In a recent article in Newsweek International, Alexandra Seno discussed the classical music recording industry as part of the “long-tail” phenomenon in e-commerce and singled out Naxos, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2007, as one company that has been able to turn its vast catalogue of repertoire into a money-maker.
According to Seno’s article, about 50% of Naxos’s almost 150,000 tracks have been downloaded 10 times or less, yet digital sales accounted for 25% of sales worldwide in 2006. Naxos also earns revenue from the Naxos Music Library service, which provides streaming versions of Naxos tracks and other distributed labels to over 1,000 educational institutions and libraries worldwide, and Naxos Web Radio.
Naxos recently opened its own digital download store, Classicsonline, which offers DRM-free downloads in MP3 format from a number of labels, including Naxos.
Clearly, Naxos founder and chair Klaus Heymann feels that the online world is one in which classical can thrive; as Heymann puts it, “we could live comfortable if from tomorrow we never sold another CD.”
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