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The Crisis of Classical Music 8

  Tobias

The news was as short as it was shocking: Andante, the Internet’s number one spot for Classical Music, has closed down and denies visitors further access to its archives. In the course of five years, the site had established a reputation as an excellent source of composers’ biographies, articles on specialised topics, current news as well as CD and concert reviews. The portal was furthermore taking full advantage of the opportunities of the digital world by allowing members to listen to radio streams, complete tracks from the catalogue of the naive label (who bought the site in 2003) and even some video clips. In other words, Andante was the dream of every Classical Music lover. So why did it fail?

Classical Music and the Internet – people have called it everything from “a contradiction in terms” to “a perfect match”. As always, the truth is nowhere near the poles and far from in between – reality is rough and simple. If you have a look at what a consumer would expect from a site, regardless of its content, four things would immediately come to mind:

•    Dynamic content: A site that doesn’t offer updates on a regular basis is a dead site. Why, after all, should anyone return to a page which doesn’t change? It’s trivial knowledge, really, but a point often sadly neglected in Classical Music. Andante was the ideal antidote – actually, it might have been too good. The flood of articles and items which were part of the daily menu, was almost scary. There was no other portal we could think of, which offered a similar service to its readers.

•    Quality content: Same here. You could get lost in the Andante-archives. They even allowed you to use reference books and dictionaries online, as well as plow through the endless oceans of their very own articles on composers and performers. It was well-organised as well, which meant that you would actually be able to find what you were looking for. In the final phase, with financial problems immanent, editor-in chief Mathew Westphal had to shed a lot of this permanent writers and the standard decreased. But it was still second to none in the industry, where most had learnt their lesson about the dynamic part, but had replaced it with links to news sites, instead of offering genuine content.

•    Technical reliability: This is where it started to go wrong. If you’re using a Website, you want it to run fast and smoothly. What you wouldn’t want was for it to keep you waiting or even worse to deny you access. The latter unfortunately happened quite often and the complaints which followed damaged Andante’s reputation dramatically. It also must have hurt the sales of CDs through the site – if you can’t be sure the site is working, one would be hard pressed to order anything at all.

•    Affordability: At $9.99, you would think that Andante had found a fair price for their services. After all, they provided you both with a rich ressource of background information and a steady flow of current news – a perfect combination and a unique one to boot. Hmmm... so maybe we should change the criterium. Because what this point is really about is the question of what customers are willing to pay for a site. And it has to do with branding.

In all of the reports on Andante’s failure, the reason for its downfall has been given as the inability to sustain the costs. Which is both true and wrong. The true part is easy to see (after all, a magazine does guzzle a lot of cash), the wrong part has to do with the fact that it is never just the costs, which decide about a business’ success – but rather the earnings. People were unwilling to sign up in large enough numbers for Andante to keep going – and when the quality decreased, even those that did, were uncertain, whether they wanted to go on spending their money. The prosaic reason for this is that Andante was very likely a highly emotional product (its founder Alain Coblence was a passionate music fan) – but it was being sold as a “brain-child”. What makes you come back to a place on the net and spend your hard-earned bucks is a combination of usefulness and an emotional connection. This site had a lot of the former, but too little of the latter. “Andante” was just a name, in their hearts people could not say what it stood for other than a lot of content. And mere content, as anyone working in publishing will readily testify, is terribly hard to sell.

Proof of this can be found in the nature of the articles which have been written over the last couple of days in the media – they are business-like and slightly defeatist, but without any tears. A brand, a site that people truly loved, would have met with an outcry of sadness and rage after its shut-down. This one just died down peacefully.

At this point, it would be a good idea to shortly get back to the basic idea of this column – after all, this is about the “Crisis of Classical Music”. Many have asked whether this failure doomes Classical Music on the web in general. To those, one could simply reply: Have a look at all those pages, which still attract houndreds of thousands of visitors, have a look at the success of the BBC’s free Beethoven-downloads, have a look at those excellent live video-streams of concerts! One could also reply: The nature of the problem is a general one, it has nothing to do with Classical Music as such. Andante’s bosses knew a lot about music, but not enough about marketing and sustainable business, it happens in other economic branches as well.

But this would not be quite true. Have a look at an excerpt of Andante’s preamble, which was formulated in 2001: “Andante looks forward to joining forces on the Web with music organizations, musicians, teachers, parents, and students. Together we will help restore music appreciation at home and at school, and bring classical music to new audiences.” Excuse me? New Audiences? Andante was everything a Classical Music lover could wish for, but it was certainly everything an unknowing “normal music consumer” always held against the Classical scene: An abundance of intellect, a lot of difficult-to-understand terminology, a wealth of references you needed dictionaries for to understand. It was a shrine to the initiated, but something of a no-go for anyone else.

What Andante would have needed is a sister or a brother in mind. A publication which attracts new audiences and then makes them aware of the fact that they can always surf over to Andante to find out more. By staying exclusive and – excuse the word – elitist, the site was constantly digging its own grave. And then it fell in.

Which doesn’t mean it was a complete disaster. Actually, I find it an absolute scandal that Andante was left to die. Governments are pumping millions into the subsidised Classical industry and into projects which noone truly cares about. This would have been the chance to fund something of absolute value – made freely available, Andante would have been the perfect online-ressource on Classical Music, a model-site, which invited everyone in and offered plenty of material for education and to sattisfy one’s curiosity. Instead, it was left to rot, until it had lost all of its appeal.

The Crisis of Classical Music is rooted in the problem of attracting new audiences and simultaneously of offering existing ones a fully satisfying product. Without a new generation of writers, who can cater to the young and slightly less-informed (nothing to be ashamed about at all) and without a truly convincing new online- and offline-publication, things will stay difficult.

"The Crisis of Classical Music" by Tobias Fischer