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SECONDARY DOMINANCE
how small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
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Sunday, November 28, 2004 :::
NAXOS COMMISSIONS PETER MAXWELL DAVIES
This is pretty cool news. Naxos has commissioned Sir Peter Maxwell Davies to write string quartets:
"Last week Naxos of America released the CD of the first 2 of Sir Peter's 10 projected "Naxos Quartets." Four more CDs are to follow at regular intervals. It's a huge commitment for the Maggini Quartet, a British-based, British-specializing ensemble that's faced with the task of learning the new works and presenting them in annual concerts at Wigmore Hall in London. (Nos. 4 and 5 had their premiere in October.)
"What's really remarkable, however, is the involvement of a record company in commissioning new music. The conventional wisdom at most major labels is that it's hard enough to sell new music. Going out and helping it come into being is virtually unprecedented."
In addition to the coolness of a record company commissioning new music, this brings up a couple of additional subjects:
First, distribution costs are falling faster than ever. It used to be a major expense just to do the duplication of commercial releases, and now a CD costs a dollar or two per unit to manufacture. The Naxos business model allows them to spend the monies freed up in those savings on making the CDs cheap, and they use other strategies for keeping costs down as well -- ugly cover art, usually a public-domain image slapped into their standard generic format, means no artist fees or art royalties; skilled but non-famous ensembles who they can hire on the cheap; and probably other less obvious techniques. The result is generally a solid recording with decent engineering (production costs for recording are plummetting, too, of course) which they can sell cheap all over the place. Why spend $20 on brand-name artists and pretty cover art when you can spend $7 or $10 apiece on Naxos and get two CDs for the same price? The result of the lowered bar to producing CDs, however, is a glutted market. If I somehow managed to land a record deal, with Naxos or Sony Classical, or Nonesuch, or anybody else, in order for my record to make any money they would have to promote it like crazy. Davies is getting a lot of free publicity because what Naxos is doing is new and the Naxos PR department can get results, but when (if) the Naxos model becomes standard the New York Times won't run articles any more, and will probably ignore their press releases. That's not to say that their model will fail -- on the contrary, if they do it right it might work nicely, but they won't be able to take risks on new artists any more than any other classical label can. Remember that CRI folded a couple years ago, and they were one of the most important New Music Labels out there. So how do you get in on the Naxos action if you aren't already famous? You don't. I'm not complaing, mind you, just stating the facts. The good news, though, is that there are now venues through with the unknown composer can get his or her music heard. I have some pieces up at music.download.com, and while I don't get many hits I can direct interested people to it, and the occasional web-surfer can stumble across it. I got fan mail from Eastern Europe the other day.
The point is, distibution has become a PR problem rather than a manufacturing problem. It used to be that getting a recording made at all was the PR problem, but the lowered bar has moved the point at which the PR is required. I don't have any solutions at the moment, but it's interesting.
The second interesting issue is the possibility of outsourcing recordings. Hollywood has been outsourcing film-scoring for a decade or more since eastern european orchestras are far cheaper to hire than Hollywood orchestras, and about as good. What Naxos is doing on a large scale today might soon be duplicated by individuals. Suppose I've just written a string quartet, and I can't find an american group to perform it. I hire four guys in the Czech Republic or in India to record it. I haven't run the numbers (I'm not even sure where to FIND the numbers, but I wouldn't be surprised if the whole project could be paid for overseas for the cost of hiring somebody to record the ensemble in the US. I end up with a solid recording of real instruments to which I own all the rights -- I can publish my CD, I can send the recording around to American quartets to try to drum up some performances, I can use it to apply for grad-schools, I can send it to my mom.
Bravo to Naxos, congratulations to Sir Peter, and watch out world, things are getting interesting.
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posted by Galen H. Brown at 3:04 PM
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