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No audiophile quality recordings in 10 years?

Posted by PAR on February 8, 2017 at 09:39:49

There is a very interesting article on the Stereophile website today. It includes an interview with Klaus Heymann of Naxos. It explains why Classics Online folded and in it he predicts the demise of CD within 5 - 10 years, the decline of downloads and the only players left in the streaming market being those with income other than that generated from subscription.

In effect he is saying that all that will be left is Apple Music, Amazon Music and the like (a gong I have been banging for a while here). This would currently seem to leave us with only MP3 as there is no indication of them desiring to move to higher resolution formats. He mentions Spotify as another survivor due to its advertising income. However as all or most of their advertising seems record company based , if the record companies no longer have CDs or downloads to sell what would they advertise?

It therefore seems to me that if he is correct these sources would then constitute the sole or nearly the sole income streams for for their record company suppliers via royalties . As the record companies probably could not generate suficient revenue from streaming alone ( except possibly top 40 labels) in order to replicate their current income, this may make the whole thing economically unsustainable. Certainly specialist genre repertoire would be unlikely to generate enough streaming interest to cover costs and survive (remember that even if a streaming service offers , say, 40 million tracks the vast majority of them are never accessed. How many streams a year does a small label specialising in, say, choral music or bluegrass get?).

So for consumers (Heymann distinguishes the B2B music market) it looks to me like Apple and Amazon etc. streaming music as the sole source of non-broadcast receorded music outside of used CDs. The music would come only from the majors (and their licensed labels) and would consist solely of mass market top 40 type titles with back catalogue of a similar variety. And all in MP3.

Your thoughts?

• http://www.stereophile.com/content/naxos-opens-arkivjazzcom-   (Open in New Window)

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