestra playing right there in front of you, along with experiencing it all with a group of others and the social element of a night out on the town. Rock and Pop musicians always used to say "you go on tour to promote the record", now it's the other way around, you release a recording to promote the tour. it's good for orchestras to release videos on RUclips, and maybe some clever marketing can get people into the concert hall Plus, I like owning a copy of the physical media. I know it will always be there, unless the house burns down. haha I've been willing to pay for that over the years, and I still do. I know compact discs make for more efficient storage, but the size of the vinyl record sleeve, cover art and liner notes are so much more enjoyable to read. Still, most of my music is on CD, so there it is.
in the way of a humble suggestion, I would urge the classical music industry consider investing in a campaign to reach out in an effort to gain a larger audience as many of DO understand the value of what is created. Making classical music interesting, fun and exciting, especially to our youth, in schools, from early on, as I believe was once a thing in years past. Otherwise the support more often than not (and not just the purchase of CDs, but in concert programming) comes from the patronage of the well off. Bring Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, etc. into a larger of the population. I recall learning about the masters and their works was part of a required curriculum in elementary school. That could be a way to see a turn in the situation. Or perhaps I am being unrealistic and oversimplifying the situation to suggest such? Would that ultimately generate more sales (not only CDs but concert attendance) of which would create greater growth in the longer term?
We need to give recordings of classical music to loved ones. Doesn't that make more sense than giving "designer" clothing and handbags? We also need to give duplicate recordings to the public libraries
When I worked in music shops starting in the early 90s, new-release CDs cost $15-20. Today, new-release CDs cost... $15-20. I have no idea why normal economics don't apply here, but we're all sitting on top of an amazing bargain. "There are very honest people who do not think that they have had a bargain unless they have cheated a merchant." - Anatole France
I will gladly pay for a recording - I do so even twice, in a way: once as a download an on Presto as a stream. But the industry is also consciously sabotaging themselves by releasing that same, brand new recording for free on RUclips.
There may be a good point to this, that maybe everyone would be a little better off financially if they didn't make anything available on streaming. On the other hand, even before streaming existed, classical albums were money-losing loss-leader promotional efforts. The ability to reach new audiences via streaming is too big of a benefit to give up even if it barely pays anything, and the difference in sales of CDs is probably not as much as you might expect.
@@ModusVivendiMedia That's not the problem - it is just that it's difficult to make a case for wanting to sell a CD or paid stream if you offer the same content for free.
@@bomcabedal I do understand that, but I suspect sales of most classical CDs would only go up very slightly, if at all, if the albums weren't available on streaming or RUclips. I suspect that's not really the problem, and withholding the music from streaming wouldn't be the solution. Most people still wouldn't bother buying those albums, they'd just go stream someone else's album.
@@ModusVivendiMedia I think we're talking about different issues here: you (sensibly) describe the interest of the industry, I'm most concerned how it comes across to the consumer. I also think that withholding music from streaming is not a solution: that train left the station some time ago. But you can't credibly charge customers on one platform and offer it for free on another. I am aware that most recordings are not dependent on sales at all, but in that case, just offer them for free everywhere.
@@bomcabedal I think I see what you're getting at, but I disagree that you can't credibly charge for recordings in one place but not in another. First, all the forms of accessing the music are supposed to result in payment (Spotify's recent removal of royalty payments for tracks receiving fewer than 1000 streams in a rolling 12-month period notwithstanding). Streaming just does it on a different time scale, one tiny chunk at a time, gradually accumulating over years. Second, many if not most people buying albums are not doing so in order to gain access to the music, but rather to support the artist. Apparently over 50% of vinyl record buyers do not even own a turntable. It may be similar with CD buyers. Third, depending on the aggregator or distributor used, it may cost nothing to put tracks on streaming (of course neglecting one-time recording costs etc.), but it does cost money to manufacture CDs, secure mechanical licenses, bulk ship the CDs, provide for an online storefront and fulfillment, etc. So charging nothing would be compounding the economic losses, one CD at a time. While these projects are not usually expected to make money, they are also not expected to incur ongoing negative cash flow! (On the other hand, "free CD" offers have been talked about as effective ways to get a lot of people to actually order them, so may be worth exploring as a promotional strategy.)
Totally agree. I put myself through university in retail jobs and have no time for the entitled whining about having to pay for something. I don't like downloads and am resigned to spending more to buy physical product (CDs - having grown up in the vinyl era of crackles and pops throughout the quiet patches I just roll my eyes at talk about its superior sound). If CDs ultimately dry up (which they won't: their demise has been predicted for a decade and they keep coming out ...), well, the CDs I have bought will see me out.
I'll don the white scarf of irredeemable chutzpah and project my own complaints on to the industry at large. The problem I see is that there just isn't one classical music buyer. 90-95% of the stuff that's issued in any given month has little to no appeal to me, and the people to whom it does appeal are drowning in the 32768th Beethoven cycle released this year. There is value in scarcity as you've pointed out before, and while I understand the desire to perform these works, not everything needs to be recorded. On the other hand, finding the stuff I actually do care about is a giant pain in the ass. Often it's a passion project of some performer or conductor and is being sponsored by some government institution. This type of stuff goes one of two directions: either it goes out of print and becomes impossible to find after a few years, or it ends up on the bargain rack. In the former case I'll end up paying $30-40 a disc for it, but I'd guess that very little of that actually goes to the label or the performers. What I'd love to see is some kind of pre-committed crowdfunding mechanism whereby I could signal my desire to pay for new recordings of works by Schnittke or Penderecki or whoever, and the performers/conductors/institutions could put their hats out and find the paying customers before actually producing the recording. Obviously that leaves me on the hook if they produce a crappy recording, but when it comes to this kind of music beggars can't be choosers, and usually the commitment that the artists bring to these passion project guarantees at least a decent result. I don't think the industry is dying, but there are unhealthy parts. The number of major 20th century works where my CD shelf has the entire set of recordings - and that's usually just one or two - suggests that there's a ways to go before the industry gets out of the rut of overproducing the same old repertoire and into a mode of producing new recordings that actually add value. For the rest of the frankly disposable recordings that are being produced these days, those might as well just go to a streaming model.
One way to fix the classical record industry is to get rid of free RUclips content. Years ago, if you read a critic saying certain recording is great, if you want to hear it, you'd need to buy the CD/record/cassette, etc. I was a poor student with limited budget back then. I was following a music critic in Hong Kong who said Carlos Kleiber is the greatest conductor ever. So I saved all my pocket money to purchase Carlos Kleiber CDs which are more expensive than records made by other conductors. I don't have money to buy many different CDs to compare the performance, and have to just trust whatever the critic says. Now you can listen to anything on RUclips for free. Why would I buy any physical product or even pay for streaming download?
The market exists for live shows. the market for recorded product has declined, owing really to the law of diminishing returns in the sense that most standard repertoire has been recorded literally hundreds if not 1000+ times. how many times can the average consumer actually listen to Beethoven 5?
@@TheAboriginal1, this, of course, in no way contradicts my statement. Paying musicians to conduct their business live and in public is part of the market to which I'd referred. (I'm actually Artistic Director of a small concert series in a large midwest city. My org's existence depends upon this.) "Classical" concert attendance seems increasingly occupied by gray hairs. I hope it's sustained as the hairs that aren't currently gray become such. Acquisitions to my personal CD-LP library are repertoire driven. Like every other classical collector of physical media, I have a couple favorite Beethoven 5s on my shelves, but they were acquired literally decades ago. That's not the kind of stuff that I personally buy when I go shopping. My last couple sets of acquisitions, e.g., included CDs (and a 2-LP album) devoted to the music of Xaver Scharwenka, Castaldi and Pellegrini, Tinctoris, Johannes de Lymburgia, Stradella, Anna Clyne, Dorothy Howell, *Johann Christoph Friedrich* Bach, and *Imogen* Holst. Another of my frustrations is that concert programs are still filled with repertoire like Beethoven 5 and disconnected from my personal library acquisitions. I doubt that will change anytime soon.
your talk of no one willing to pay is not related just to classical , I know people who only listen to oldes, rock, pop and they won't pay either. Then they bitch about the price of a live concert. How else can these people get paid 'Next people will just photograph a starving painters work and walk away .
As someone who performs music and is on the board of a non-profit devoted to music, it seem that there is a big problem with generating audiences for live performances. When it comes to paying to see my local symphony orchestra in San Francisco, I'm part of the problem. My choice is to decide whether to pay $100 for two mediocre seats for a possibly mediocre performance, or purchase a box of stellar CDs at roughly $2 a CD that I can listen to at what ever volume I want, pause when I need to pee, get up and dance if I feel like it (or air conduct) and replay it whenever I want. So now I hardly ever go to the symphony, and my CD collection has grown by the thousands in the last decade.
Dave, great video, but... you say "Come on, nothing is for free". Are you sure? I can find any music (and I mean, ANY music) I want for free on the web, most of it on the very platform we use to communicate right now. If we put aside for a moment easy moral characterizations, the basic facts of human psychology are simple: giving something to people for free, and then expecting most of them to buy it out of sheer appreciation for the "hard work of the artists" borders either to naivety or ignorance of how human nature works (and this is not a comment against you, but against more simplistic versions of this argument that I have been recently exposed to). And I am not excluding muself from this, neither should anyone exclude him/herself. If anyone says, "You are wrong, I end up buying many records I hear on RUclips", I would ask them to count carefully what is the number of records they end up buying as a percentage of all the music they consume for free and what are the consequences for the industry: none. You yourself gave away one of the very reasons that people don't buy anything. If the industry and the artists find money anyway by other routes to keep recording and publishing more and more records, one more incentive to buy those records (that is, to support the artist to make more of them) is gone. People listen for free, artists find the money to record anyway, and everybody is happy. Or perhaps not. Of course, the counter-argument might be that the reason they give it for free is exactly because no one is willing to pay for it in the first place. But whether the chicken made the egg or vice versa, the objective result of providing almost all music for free without any tangible consequence on the ammount of stuff produced, makes most people more and more accustomed to getting what they want for free and reluctant to pay for it. Instead of conceiving the issue in moralistic terms (who is or is not a hypocrite) perhaps it would be more fruitful to examine the objective effects of both the free internet availability of cultural products and the subsidizing system and other peculiar mechanisms of funding that disassociate the sales of products from the capacity to continue their production. You have touched the latter issue frequently in videos about the close bond between the serialist avant-garde and the academy. Would they be able to (pretend to) be so indifferent to the public's acceptance of their music if their income wasn't already secure from another source? Sorry for this short essay. I hope you are not annoyed by the tone, I am just a bit bothered by the current situation of first giving everything away for free and then accusing people of being hypocrites for not buying most of it.
Well, the time you waste sitting through ads is not money, so it is still free from the consumer's point of view, and if you can tolerate the ads, you don't need a subscriptipon. As to your last point, that is actually correct and I forgot to consider it in my comment. It is true that free product on the web may result in some cases in more purchases, so, yes, you do have a point.@@SO-ym3zs
Of course we don't expect "most people" to buy a CD or paid download, but if even 1% of the social media followers of a particular artist (many of whom are supposedly "fans" of that artist) would buy that artist's album within a few months of release, plus some number of classical recording collectors who buy unfamiliar artists's albums based on positive reviews, it would be a huge improvement over the current reality. (The true figure seems closer to 0.1%.) It must be said that being the lead review on the Classics Today homepage DID appear to generate a flurry of maybe 15 additional sales over a few weeks that probably wouldn't have happened otherwise, so thanks Classics Today!
Artists could easily fix the problem with differentiated proprietary repertoire, like pop artists. If one orchestra had a massive crowd pleaser that only they could play and record, they could sell the recordings at full price, and people would buy because there would be no competition for that piece. But that would involve modern composers and orchestras shedding their elitism and creating original listener-friendly repertoire. Which, of course, they won’t. So instead we keep buying non-proprietary repertoire, which anyone can record and hypersaturate the market. So I proudly enjoy my dirt- cheap CDs and will continue buying CDs only when they’re dirt-cheap, which they all eventually will be.
But there are compulsory mechanical licenses allowing for the recording of copyrighted works without needing to ask permission (just pay the appropriate fee to the copyright society or collection organization, like ASCAP or BMI), so exclusivity only lasts, at best, until the first recording comes out. Of course, composers could decline to rent scores to any other groups, but I doubt many would want to participate in a situation where only one ensemble in the world gets to perform their music, unless that ensemble was paying a lot for exclusivity. And I doubt any ensemble would, because I expect the value of that exclusivity in the classical world is usually going to be $0.
Amen. I get so tired of people complaining that x or y piece of classical music is too sacred to be interrupted by ads on RUclips, and then a chorus of people agreeing. Its something like $15 a month (I cant remember but its fairly nominal) and you can listen to all kinds of music and access all kinds of content for that. Its the biggest bargain in entertainment, by far. Of course, I hope nobody from the Google pricing department reads this.
An irony here, as you suggest toward the very end, is that capitalism is behind the hypocrisy you’re discussing. I absolutely agree that artists should earn real money for their work. When I was younger, if you wanted music you had to buy it on cassette or CD. You had to be choosy about what you could buy, you had fewer records, and you tended to know the ones you had front to back. And they had that gestalt effect: they were wholes. This applied to rock records too. A record with a narrative, say Pink Floyd’s The Wall, was followed across four sides on two discs and was the sum of its parts, a totality. The change in the business model to streaming has eroded this personal and intimate relationship to recordings for many people, and especially for the youngest generations. For them, music is simply assumed to be free, and as a result there is little attachment to any treasures one owns. The figure of the high school kid with the amazing record collection-the one who makes amazing mix tapes-is long gone. Now it’s just this morass of “content.” But that is the intersection of technology and capitalism too. How can any company fight this tide and compete? If something isn’t on Spotify or iTunes, 666 other versions of the work likely are. That’s one stratum of capitalist enterprise swallowing another. I say this not in some broadly anticapitalist way, but rather as an observer of this particular injustice done to those who make the music we love. I will, however, add one political aside. What do we spend on defense per year? The word “trillion” is involved. What do we spend on the performing arts per year? How do we support our heritage and culture? How well do we fund public schools to provide arts education? Heavens forfend that our citizenry should be educated in civics and aesthetics, not just the STEM topics that we presume are the future of virtually all wage labor. Give someone no tools or context to recognize the virtues of complex things with histories and opera looks like the most affected antiquarian horror a kid can imagine-I once saw a Twitter post saying “can you imagine liking music with strings? 😂”-while Kanye “I Love Hitler” West and the cretinous Jason Aldean and others flog their product, sell out arenas, and keep the proles humming along. Technology has made possible a music industry where all but the most visible and contemporary artists are cut out; politicians have worked hard to deracinate culture. The combination is deadly. Not because classical music will die out, of course-but because it is so marginalized, especially among the young, that the industry itself must behave as it does to support itself.
I am having a hard time imagining how you would decouple neoliberalism from at least a particular practice of capitalism. Are you suggesting the ideological stuff here is divorced from profiteering?
@@michaelmasiello6752 I think the literature tends to understand neoliberalism to be a subset of capitalism whereby the market logic permeates all other aspects of life. So everything and everyone becomes valued (or devalued) according to whether it contributes to economic growth or efficiency. Thus you get the devaluation of arts, culture, etc. Capitalism, in contrast, just refers to a particular way of aggregating decisions via a free price or market system. I don’t think capitalism necessitates wholesale ideology or the permeation of the market logic everywhere. Post-war capitalism in America, for instance, was fully compatible with the liberal arts in higher education and with the support for and celebration of the arts (e.g., JFK and the NEA) - probably, much more so than in the communist world. What I am referring to as neoliberalism was a phenomenon that really began to spread beginning in the late 1970s. Adam Smith wouldn’t have wanted to see the market logic permeate everywhere.
As my dear father always said: price is an issue for buyer if they are unconvinced of the value of the product. Buying products insures that companies keep producing them for us to enjoy. Just common sense. Financially support those things that you cherish and value.
So basically, putting the performers aside, both the creators and the consumers of the product like to pretend that they are not creating and consuming product. I’d argue that this mindset is more aristocratic than socialistic. But in any case, it turns non-classical people off because it makes us come across as snobbish. We reap what we sow. A corollary of the cheapness mindset is that young artists are sometimes invited to perform at events for free and told that they should because doing so would give them “exposure.” It’s so disrespectful.
This reminds me of trying to explain to my communist friend why all recordings of Beethoven symphonies are not public domain. Then again, my collection largely consists of used media.
I'm a long-time communist myself, and while Beethoven's compositions should be public domain -- except for new editions -- recordings of his music all are still covered by copyright. Generally speaking, that's as it should be; artists (which includes musicians) deserve to collect royalties for their work. (That big companies usually cheat their artists is another question. That's where unions come in.) No copyrights, no royalties. Of course, your friend is welcome to listen to all the pre-1929 recordings of Beethoven symphonies; their copyrights have expired.
Well, just this morning I picked up 9 premium box sets- 70 CDs in total- for a grand total of £5 (about $6), from the charity (thrift) store. So I guess I'm a happy hypocrite!
Hey, nothing wrong with getting a bargain! I didn't say people should pay more than they should--just that they shouldn't think this stuff falls off of trees for free!
If you bought them at a charity store we'd have to assume they're products that were already paid for by their previous owners. No hypocrisy here. Money had already found its way back to the artists and the labels years ago, and it would be unethical for the labels to double dip from the same unit.
@@MichaelGilman489 I guess that's why the music industry is moving away from physical product! Funny- many of the old 78rpm records had- in addition to the standard copyright wording- something about resale being 'prohibited'. Totally unenforceable in court, I should imagine. So I guess we've come full circle...
I can certify that our host is NOT miserable, miserly, misanthropic, penny pinching or a cheapskate and neither am I; I don’t think! But how much are you charging for membership???
i am from India and due to the economics and how currencies convert. 20$ is a bit of money. Yet when it comes to listening to music I cannot not buy and consume it. I feel the tendency to not pay for music has been quite rampant in different styles as well. And somewhere resulted in the decline of music appreciation. All people want is elevator music.
One reason why some of us resist paying more for CDs: the Naxos Effect. We learned a long time ago that you don't need the greatest orchestras, conductors, or soloists to have a great musical experience. And Naxos (among others) presented "good enough" recordings for a low price. In some ways the big discount boxes are just reinforcing that attitude but now with top notch performers.
Many years ago (pre-internet) I worked in a travel agency, when people still bought airlines tickets (yeah...real paper tickets) in such places. Nearly all customers wanted to fly on the newest aircraft, with the most experienced crew, wanted good service onboard, on-time departure & arrival, but wanted us to find them a really cheap fare. We all want bargains, but this illustrates that everyone knows the difficulties of their own job/business, yet care little about the same for other businesses. The "anti-capitalist" crowd for classical music is the same group that thinks internet/cell service, college tuition, healthcare, on & on & on, should all be free...Children...
This channel and your person Dave makes me no longer feel alone in my passion for classical music. This is my safe spot that I return to regularly. Thank you
Dear Dave, I run a small classical music store in Italy. Last year was awful, to say it straight. With this video you really made my day. Thanks a lot.
@@saltech3444 Years ago I rejected a job offer in Sydney. I still regret it…
Hi! Sorry I'm way late to this but I'm planning on going to Italy soon. Could I visit the store if I'm near?
Thank you for what you do. It makes my life better!
I was trying to figure out a way of saying exactly the same, but you were faster!
It's my pleasure. Thank you for watching!
Thank you, Dave for your forthright comments. I’m old enough to remember when major-label classical LPs were expensive and precious. My parents bought me Solti’s Götterdammerung for my 14th birthday. A major event. It cost $36. Almost as much as a bicycle. (Adjusted for inflation about $300 today, according to Google.) The sheer amount of stuff available today for very little money simply boggles the mind. And then there’s RUclips…
In high school, I went down to a record store on a tip from a classmate and bought that same recording, used but like new, for $18. Those were the days (mid-1960's.)
I scrimped and saved from odd jobs for a couple of months to buy the Solti Siegfried. Five full-priced discs was real money then. I bought it ahead of schedule, though, because there was a sale! Your Götterdämmerung was SIX discs. Back when a brand new Ford Mustang was only $2700.00.
I was also 14 years old in 1980 when my Mum offered to buy me a box set of Mahler symphonies. I went to great lengths to find out which of the available boxes - Bernstein, Kubelik or Haitink - was the one to buy. I opted for Haitink - £25, which now would cost with inflation £108! But deep appreciation and love of the records, the notes, the entire package (product). Nowadays with downloads, it's just another product which never gets the love it deserves because there is too much _quantity_ ; too many CDs, downloads, not enough time to listen" My 14 year-old self is shocked by the shallowness of what I am today!
Classical cds are the best value product ever invented. Amazing content you can access over and over and pass on to your grandkids too.
Your point about our stinginess is very well made. When I first starting collecting music in the early 50s, a full price LP (e.g. HMV red label) cost a scintilla under GBP2 in the UK, which according to Google equates to about GBP 71 in present day money (roughly = USD 89 and EUR 82). I used to save up my pocket money for several weeks in order to buy 1 LP giving 60 minutes music at most. It would be unthinkable nowadays for me to pay EUR 82 (or even half that) for a CD giving up to 80 minutes of music. Very many of my CD purchases come at well under EUR 10, such as some single discs of Holmboe Chamber concertos, which I ordered yesterday. An extenuating circumstance is that I am a modest pensioner with another interest which is much more expensive than music, namely wine. Wine values have moved the other way, making many once reasonable purchases now totally inaccessible. Perhaps I should sell some wine in order to buy more music, especially from living musicians!
The real cost of the recorded medium has fallen greatly with one innovation after another, beginning with the LP record. I rememer when RCA Red Seal LP records had the digits "0498" or "0698", suggesting MSLP. In real cost, compact discs were quickly less expensive in real cost than $4.98 in the 1960's or $6.98 in the early 1970's. The CD used less material, but the packaging was more expensive. But that is technology, doing much the same with lesser cost.
A few personal rules: 1) I only burn a copy of a CD to use in my car; never to give away. 2) I listen to performances on-line; but, to determine if I want to buy it on CD. Never record off of the internet.
A comment about opera gaining new audiences. People just coming to opera have a vision of what the work is like, based on the story and history of the work. So many new productions ruin this for newcomers. If I have listened to an opera, and then go to see it; I want something visibly related to what I expected. If I listened to Das Rheingold and then spend big bucks to see it for the first time; I do not want a stage full of storm troopers. I want forests, caverns, rainbows.
Yes indeed; Opera companies bitch and moan about not attracting new audiences while alienating their current ones and doing nothing to entice new ones; does anyone really believe That, pretending something visually ugly and stupidly conceived, is the way to go? Apparently so. There are creative ways to present things in a new manner without relying on some half baked,usually leftist view. And I say this as a leftist myself.
My friend has a nightmare tale of driving three hours to see Carmen, and all the singers were wearing jeans. It's become the new low we hold all productions to. Even the first Pagliacci I saw that was 1930s themed. Why??
I worked in a record store in the 80s-90s and many classical CDs sold for about $18, which is about $43 today. Many collectors (including myself) thought it was a bit excessive. Fast forward to today...The recent Ansermet 88 CD box at those prices would be almost $3,800. So today's prices don't seem so bad.
Happy New Year, Dave, and thank you for this video. Well said!
In 1987, I paid $17 for one of Claudio Abbado’s new Beethoven discs with the VPO. In 2021 dollars, that’s about $40. Since I was in grad school (Early American history), my income was near zero, but I wanted a few classical (= music without words) CDs for my new portable CD player to help me study and read and write. Ultimately, my interest in getting an advanced degree petered out, and I went to work in computer support, a new field at the time. It required no programming or engineering skills or degrees, and paid appropriately.
30 years into my career as a software support engineer (it’s now a career), I bought Abbado’s VPO box (58 discs) for $122.50, 3 times in 2021 dollars what it cost me for a single disc in 1987. My current income is infinitely higher than it was in 1987, so the example is not perfect.
My point is that I am drowning in classical CDs, and watching your RUclips channel is a factor (I don’t blame you, because I’m kind of easily led that way). Do I listen to everything? Of course not. Do I occasionally listen to Abbado’s okay VPO Beethoven? Of course!
Thank you.
All true and well said, and yet ..... the fact remains that we are living in a Golden Age of Classical music. I am happy to pay the asking price for concert tickets (partly because I feel I can see that a good chunk of it goes directly to the performers). I am also happy to pay £25 for a newly released CD if a certain gent by the name of Dave Hurwitz tells me it is the absolute Best. But meanwhile, I have developed this other habit, which is to buy and lots and lots of second-hand CDs because the same Dave Hurwitz tells me about them and they are so dirt cheap. Where does that leave me? Hypocrite? Stingy miser? Gullible consumer? Or just a plain ol' music lover who is happy with life?
Haha, well that's the challenge, isn't it? Getting Dave to read an emailed pitch or listen to an album appears to be a herculean feat (probably for all critics, considering the volume of submissions they field on a daily basis), even if the album is so good that, upon hearing, he'd immediately go out and write an enthusiastic review (or gush about it here).
Loved the post. I know I spend far too much money on classical music given my budget but I'll never regret it. One of the greatest joys. All I can say about the miserable, miserly, misanthropic, penny-pinching group pf cheapskates is... too bad! 😁 Thanks.
Thank you Dave for helping me get the best value for my money for 20+ years. I learned I could trust your reviews and I always enjoy hearing your thoughts on topics like this. I am a musician myself and I completely agree, the value in the good recordings is often way higher than the price point. This makes me think of Radiohead's experiment when they released their (excellent, highly anticipated) 2007 album In Rainbows for download and let fans set the price. Like a true sucker, I paid what I would have for the CD. Most fans downloaded it for free. What to do, when the actual value is great but the perceived value is $0?
$20 for a CD is a steal when it can be heard repeatedly for decades compared to what would be charged for hearing the performance once in the concert hall.
i absolutely agree. im from the younger gen z here, and usually i get my first listening experiences from spotify, and if i like the album i am hearing, i will buy physical product as a show of support for their work.
Not sure that’s a good comparison. I started out listening to CDs, and it took me years before I first set foot in a concert hall. A live performance really is something quite different from a recording, and for me, very few recordings come even close to the effect a live performance can have on you. A few concerts were absolutely live changing. Can’t say that about recordings. At least that’s my experience after thousands of recordings and a few hundred concerts.
It’s not that recordings can always adequately substitute for the live experience. It’s that the price is right.
One cannot simultaneously be a conspicuous consumer and purport to be an anticapitalist. That’s just someone who wants a free ride. All told, prices for just about everything in the classical music world are affordable save for the best concert seats at the fanciest orchestras. If we want to continue to hear good music, someone has to pay for it.
As thought provoking and entertaining as always. Alas, the problem of people not being prepared to pay for the true value of things applies to lots of areas besides classical music
You have definitely been more helpful than anyone else for me! Even when I disagree, I know exactly where our prefererences differ!
Dave. Amazing video. Artists need to get paid and are entitled to make great livings. I for one pay for all my music - box sets, digital downloads etc. we are so lucky to live at this time. Amazing music. Affordable music. Great great video. All of us on here have an obligation to buy our music and support the labels and artists who are making this fantastic stuff.
I never complain about the cost of CDs and I buy lots of them. In fact, when you look at the cost per CD of most large boxes (conductor boxes in particular) it is incredibly inexpensive. The only issue is considering whether $25 for X CD is worth it when compared to $20 for A and B CDs. Indeed, I once paid over $80 for a 2 CD set that I particularly wanted and I don't regret it one little bit.
I don't follow it that closely, but it seems to me that CDs hit the $20 mark quite a few years ago, and they're not much above that today.
Couldn’t agree more!
Besides the obvious payment of the players for their labor & time, you have to pay engineers & tech support, you have for the studios or halls.
And taxes….
I’ve always payed for my LPs & CDs, and I still love to buy music and hear it home.
Lately Warner Classics released lots of great CDs Box Set with budget prices, and some very expensive.
It’s wonderful!
Keep listening 🎵🎼🎶
I have purchased many boxed sets and individual recordings on your recommendation and within my budget. I have not yet been disappointed.
Thanks!
Thank you very much!
Thank you. Well said, Dave. I taught college for a while and I admit that my favorite perk was getting a free desk copy every time I ordered a book as the class text. But I also realize why book publishers could no longer maintain that practice.
Got a chuckle out of the "small portions" Borscht Belt joke. In the film "Annie Hall" Woody Allen used it as a metaphor for life, and it works just as well here.
I helped keep in business Tower Records, Phantasmagoria, Yesterday & Today Records, Olsson`s Records and Books, and Joe`s Record Paradise. It was a list price blast! My favorite one was when I was flipping through the Biber section at Tower and came across a gold colored CD….”Missa Salis-Ber-something”. I`d not heard of it. If it’s in gold, must be good. I bought it, popped it into the player, heard two neat fanfares in the distance, turned up the volume some, an audible breath then whoosh……this titanic sonic tsunami plastered my ears to the wall. What a rush. I was hooked.
Thanks for this video. Artists have a difficult time already without us "appreciators" complaining about musicians who feed our love of classical music. It annoys me that classical music "lovers" upload entire videos or CDs to RUclips. The labels don't take those videos down, but harrass Dave? I can understand how such access can help with a new audience, but we shouldn't tolerate theft. Creators deserve our support. Besides, box sets that Dave has mentioned on this channel are steals at rarely more than $2 per disc.
Thanks Dave, excellent video. I’m not reluctant to pay substantial sums for streaming services, CDs, LPs and don’t resent it, these purchases bring me great joy. My hefty outlay for season subscriptions to the Seattle Symphony is another story. It has been TWO YEARS since conductor Thomas Dausgaard left and the symphony has still not hired a replacement or deigned to explain why not. Seems reasonable to me to expect a little reciprocity with one’s patrons.
10:40 I remember growing up in the 70s and going to the record store to buy an album. Do I buy two or three budget label albums, which were generally pretty decent, or a known artist on Deutsche Grammophone. Whatever I bought, overtime the records would develop “pops,” and if a scratch occurred they became unlistenable. Then came CDs, still the same choices, but they would last. They rendered vinyl recordings obsolete. Like it or not, CDs are now going obsolete, thanks to MP3 apps like Spotify. I have thousands of CDs at my disposal for about 11 bucks a month. I am a performing artists and I don’t know a classical listener who pays 20 or so dollars for one almost obsolete CD. I don’t know whether artists get their appropriate compensation through a medium like Spotify. I hope they do, but I will never go back to spending 15-20 dollars on a CD.
Iv'e followed your advice on CDs and enjoyed a lot of great music. Although I've steered clear of the big boxes, I have acquired some of the smaller ones. I have, however, been tempted to order the Cleveland Quartet box and it will arrive any day now. So I expect that I won't surface for a long time. Best wishes for the New Yeat.
I also bought the Cleveland box and enjoy it very much
Thank you, Dave, for another intriguing video. New classical music CDs in New Zealand cost $30.00 each on average and I'm still happy to pay that for a recording I hope I'm going to treasure. I admit I am in the position where I can afford to pay that whenever I want to and I realise that many people can't. There have been rare occasions when I've been disappointed in what I've bought, but I suspect that applies to most people.
Streaming won't save the classical music industry. In the streaming world only the big stars make money from streaming, meaning millions of streams. In my opinion buying CD's or downloads is the way to go (and provide meaningful information in the tags). When CD's came out they cost NLG 50 (about €25) or$27.50 in 1982, nowadays they are even cheaper and it's 40 years later. This isn't sustainable. I agree with David, we have to pay for the quality we get!
I miss classical music cd shops. Our last one in Sydney closed in 2019 ...
I came along at the time of CD re-recordings, and always thought that a video re-recording might be the next wave, but it never happened. Of course you are right about 'free' streaming. In many ways the lack of profit in the recording industry means that live performances are back as the most important income stream. I also agree about the price of a cup of coffee - if I buy a used CD, that's what it costs - being so easy to justify [for me]. I do worry that the 'bums on seats' programming doesn't work. I'm not going to turn out for yet another Beethoven live cycle, but I would turn out for rarely performed works - not obscure 'forgotten' pieces, as those are usually junk, but big pieces that aren't lollipops, maybe Ravel Piano Concertos, or a Shostakovich 2, 3 or 4. By the way - and thank you for allowing my sudden and multiple comments without taking offence - the classical music industry you frequently allude to means, I think, in your terms, the recording industry. Personally I'm all in favour of letting the recording side bounce back off any reinvigorated live performance resurgence. Keep them coming. Your videos are really entertaining, and equally informative.
I agree with everything you said, Dave. My purchasing pattern is very much to the benefit of the industry, I believe. I subscribe to qobuz, Apple Music and frequently buy SACDs. Not having unlimited funds either, I justify those additional physical purchases to myself using the multichannel layer that I don’t get from streaming, while actually I only want to own great recordings. Then I also purchase CDs from time to time, while I haven’t found a proper justification for said behaviour yet 😊
I’d say you are directly responsible for the outlay for quite a number of titles that I’d never have come across without you. I cherish each and everyone of them.
@@maxhirsch7035 Very good, I‘ll keep that in mind for my next moment of hesitation 😁
Sadly, I have to agree with you. For me, a live performance is a small luxury that only happens once a year or two. When I hear the orchestra, I hear and appreciate the fruit of years of practice and hard work, and I also realise how little the players are paid. The CD's seem expensive, but then I bought a Kpop CD for my niece for Christmas - $35 for 35 minutes of music!! Now I remind myself that classical music is a bargain (and I'm thankful that none of my kids want a Swift concert ticket!).
I grew up buying music CDs in the early to mid 90s, and those tended be 15 dollars or so. This leaves me with two general attitudes: I want to own my music and can't stand subscription fees; and I don't think paying $10-13 for a FLAC download from Presto Classical is outrageous at all (many older and budget releases are in the $8 neighborhood as well). When you add to that the bargain prices for CD box sets (often in the range of $2-$4 per disc), I don't think there has ever been a better time, at least financially speaking, to be a fan of classical.
Maybe it's too far afield but would you ever consider doing your own Dave version of a movie review? I'm thinking of Maestro, of course.
Thanks for asking, but no, I have no plans to see the movie or review it. I really just don't care about composer/artist biopics, and I really don't like it when the music appears as an adjunct to some theoretically more important topic.
I got sucked into this attitude when Naxos CDs jumped overnight from £7 to £11. I still kept buying the CDs but just less of them and I was perhaps less experimental with new composers as a consequence. Back in the day I bought all the unknown Bax symphonies partially due to price and partially due to the Classics Today 10/10 Dave Hurwitz stickers. I had little money then. I have more money now and would happily pay for classical CDs if our record stores actually sold any. HMV are a joke with their classical section. It is miniscule with almost no new recordings at all unless it's Andre Rieu. Independent classical CD stores have all died and the last decent CD section in an Edinburgh bookshop has been ripped out. There's almost nowhere in Scotland now to have the luxury of moaning about the price of a CD. Almost everything needs to be ordered online now. Even when visiting London I found a decent classical section in one bookshop but that's it. Oxford Street, the home of HMV and which in the 90s had the enormous HMV and Virgin megastores does not even have a music store at all. The price of CDs is almost minor compared to getting your hands on one in the first place. I'm beginning to sound like my grandparents moaning about the end of a golden age.
I usually stream my music but over the years I have found some great classical CDs at thrift stores - they are often early digital recordings which I know aren't always the best sonically but still some great performances.
Many years ago, I turned up for a piano lesson with a newly purchased copy of the manuscript of book 1 of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier. My piano teacher was shocked at how much it cost. I could not believe that someone could hold something in their hand of infinite value and think such a thought.
Any chance you can do a video on the ASV label and potential options to re-issue their stock, especially their "Gaudeamus" line which is basically what Veritas was to Virgin and L'Oiseau Lyre was to London/Decca? Please do a video on the ASV label.
Sorry, but I can't if there's no chance on their stuff showing up again, and I have no idea about that.
I pay for records and downloads as I'm old-fashioned, and because my collection has grown to where I may not live to listen to it all, so streaming would seem like a distraction. All my music-loving and audiophile friends and acquaintances use streaming services, I realize I'd have more choice (albeit not necessarily my favorites) and probably be spending less overall…
Your money-back discussion resonates specially when it comes to concerts where artists cancel (be it conductors or soloists). It's a bit of talking out of both sides of your mouth. Organizations market the concerts by putting the artists' names front and center (not the repertoire) but when the artist cancels they just say "oh, nevermind, we're showing someone just as good". So what is it? Do you want me to attend the concert BECAUSE of artist x or does it not matter at all in which case why was that the selling point to begin with?
In my hometown, they had the chutzpah to replace an orchestra that cancelled due to travel restrictions with a saxophone quartet. No refunds. It’s a joke sometimes. Then again, when certain people are scheduled, I already expect them to cancel.
Sorry for minding about something else, but can you please tell me where did you get those cds racks behind you? .Thanks.
I had them custom built.
Have you seen the RUclips video The Best of Deutsche Grammophon 2023? If that's the best, what the hell is the rest like?
Perhaps the hypocrisy is strongest among the jaded. When I think about my initial plunge into Russian concert music back in the late 1980s, I remember that I paid $20 to $35 per CD for less than stellar Melodiya recordings. And I was ecstatic to even be able to hear works I’d only read about! It seemed a bargain to rummage through bins at every Tower Records location I could find and locate even one recording of a work on my ever growing list of obscure works I read about in Grove’s or Rimsky’s _My Musical Life_. It was hard work to research the first and second Russian Nationalist Schools by buying out of print books from a mailing list, visiting university libraries, and gleaning scraps from liner notes. That taught me to be thankful and happy to pay for good (and even historically noteworthy mediocre) music.
Take, for example, that exact box of Bach Cantatas by Rilling, the one sitting just over your left shoulder. I got it for ca. $80 at Amazon a few years ago. Okay, now it's listed for $108; it's still a screaming bargain. Less than $!.50 per disc, and people still complain about the price!
Amen, yes that is absolutely the truth! Thank you !
I'm pretty sure that the only time I ever paid $25 for a CD was for a fundraising charitable enterprise. Usually a noncommercial historical release. The really high-priced music now is, ironically, on vinyl, those heavy virgin vinyl repressings. But when cd came out, $16.99 was a not uncommon price, and we paid it.
I think people ought to count their blessings. During the 1930s, the Depression mind you, a full-priced classical disc--generally with not much more than eight minutes of music cost $2. A Tchaikovsky symphony would have been $10. That's over $180 now, yet ordinary music lovers managed to buy them. The only free music was on the radio. Heard once and never again.
I see this with classical vinyl collectors especially: they're so used to inheriting boxes full of old classical LPs (usually the collections of people who died, and their wife just wanted to get rid of them) for like $0.25 each that they're offended if they're asked to pay more than $1-2 for a record. (Never mind that a new vinyl album might have a total manufacturing, (bulk) shipping, mechanical license royalty, etc. cost of maybe $10 per album to the record label or performers who paid to put it out, not even counting the hall rental, recording, mixing, mastering, photography, writing, graphic design, project management, marketing, promotion, advertising, distribution, etc. costs.) They must think record labels or performers are making $29 profit on a $30 record, when in fact they're actually losing money. Most of those collectors are well in the upper half of the income spectrum, so it's not like they couldn't afford to actually pay a reasonable price for an album.
Even CDs aren't necessarily that cheap to manufacture, when you include mechanical licenses for copyrighted works (again, not to mention all the other costs of making the recording, the cover art, and all the rest). One that I put out has a gross cost of around $4.50 per (2-CD) album just for manufacturing and mechanical license costs.
Oh, and there's this: in around 9.5 months, I've sold a total of barely over 50 CDs online (plus around 30 paid downloads), despite a number of positive reviews (including from Classics Today). People must think these things are flying off the shelf, but getting someone, even a diehard fan of the artist, to actually shell out even a single dollar is like pulling teeth. (I have heard the average sales of a classical album is around 100 copies, so the result isn't too surprising.) And no, Spotify, Apple, etc. do not make up for it. I think the average total among all those has been maybe around $20-30 per month.
This didn't resonate with me. If I want something, I buy it at the price offered. I wouldn't qvech if it costs a fair bit. But, true, it often seems inexpensive. Is that MY fault? Should I add a tip?
I bought a lot of Naxos CDs - plus a ton or two of others; whenever I had a bit of money, it went on CDs, and books. Naxos had work I'd not seen before, with orchestras I'd not encountered before - even the least stellar were good value for money; then I subscribed to the BBC's classical music magazine, which had a CD with every issue (probably still does, I had to cancel when I just physically ran out of space).
You will be impressed - no, no, you will - to read that I have never yet complained about the cost of classical music CDs; yes, I listen to classical music, and some other, on RUclips - got to confess to that; but that's partly because I don't always know what to look out for; and I like to listen to music I may have on disc, but not with the performances on offer here, which can differ for better or for worse. So I plead a firm "in the sense of the indictment, I declare myself not guilty", just as they all did at Nuremberg but with, I think, a touch more justification.
But for Naxos, I might never have encountered the organ music of Scheidemann, Muffat, Rheinberger, Dupré, to start with - so trawling their display stands, in a local bookshop, was exciting - and the price didn't hurt either. I'm grateful to them.
Of course I don't want to pay for it: I already paid for it. I paid for it when it was on LP, then I paid for it on cassette, then I paid for it on CD, then I paid for it on Apple's crummy mp3s, and now I'm expected to pay for it on streaming? Haven't these guys ever had enough of my money?
If you have it once then you don't need to pay for any of the others.
Why on earth did you pay for crummy mp3s if you already had the CD? Other people are not to blame for that kind of choice, if you live somewhere where format-shifting is allowed (most places these days).
The whole "I'm not paying for it because it should be free" issue sadly does not just involve classical music. It has become an issue in pretty much all mass media - music, TV, movies, books, games. And in the internet age, the ability to just make a few clicks and download something has changed the way all media is consumed. The market needs to adapt to the changing mood of the consumer or it won't survive. Classical music as a business and industry isn't going anywhere. Neither are pop music, literature, film, television, and so on.
The problem is that when the product is considered a service, the consumer does not have the ability to retain a copy of what they have paid for. I fear that the industry may push back so much that physical media may indeed become such a boutique item as to become too expensive for the average person, therefore encouraging illegal downloads. There is a happy medium somewhere.
I don't think the classical music crowd is more miserable about CD prices than any other crowd, everybody wants more music for as little as they have to pay, that's why most frequent listeners are on streaming platforms. Also, symphonic music is just a small portion of classical music that's published, and I'm not sure that symphony orchestras were able to rely on record sales for a significant portion of their income even in the pre-internet era. Gone are the days where artists from pop to classical through rock could rely on record sales to sustain themselves, that's why the entire industry is reinventing itself and that's why your initial idea, Dave, about the possibilty of getting one's money back or to attend another concert is one of the steps in the right direction for a more reasonable economic model and marketing policy.
My friends think I’m bonkers for still buying CDs & they are probably right.
@@SO-ym3zs I’m 48 I like physical product. Streaming to me is meaningless
I like having the booklet with commentary and track listings that actually make sense. But the sheer availability of music through, say a streaming membership, is amazing, especially when you can link the sound to your stereo system.
Dave, I agree completely. You know I am a big fan of vinyl. I buy LPs too add to my collection and I am more than happy to pay for them. I don't like to stream music because it doesn't sound as good. I am happy to pay for the real deal.
Not only can you purchase a top performance for very little money; you can listen to that performance as often as you like. It's like having your own personal orchestra. Think of how much it cost Prince Esterhazy to employ his own orchestra!
It was a great hobby for a long time. My wife could never understand why all these people came.over to look at my records, but we rarely played them. I tried to explain than some are not to be played, like a sealed.RCA shades dog . She said "you collect records but not music". The money we all spent, only to have them become pretty worthless. Especially CDs. Could not give them away.
One of the last remaining classical and jazz music stores in the south of England closed 5 years ago and I asked the owner why he was going and he said ''cos you guys who come in for a coffee and a chat check out my prices and then go home and download it for free'' He then proceeded to show me how file sharing sites coupled with various free software programmes enabled anyone to obtain complete box sets of Beatles, Stones, Taylor Swift, Bernstein and Karajan etc. etc. My jaw hit the floor... Hollywood films anyone? Netflix or Amazon productions? just at the click of your mouse... Even new classical releases can be had on yt
Yet the compressed sound on YT is terrible when compared to a flac file in my opinion. I use YT only to sample before I decide to buy.
Guilty as charged. I know several persons who don't look at price tags. A revelation. But it isn't me. I have been a classical performer and totally appreciated getting paid but haven't had the illusion that I could make a living at it.
Before recorded performances existed, the only way for performers to make a buck was live performances, and many of the public never had the chance to hear great orchestras at all. What a wonder it was then to be able to hear the greatest players in the world, especially once truly high fidelity stereo recordings were available for the cost of an hour or two of common labor wages. After Edison, and before the internet, it was a golden age for record companies, and orchestras.
Now were back to the concert hall being the primary revenue source for musicians.
Maybe that isn't so bad. Nothing is quite like hearing the orchestra playing right there in front of you, along with experiencing it all with a group of others and the social element of a night out on the town.
Rock and Pop musicians always used to say "you go on tour to promote the record", now it's the other way around, you release a recording to promote the tour.
it's good for orchestras to release videos on RUclips, and maybe some clever marketing can get people into the concert hall
Plus, I like owning a copy of the physical media. I know it will always be there, unless the house burns down. haha
I've been willing to pay for that over the years, and I still do. I know compact discs make for more efficient storage, but the size of the vinyl record sleeve, cover art and liner notes are so much more enjoyable to read. Still, most of my music is on CD, so there it is.
in the way of a humble suggestion, I would urge the classical music industry consider investing in a campaign to reach out in an effort to gain a larger audience as many of DO understand the value of what is created. Making classical music interesting, fun and exciting, especially to our youth, in schools, from early on, as I believe was once a thing in years past. Otherwise the support more often than not (and not just the purchase of CDs, but in concert programming) comes from the patronage of the well off. Bring Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, etc. into a larger of the population. I recall learning about the masters and their works was part of a required curriculum in elementary school. That could be a way to see a turn in the situation. Or perhaps I am being unrealistic and oversimplifying the situation to suggest such? Would that ultimately generate more sales (not only CDs but concert attendance) of which would create greater growth in the longer term?
I am willing to spend but most things I want to buy are out of print.
We need to give recordings of classical music to loved ones. Doesn't that make more sense than giving "designer" clothing and handbags? We also need to give duplicate recordings to the public libraries
They don't want them.
@@DavesClassicalGuide Too bad. That's a good case for more education in music in K-12 schooling.
When I worked in music shops starting in the early 90s, new-release CDs cost $15-20. Today, new-release CDs cost... $15-20. I have no idea why normal economics don't apply here, but we're all sitting on top of an amazing bargain.
"There are very honest people who do not think that they have had a bargain unless they have cheated a merchant." - Anatole France
I will gladly pay for a recording - I do so even twice, in a way: once as a download an on Presto as a stream. But the industry is also consciously sabotaging themselves by releasing that same, brand new recording for free on RUclips.
There may be a good point to this, that maybe everyone would be a little better off financially if they didn't make anything available on streaming. On the other hand, even before streaming existed, classical albums were money-losing loss-leader promotional efforts. The ability to reach new audiences via streaming is too big of a benefit to give up even if it barely pays anything, and the difference in sales of CDs is probably not as much as you might expect.
@@ModusVivendiMedia That's not the problem - it is just that it's difficult to make a case for wanting to sell a CD or paid stream if you offer the same content for free.
@@bomcabedal I do understand that, but I suspect sales of most classical CDs would only go up very slightly, if at all, if the albums weren't available on streaming or RUclips. I suspect that's not really the problem, and withholding the music from streaming wouldn't be the solution. Most people still wouldn't bother buying those albums, they'd just go stream someone else's album.
@@ModusVivendiMedia I think we're talking about different issues here: you (sensibly) describe the interest of the industry, I'm most concerned how it comes across to the consumer. I also think that withholding music from streaming is not a solution: that train left the station some time ago. But you can't credibly charge customers on one platform and offer it for free on another. I am aware that most recordings are not dependent on sales at all, but in that case, just offer them for free everywhere.
@@bomcabedal I think I see what you're getting at, but I disagree that you can't credibly charge for recordings in one place but not in another.
First, all the forms of accessing the music are supposed to result in payment (Spotify's recent removal of royalty payments for tracks receiving fewer than 1000 streams in a rolling 12-month period notwithstanding). Streaming just does it on a different time scale, one tiny chunk at a time, gradually accumulating over years.
Second, many if not most people buying albums are not doing so in order to gain access to the music, but rather to support the artist. Apparently over 50% of vinyl record buyers do not even own a turntable. It may be similar with CD buyers.
Third, depending on the aggregator or distributor used, it may cost nothing to put tracks on streaming (of course neglecting one-time recording costs etc.), but it does cost money to manufacture CDs, secure mechanical licenses, bulk ship the CDs, provide for an online storefront and fulfillment, etc. So charging nothing would be compounding the economic losses, one CD at a time. While these projects are not usually expected to make money, they are also not expected to incur ongoing negative cash flow!
(On the other hand, "free CD" offers have been talked about as effective ways to get a lot of people to actually order them, so may be worth exploring as a promotional strategy.)
Totally agree. I put myself through university in retail jobs and have no time for the entitled whining about having to pay for something.
I don't like downloads and am resigned to spending more to buy physical product (CDs - having grown up in the vinyl era of crackles and pops throughout the quiet patches I just roll my eyes at talk about its superior sound). If CDs ultimately dry up (which they won't: their demise has been predicted for a decade and they keep coming out ...), well, the CDs I have bought will see me out.
I'll don the white scarf of irredeemable chutzpah and project my own complaints on to the industry at large. The problem I see is that there just isn't one classical music buyer. 90-95% of the stuff that's issued in any given month has little to no appeal to me, and the people to whom it does appeal are drowning in the 32768th Beethoven cycle released this year. There is value in scarcity as you've pointed out before, and while I understand the desire to perform these works, not everything needs to be recorded. On the other hand, finding the stuff I actually do care about is a giant pain in the ass. Often it's a passion project of some performer or conductor and is being sponsored by some government institution. This type of stuff goes one of two directions: either it goes out of print and becomes impossible to find after a few years, or it ends up on the bargain rack. In the former case I'll end up paying $30-40 a disc for it, but I'd guess that very little of that actually goes to the label or the performers.
What I'd love to see is some kind of pre-committed crowdfunding mechanism whereby I could signal my desire to pay for new recordings of works by Schnittke or Penderecki or whoever, and the performers/conductors/institutions could put their hats out and find the paying customers before actually producing the recording. Obviously that leaves me on the hook if they produce a crappy recording, but when it comes to this kind of music beggars can't be choosers, and usually the commitment that the artists bring to these passion project guarantees at least a decent result.
I don't think the industry is dying, but there are unhealthy parts. The number of major 20th century works where my CD shelf has the entire set of recordings - and that's usually just one or two - suggests that there's a ways to go before the industry gets out of the rut of overproducing the same old repertoire and into a mode of producing new recordings that actually add value. For the rest of the frankly disposable recordings that are being produced these days, those might as well just go to a streaming model.
BRAVO!!!!!! 👍
One way to fix the classical record industry is to get rid of free RUclips content. Years ago, if you read a critic saying certain recording is great, if you want to hear it, you'd need to buy the CD/record/cassette, etc. I was a poor student with limited budget back then. I was following a music critic in Hong Kong who said Carlos Kleiber is the greatest conductor ever. So I saved all my pocket money to purchase Carlos Kleiber CDs which are more expensive than records made by other conductors. I don't have money to buy many different CDs to compare the performance, and have to just trust whatever the critic says. Now you can listen to anything on RUclips for free. Why would I buy any physical product or even pay for streaming download?
An avid collector, I occasionally commit to similar rants. There's value to creating a market that makes a professional class of musicians viable.
The market exists for live shows. the market for recorded product has declined, owing really to the law of diminishing returns in the sense that most standard repertoire has been recorded literally hundreds if not 1000+ times. how many times can the average consumer actually listen to Beethoven 5?
@@TheAboriginal1, this, of course, in no way contradicts my statement. Paying musicians to conduct their business live and in public is part of the market to which I'd referred. (I'm actually Artistic Director of a small concert series in a large midwest city. My org's existence depends upon this.) "Classical" concert attendance seems increasingly occupied by gray hairs. I hope it's sustained as the hairs that aren't currently gray become such.
Acquisitions to my personal CD-LP library are repertoire driven. Like every other classical collector of physical media, I have a couple favorite Beethoven 5s on my shelves, but they were acquired literally decades ago. That's not the kind of stuff that I personally buy when I go shopping. My last couple sets of acquisitions, e.g., included CDs (and a 2-LP album) devoted to the music of Xaver Scharwenka, Castaldi and Pellegrini, Tinctoris, Johannes de Lymburgia, Stradella, Anna Clyne, Dorothy Howell, *Johann Christoph Friedrich* Bach, and *Imogen* Holst. Another of my frustrations is that concert programs are still filled with repertoire like Beethoven 5 and disconnected from my personal library acquisitions. I doubt that will change anytime soon.
your talk of no one willing to pay is not related just to classical , I know people who only listen to oldes, rock, pop and they won't pay either. Then they bitch about the price of a live concert. How else can these people get paid 'Next people will just photograph a starving painters work and walk away .
As someone who performs music and is on the board of a non-profit devoted to music, it seem that there is a big problem with generating audiences for live performances. When it comes to paying to see my local symphony orchestra in San Francisco, I'm part of the problem. My choice is to decide whether to pay $100 for two mediocre seats for a possibly mediocre performance, or purchase a box of stellar CDs at roughly $2 a CD that I can listen to at what ever volume I want, pause when I need to pee, get up and dance if I feel like it (or air conduct) and replay it whenever I want. So now I hardly ever go to the symphony, and my CD collection has grown by the thousands in the last decade.
Dave, great video, but... you say "Come on, nothing is for free". Are you sure? I can find any music (and I mean, ANY music) I want for free on the web, most of it on the very platform we use to communicate right now. If we put aside for a moment easy moral characterizations, the basic facts of human psychology are simple: giving something to people for free, and then expecting most of them to buy it out of sheer appreciation for the "hard work of the artists" borders either to naivety or ignorance of how human nature works (and this is not a comment against you, but against more simplistic versions of this argument that I have been recently exposed to). And I am not excluding muself from this, neither should anyone exclude him/herself. If anyone says, "You are wrong, I end up buying many records I hear on RUclips", I would ask them to count carefully what is the number of records they end up buying as a percentage of all the music they consume for free and what are the consequences for the industry: none. You yourself gave away one of the very reasons that people don't buy anything. If the industry and the artists find money anyway by other routes to keep recording and publishing more and more records, one more incentive to buy those records (that is, to support the artist to make more of them) is gone. People listen for free, artists find the money to record anyway, and everybody is happy. Or perhaps not.
Of course, the counter-argument might be that the reason they give it for free is exactly because no one is willing to pay for it in the first place. But whether the chicken made the egg or vice versa, the objective result of providing almost all music for free without any tangible consequence on the ammount of stuff produced, makes most people more and more accustomed to getting what they want for free and reluctant to pay for it. Instead of conceiving the issue in moralistic terms (who is or is not a hypocrite) perhaps it would be more fruitful to examine the objective effects of both the free internet availability of cultural products and the subsidizing system and other peculiar mechanisms of funding that disassociate the sales of products from the capacity to continue their production. You have touched the latter issue frequently in videos about the close bond between the serialist avant-garde and the academy. Would they be able to (pretend to) be so indifferent to the public's acceptance of their music if their income wasn't already secure from another source?
Sorry for this short essay. I hope you are not annoyed by the tone, I am just a bit bothered by the current situation of first giving everything away for free and then accusing people of being hypocrites for not buying most of it.
Very good points! Thank you.
Well, the time you waste sitting through ads is not money, so it is still free from the consumer's point of view, and if you can tolerate the ads, you don't need a subscriptipon. As to your last point, that is actually correct and I forgot to consider it in my comment. It is true that free product on the web may result in some cases in more purchases, so, yes, you do have a point.@@SO-ym3zs
Of course we don't expect "most people" to buy a CD or paid download, but if even 1% of the social media followers of a particular artist (many of whom are supposedly "fans" of that artist) would buy that artist's album within a few months of release, plus some number of classical recording collectors who buy unfamiliar artists's albums based on positive reviews, it would be a huge improvement over the current reality. (The true figure seems closer to 0.1%.)
It must be said that being the lead review on the Classics Today homepage DID appear to generate a flurry of maybe 15 additional sales over a few weeks that probably wouldn't have happened otherwise, so thanks Classics Today!
Artists could easily fix the problem with differentiated proprietary repertoire, like pop artists. If one orchestra had a massive crowd pleaser that only they could play and record, they could sell the recordings at full price, and people would buy because there would be no competition for that piece. But that would involve modern composers and orchestras shedding their elitism and creating original listener-friendly repertoire. Which, of course, they won’t.
So instead we keep buying non-proprietary repertoire, which anyone can record and hypersaturate the market. So I proudly enjoy my dirt- cheap CDs and will continue buying CDs only when they’re dirt-cheap, which they all eventually will be.
But there are compulsory mechanical licenses allowing for the recording of copyrighted works without needing to ask permission (just pay the appropriate fee to the copyright society or collection organization, like ASCAP or BMI), so exclusivity only lasts, at best, until the first recording comes out.
Of course, composers could decline to rent scores to any other groups, but I doubt many would want to participate in a situation where only one ensemble in the world gets to perform their music, unless that ensemble was paying a lot for exclusivity. And I doubt any ensemble would, because I expect the value of that exclusivity in the classical world is usually going to be $0.
*90 minutes longs applause
Amen. I get so tired of people complaining that x or y piece of classical music is too sacred to be interrupted by ads on RUclips, and then a chorus of people agreeing. Its something like $15 a month (I cant remember but its fairly nominal) and you can listen to all kinds of music and access all kinds of content for that. Its the biggest bargain in entertainment, by far. Of course, I hope nobody from the Google pricing department reads this.
YES!!! A RESOUNDING YES!!!!
An irony here, as you suggest toward the very end, is that capitalism is behind the hypocrisy you’re discussing. I absolutely agree that artists should earn real money for their work. When I was younger, if you wanted music you had to buy it on cassette or CD. You had to be choosy about what you could buy, you had fewer records, and you tended to know the ones you had front to back. And they had that gestalt effect: they were wholes. This applied to rock records too. A record with a narrative, say Pink Floyd’s The Wall, was followed across four sides on two discs and was the sum of its parts, a totality. The change in the business model to streaming has eroded this personal and intimate relationship to recordings for many people, and especially for the youngest generations. For them, music is simply assumed to be free, and as a result there is little attachment to any treasures one owns. The figure of the high school kid with the amazing record collection-the one who makes amazing mix tapes-is long gone. Now it’s just this morass of “content.” But that is the intersection of technology and capitalism too. How can any company fight this tide and compete? If something isn’t on Spotify or iTunes, 666 other versions of the work likely are. That’s one stratum of capitalist enterprise swallowing another. I say this not in some broadly anticapitalist way, but rather as an observer of this particular injustice done to those who make the music we love. I will, however, add one political aside. What do we spend on defense per year? The word “trillion” is involved. What do we spend on the performing arts per year? How do we support our heritage and culture? How well do we fund public schools to provide arts education? Heavens forfend that our citizenry should be educated in civics and aesthetics, not just the STEM topics that we presume are the future of virtually all wage labor. Give someone no tools or context to recognize the virtues of complex things with histories and opera looks like the most affected antiquarian horror a kid can imagine-I once saw a Twitter post saying “can you imagine liking music with strings? 😂”-while Kanye “I Love Hitler” West and the cretinous Jason Aldean and others flog their product, sell out arenas, and keep the proles humming along. Technology has made possible a music industry where all but the most visible and contemporary artists are cut out; politicians have worked hard to deracinate culture. The combination is deadly. Not because classical music will die out, of course-but because it is so marginalized, especially among the young, that the industry itself must behave as it does to support itself.
You are describing a neoliberalism problem, not a capitalism or markets problem.
I am having a hard time imagining how you would decouple neoliberalism from at least a particular practice of capitalism. Are you suggesting the ideological stuff here is divorced from profiteering?
@@michaelmasiello6752 I think the literature tends to understand neoliberalism to be a subset of capitalism whereby the market logic permeates all other aspects of life. So everything and everyone becomes valued (or devalued) according to whether it contributes to economic growth or efficiency. Thus you get the devaluation of arts, culture, etc. Capitalism, in contrast, just refers to a particular way of aggregating decisions via a free price or market system. I don’t think capitalism necessitates wholesale ideology or the permeation of the market logic everywhere. Post-war capitalism in America, for instance, was fully compatible with the liberal arts in higher education and with the support for and celebration of the arts (e.g., JFK and the NEA) - probably, much more so than in the communist world. What I am referring to as neoliberalism was a phenomenon that really began to spread beginning in the late 1970s. Adam Smith wouldn’t have wanted to see the market logic permeate everywhere.
As my dear father always said: price is an issue for buyer if they are unconvinced of the value of the product. Buying products insures that companies keep producing them for us to enjoy. Just common sense. Financially support those things that you cherish and value.
So basically, putting the performers aside, both the creators and the consumers of the product like to pretend that they are not creating and consuming product. I’d argue that this mindset is more aristocratic than socialistic. But in any case, it turns non-classical people off because it makes us come across as snobbish. We reap what we sow.
A corollary of the cheapness mindset is that young artists are sometimes invited to perform at events for free and told that they should because doing so would give them “exposure.” It’s so disrespectful.
This reminds me of trying to explain to my communist friend why all recordings of Beethoven symphonies are not public domain. Then again, my collection largely consists of used media.
I'm a long-time communist myself, and while Beethoven's compositions should be public domain -- except for new editions -- recordings of his music all are still covered by copyright. Generally speaking, that's as it should be; artists (which includes musicians) deserve to collect royalties for their work. (That big companies usually cheat their artists is another question. That's where unions come in.) No copyrights, no royalties. Of course, your friend is welcome to listen to all the pre-1929 recordings of Beethoven symphonies; their copyrights have expired.
Well, just this morning I picked up 9 premium box sets- 70 CDs in total- for a grand total of £5 (about $6), from the charity (thrift) store. So I guess I'm a happy hypocrite!
Hey, nothing wrong with getting a bargain! I didn't say people should pay more than they should--just that they shouldn't think this stuff falls off of trees for free!
If you bought them at a charity store we'd have to assume they're products that were already paid for by their previous owners. No hypocrisy here. Money had already found its way back to the artists and the labels years ago, and it would be unethical for the labels to double dip from the same unit.
@@MichaelGilman489 I guess that's why the music industry is moving away from physical product! Funny- many of the old 78rpm records had- in addition to the standard copyright wording- something about resale being 'prohibited'. Totally unenforceable in court, I should imagine. So I guess we've come full circle...
I can certify that our host is NOT miserable, miserly, misanthropic, penny pinching or a cheapskate and neither am I; I don’t think! But how much are you charging for membership???
In what?
Furtwängler and Celibidache recordings are worth $20 a single disc. The others are not! lol
Then there are the suckers...
i am from India and due to the economics and how currencies convert. 20$ is a bit of money. Yet when it comes to listening to music I cannot not buy and consume it. I feel the tendency to not pay for music has been quite rampant in different styles as well. And somewhere resulted in the decline of music appreciation. All people want is elevator music.
One reason why some of us resist paying more for CDs: the Naxos Effect. We learned a long time ago that you don't need the greatest orchestras, conductors, or soloists to have a great musical experience. And Naxos (among others) presented "good enough" recordings for a low price. In some ways the big discount boxes are just reinforcing that attitude but now with top notch performers.
Many years ago (pre-internet) I worked in a travel agency, when people still bought airlines tickets (yeah...real paper tickets) in such places. Nearly all customers
wanted to fly on the newest aircraft, with the most experienced crew, wanted good service onboard, on-time departure & arrival, but wanted us to find them a really
cheap fare. We all want bargains, but this illustrates that everyone knows the difficulties of their own job/business, yet care little about the same for other businesses.
The "anti-capitalist" crowd for classical music is the same group that thinks internet/cell service, college tuition, healthcare, on & on & on, should all be free...Children...