This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Agile Buzz by Dominik Wei-Fieg. Original Post: A long tail for contemporary classical music Feed Title: Ars Subtilior Feed URL: http://typo.ars-subtilior.com/articles.rss Feed Description: Finest Handmade Code Random thoughts about agile software development as an art Latest Agile Buzz Posts Latest Agile Buzz Posts by Dominik Wei-Fieg Latest Posts From Ars Subtilior

Yesterday I’ve been in a concert of the orchestra my wife is playing in and my seat neighbor was fascinated by the first two pieces of the evening (Siblius 4th Symphony and Ligetis “Mysteries of the Macabre” for Trumpet and Chamber orchestra).

He said that he would love to have the recordings of these two pieces, but thought that there wouldn’t be a CD available, because they wouldn’t sell enough of that CD to make it worth producing the CD. Which made me think. My wife’s orchestra is a radio symphony orchestra, i. e., they were founded by a radio station60 years ago and (almost) all of their concerts are broadcast live or recorded and broadcast later on.

They also produce CDs, but, as expected, not of every concert they are giving.

Now, there are a lot of recordings of Sibelius 4th Symphony around, with the Ligeti piece it’s getting more narrow. But why shouldn’t it be possible to get the recording of that specific evening? The recording exists anyway and will be broadcast on May 4th at 20:03 CET. Now, instead of (illegally) recording that broadcast, some people would be willing to pay money to download the recording from the orchestras’ homepage.

It shouldn’t be too hard to setup a store for the recordings after they have been converted. Surly, there are rights issues (what if the soloist or the conductor have contracts with record companies etc…). But solutions could be found eventually.

This is would be a case for the long tail. The recordings are resources that could be tapped by selling them on the internet. If the conversion to a suitable format could be automated, the price wouldn’t even have to be that high.

And since this orchestra has done more than 400 world premiers since its inception 60 years ago, there are a lot of recordings of pieces that probably have not been recorded by anyone else.