Thursday, July 14, 2005
another new music festival, and why shop at record stores?
Information is available here. I only wish I could read the program's Web site, which is not in English. What I do find most interesting is that they are going to make concert performances available as MP3s, which I applaud.
As I walked through the classical music section of a major record store in Philadelphia today, which was largely devoid of customers in the classical section, it really brought home how downloadable music could make the classical music section obsolete. I found a few nice recordings of new music (interspersed with the usual offerings), but given what is available on the Web, either for download or purchase, how much longer should a new music aficionado browse through bins in a record store clearly dominated by either rock or traditional classical music? No recordings by Palestine, de Alvear, or many other composers are found here. While there are some recordings of Feldman and (to be fair) a ton of releases by Glass and Reich, very little cutting edge music is to be found in these stores.
So, aside from the fun of browsing in person, is there much to be gained from a visit to a typical record store chain when new music increasingly is moving to either small independent distributors accessible from the Web, or Web sites containing downloadable audio files?
posted by David Toub
4:56 PM
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