[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: [ARSCLIST] CD versus Download was "All hail the analogue revolution..."
Mike:
Universal owns what used to be Polygram. That's DG, Decca, London, Mercury, Command, etc.
Sony/BMG owns what was RCA, Columbia and perhaps a couple of small players.
EMI owns EMI, Angel and Capitol's few fully-classical releases.
Warner Music owns Nonesuch and perhaps a few other classical or crossover labels.
Regarding your comment about classical labels, I think it's definitely a game today for smaller
companies like Naxos.
I know a fair amount about the economics of classical recording due to my parents' work. A classical
recording used to be intended to act like an annuity. You work out a reasonable rate -- in some
cases, the orchestra's donors or board would put up some of the session money in exchange for a
royalty. You work efficiently. You record something the musicians are well-versed in (usually what's
on the program that season). Then you come home with what you hope is a fine product. You package it
well. You market it well. If you're super-lucky, it'll be a hit like the Mercury "1812 Overture" or
"Pictures" with Kubelik. That's a bonanza, not expected and much appreciated, back in the day. If
it's a success under normal circumstances, it will steadily sell a reasonable amount of copies every
year for as long as you keep it in print. Build up a library of these annuities and you have a very
nice income stream over time. Keep freshening it with exciting material and all the more so. The pop
people always complained they had to work on the same budget as classical but they were generating
occasional mega-hits. Yes, but they also generated many misses. A successful classical department
generated many more successful revenue streams than loss-leaders. By the time the classical labels
got conglomerated, there emerged a hit mentality in these new corporate classical departments. The
success of "Three Tenors" type releases fed this hit mentality, and suddenly the classical division
could be a big contributor to quarterly results. The thinking became, "hey, who needs another
Beethoven, how about that exquisit looking and relatively talented violinist we can market to the
nth degree?" Besides, the thinking went, those damn musicians unions make orchestral recordings
unprofitable. This was also the time that many American orchestras lost a regular-standing recording
contract -- and also around the time that symphony ticket prices started getting so outrageous that
the whole musical genre was guaranteed to be relegated exclusively to the elite who could afford to
hear it.
So, as you can probably see, the old kind of economics flies in the face of stock-driven
quarterly-results-obsessed megaglomerates. Plus, these megaglomerates own such huge catalogs, they
barely can keep track of it all, much less successfully mine every vein for maximum profits. Note
that Time Warner cut Warner Music loose because it turns out a record company wasn't a good fit for
a media megaglomerate, ie it wasn't as profitable as magazines, cable networks and cable systems.
They are probably going to cut AOL loose too because that was just an unmitigated disaster, but not
relevant to this conversation.
I don't think it's a good thing for "dead" or "near-dead" or "niche" musical styles like jazz and,
arguably, classical to be under the umbrella of these huge organizations, and I wish there were ways
to bring pressure to bear for easier licensing arrangements because I think that specialty/niche
labels can be very successful doing reissues of back catalog where the megaglomerate can't be
bothered -- but only if the cost of entry is low enough for them to have a reasonable chance of
success. I cite the examples of Mosaic with jazz CD sets and now individual albums from the RCA and
Columbia vaults. And I cite the few long-term-successful (successful = able to stay in business; I
doubt any of them are super-profitable) LP reissue companies.
You are seeing how things have shaken out. A player like Naxos or Telarc, which has a
classical-focused staff and knows their customers and their marketing and can survive with a few
thousand copies of something sold per quarter, will be the main new-release generator in this
market. I would also say that the failure of high-resolution formats to attact much of an audience
has further set back the megaglomerates since their marketing and new-release machinery is obsessed
with technology and "latest-greatest" thinking. It's not flashy or perhaps "interesting" to quietly
work hard to build a great classical catalog, and this probably does not attract the best and
brightest in these corporate cultures. By the way, back in the "golden era", even very large
companies like RCA and CBS/Columbia had a small cadre doing the classical work. Classical has always
been a "specialty shop" with U.S. labels, which is why some of the recordings are so beloved --
because the whole thing was the antithesis of corporate, it was very personal and hand-crafted. I
think classical was more institutionalized in Europe because it was a bigger music market and
because it was a bigger part of broadcasting for longer than in the US. Remember that jazz and rock
didn't catch on until after the US.
-- Tom Fine
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Richter" <mrichter@xxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, September 27, 2006 6:43 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] CD versus Download was "All hail the analogue revolution..."
Tom Fine wrote:
Right, again, niche players. Limited marketing budget, etc. Most of the world's back catalog of
classical music is owned by Universal and BMG/Sony and EMI. I think if you took a census, they
would own about 85-90% of total back catalog of recordings. The reasons why so much of it is out
of print has been detailed ad nauseum by me and others.
-- Tom Fine
I'll suggest that whatever Polydor is now (notably the DG label), it has a library comparable with
the two you cite with Decca/London not far behind.
Mike
--
mrichter@xxxxxxx
http://www.mrichter.com/