Would You Buy an Instant-Recording While Walking Out of a Concert?

LiveHereNow is a company that specialized on Instant-Recordings This idea is intriguing. You go to a concert and at the end of the show, while you walk out of the hall, a freshly produced instant-recording of the concert is already up for sale at the merchandise stand at the exit doors. Think of this CD […]

What’s wrong with the Petition against the German Music Collecting Society GEMA

The online petition at the German parliament against the German music collection society, GEMA, is a good thing, but it misses one of the most problematic aspects: that all music collecting societies are forcing customers to buy comprehensive licenses for websites even though they need only a license for one, two, or a few works.

Hockey Night at the Symphony: the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal at the Bell Centre

Kent Nagano and Guy Lafleur For those of you who think that classical music is dead, or that classical music cannot appeal to a mass audience, or even that the funding of classical music organizations is doomed to be perennially on the brink, you clearly did not attend the Montreal Symphony‘s presentation at the Bell […]

Grassroots Documentary

Derek Sivers, founder of CDBaby and ardent supporter of independent music and artists, has started a new initiative to help young musicians get ahead in the music business: Grassroots Documentary.

What is the new project about? Well, essentially Derek goes out with his video camera and produces short interviews with people from the music industry. In those short videos (ca. 10 minutes each) these insiders talk about how the business works and how artists can have an impact in today’s music world. The idea is that the more information young musicians have about the way the business works, the better they will be positioned to participate sucessfully in the music market.

The first live internet broadcast of the Berlin Philharmonic

It felt vaguely ironic to be sitting before our computer in Germantown, New York, watching the first live internet broadcast from the Digital Concert Hall of the Berliner Philharmoniker, with Sir Simon Rattle conducting Dvorák’s G minor Slavonic Dance and Brahms’s First Symphony.

How the Classical Music Industry will (likely) survive

I believe that digital media offers many opportunities for the classical music industry to reach out to new audiences, interact better with those who are interested in their music, and ultimately find new customers.

Here are three aspects that need to be addressed by the classical music industry:

Interview with Alessandro Simonetto, Founder of OnClassical – The e-label for Audiophiles

OnClassical is a new e-label that sells music solely via the web. Unlike itunes, emusic, rhapsody, and amazon, OnClassical offers only high-quality downloads that sound exactly like a traditional CD. Zeitschichten.com spoke to the label’s busy founder, Alessandro Simonetto, about music in the age of the internet, OnClassical’s business philosophy, as well as their upcoming projects (they will soon license music for commercial uses)

Konzerthaus is the best

Going through my old post for tagging purposes I once again realized that the Berlin Konzerthaus is the most fabulous music institution in the German Capital. Best programming. Period. Someone should really give them a medal. Here are my Konzerthaus-related articles.

Rhapsody.com still not useful for classical music listeners

As some of you may already know, rhapsody.com has added a mp3-store to its portfolio recently. While I welcome this move, especially since the mp3s are DRM-free, the main drawback with the service, namely its poor user interface, still remains an issue. The problem as I see it is a lack of a sufficient search-engine […]

What Rhapsody is lacking

Real Rhapsody is a music subscription service that I have been using for quite a while now. It features millions of pop songs, jazz tunes, and classical works. The catalogue is pretty amazing, rarely do they not have what I am looking for. All it takes to listen to days of music is a broadband […]

Arditti Quartet Plays Webern, Berg, and Harvey

What a great program! Anton Webern Fünf Sätze für Streichquartett op. 5, Alban Berg Lyrische Suite für Streichquartett, and then, after a short intermission, Jonathan Harvey’s String Quartet No. 4 with live electronics. The Arditti Quartet gave yet another memorable concert and again the hall was half empty. This is something I just cannot understand. […]

Music for the Masses

Last night the Deutsche Symphonie Orchester Berlin, Maxim Vengerov, and Hakan Hardenberger gave an open air concert at the Brandenburger Tor. “Nice!”, some of you may think, “what a cool place to have a concert!” Right. Alas, as those of you who follow the world cup will know, the place in front of the Brandenburger […]