Looks like LvB has still got it. Good news, but the article finally gets to what I think may be classical music's biggest problem. It is not as accessible online as other genres. Finding decent recordings (particularly complete ones) of the masterworks on Napster, Rhapsody or Yahoo! Unlimited is difficult and most contemporary works aren't available at all. Also, the search engines on those sites are set up to deal with pop music, which can make finding specific classical recordings almost impossilble. The closest we can come is a $19.95 per year subscription to Naxos.com where you can stream over 5000 CD's worth of recordings. A great resource, but most people have never even heard of it.
You can sell anything to anyone with even an average marketing campaign (have you seen the stuff they unload by the thousands over at QVC and HSN?). I guess this is proven by the junk music labeled "classical" that is pushed down people's throats (Il Divo for example). If they marketed Steve Mackey, Steve Reich or Michael Torke with the intenisity that they market Il Divo, they would be very popular as well. Contemporary music is the only hope. I have at least 3 recordings of every symphony by Beethoven and Brahms, from Toscanni to Bernstein to Norrington. It is going to take some kind of great recording to get me to part with $15 or $20 for another "Eroica". But, new music is a different story. It's exciting and vibrant and not just being written by guys who are good at math anymore. Unfortunately, recordings of new music are hard to find unless you are really, really looking for them. No one is going to stumble across it the same way they'll stuble across a new CD by Gwen Stefani. I'm not saying we need more women in short skirts (we have plenty of that already), just more accessibility.
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