2/28/08

File It under... "Who Cares?"

We get it. Classical music is dead. The only people who still listen to it have white hair. They probably don’t even know how to use the inter-world-wide webs, which is why you’ll find this prominently filed under “classical”:

iTunes takes bigger slice of music pie

It informs us that music sales are down, CDs are yesterday’s cassettes, and iTunes is gaining popularity.

Where’s my daily allowance of North Korean poetic waxing? Where can I find some good hatred of new music? Where’s the content related to classical music?!

What? There is none? Fine. Just shove this in there instead—nobody’ll notice.

Well, Mr. Editor, I noticed. And I would like an apology. I accept Diners Club and American Express.
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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

There's a quote (perchance one of you can remember the correct wording and author), that is something like "the best way to make a living in classical music is to always talk about its death".

I think this article is funny compared with this 2006 NYT article (from Detritus friend A. Kozinn):

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/28/arts/music/28kozi.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2

The gist of it is that on iTunes, classical sales account for 12% of total sales, which is 4 times classical music's CD marketshare.

So it seems a more Web-based business model is good for classical music...

A quote from Alex Ross's blog in a post on a similar topic:

"The neverending "death of classical music" talk is the wishful thinking of the culture industry. But the fact that orchestra subscriptions, opera ticket sales, and, possibly, record sales have gone up in the last year or two suggests that music from Hildegard to Anna Clyne can still find its audiences without help from TV, magazines, and commercial radio. That's an astonishing phenomenon."

Indeed.

Aaron said...

The only music-criticism topic more tired and lazy than "jazz is dead" is probably "classical music is dead."

If some music critic is looking for a musical genre that actually is dead, I nominate "ragtime is dead."

Or possibly Morris dancing.