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Amazon fills the Classical Recording Niche
March 19, 2007 12:27 PM

An interesting article from the NY Times discussing the ramifications of Tower Record's demise shines the spotlight on Amazon's new Classical Recording "Blowout" Store.

Tower Records really did provide the most extensive collection of classical recordings for sale, and when it went bankrupt it was devestating to classical fans:

According to Paco Underhill, chief executive of Envirosell, a New York-based retail consultancy, Tower's closing has been absolutely devastating for the classical music community. And the transition to online isn't as natural as it might be for products with a younger customer base.

Amazon offers over 100,000 titles online:

Amazon's new classical music Blowout store complements its core classical music offering, which has been in place since 1998 and features about 100,000 titles. With 2,000 deeply discounted CDs and a small but growing number of audio tutorials, the Blowout store is meant to be an introductory service of sorts for those who wish to build classical music collections but are not willing to spend large sums on a genre they know little about. Amazon's classical music sales last year grew by more than 22 percent, making it one of the fastest-growing music genres on the site (Amazon does not break out separate revenue figures). The Blowout store will seek to feed that trend by offering most titles at 30 percent of regular prices.

What's interesting (or confusing...or sad) about this story is that the classical market has been shrinking precipitously over the past years. The research and consulting group, NPD Group, has compiled consumer survey data which shows that classical sales dropped last year by 28 percent, and have dropped by 54 percent in five years. These numbers, though, do not include albums like Josh Groban's "Awake," Andrea Bocelli's "Amore" and Il Divo's "Ancora" as classical albums. Combined, these performers' crossover albums notched eight of the top 10 "classical" recordings last year, and 91 percent of the top 10�s sales.

Clearly, the classical music genre is becoming less and less valued by consumers of "high" art. In that way, it's been mirroring the demise of jazz, as well, which the the Recording Industry of America pegs at less than 2% of all record sales.

And Classical? It's sales represented less than 3% of all record sales in 2005.

Ouch!

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