It looks like the Beeb have backed down on the issue of downloads, and there won’t be any Bach Concertos, Suites or Masses available free of charge at the end of the year when the BBC plays his entire repertoire.
I’ve argued before how this is exactly what the BBC should be doing – particularly in the case of out of copyright music performed by orchestras supported by the licence payer. In fact, a lot of these record companies get to record some of their major classical output thanks to these orchestras.
The thing is that someone who’s just got their shiny new iPod Nano, and loaded it up with some wonderful Bach music, is surely much more likely to go out and buy more than someone who hasn’t.
I don’t have any empirical evidence of this, but could Amazon, say, provide a breakdown of what Beethoven music they’ve sold over the last 12 months. Then, maybe, we could see what the real impact of the Beethoven downloads was.
Maybe it’s just me, but record companies just aren’t willing to try anything new. What they should be doing is getting together with record shops around the country and putting big displays of Bach music together. A bit like bookshops have “Big Read” and “Richard & Judy Bookclub” displays. Take it a bit further: let the BBC give away some music – the Brandenburg concertos say. Then sell the CD. It really would sell. It’d have a nice cover, some liner notes written by someone accessible. Even Classic FM would have to mention it when the album entered the top 20 Classical chart, as surely it would do. Everyone would be a winner!
Let’s just hope that BBC Music magazine puts some Bach on its December or January CD. I suspect it will.