At the same time, sound quality is important to classical music collectors and most are not really satisfied with heavily compressed files. Higher-quality files are much bigger and are more difficult to download…
… We made our entire catalog available for streaming online, free, in 1996 so that people could listen to our recordings before purchasing them…
If the industry had gotten together in the late-1990s and come up with a concept like iTunes, it could have avoided most of the piracy problems it has been experiencing in recent years…
Klaus Heymann, founder of Naxos, speaks about classical music and the Naxos label with CNN’s Andrew Stevens.
From piano concertos to violin masterpieces, Klaus Heymann knows his classical music — and the classical music business. His career path includes stints as a tennis coach and stereo equipment distributor, and he married a world-class violinist before making his unlikely entrepreneurial debut in the music industry. Today he has every reason to celebrate. His music label, Naxos, which quietly undercut the classical music market 20 years ago, is now selling more than 7 million records a year. CNN’s Andrew Stevens met the business maestro at the Naxos headquarters in Hong Kong to find out how he did it.
“The Boardroom” is CNN International’s weekly segment offering insights into the minds of the world’s top CEOs. Airing across CNN news and business programming, “The Boardroom” goes beyond quarterly earnings and trading updates and focuses instead on what motivates these high-fliers, their leadership styles and strategies.
Conducting her first subscription-series program at Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall as the music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra here on Friday night, Marin Alsop received two prolonged standing ovations.
Classicsonline offers DRM-free downloads at 192 kbps from Naxos–but also, as Serinus points out, a number of other labels, including many which Naxos of America doesn’t even distribute here in the US. Naxos albums cost $7.99 from Classicsonline and other labels run for $9.99.
The intuitive search engine function on Classicsonline makes it easier to find what you want than iTunes (which, according to NPD Group, is now the third-largest music retailer in the US by sales) but it is also interesting to note that, unlike other download stores, one can purchase tracks lasting as long as 20 minutes individually. This feature makes it a fine stop for students who are studying a particular movement or for those who don’t want to pay the money for a full album without sampling first.
A recent development that Serinus wasn’t able to write about was Naxos of America’s just-finalized deal to put the Naxos entire catalogue of 100,000 tracks up on British-based social networking site Last.FM, sold last month to CBS. If all goes well, Last.FM should have all Naxos content up in three weeks.
Scottish paper The Herald published an article today about Naxos on the occasion of the company’s 20th Anniversary. In the piece, founder Klaus Heymann talks about the origins of Naxos, its current status, and plans for the future.
Heymann also talked about Naxos in Australia’s The Age back in April. In both pieces, Heymann emphasizes the role that digital services such as Naxos Music Library, downloading, and licensing play in sustaining the company.
For anyone who wants to get a look at the Naxos big picture, these are worth a read.
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Klaus Heymann, founder of Naxos, speaks about classical music and the Naxos label with CNN’s Andrew Stevens.
Scottish paper The Herald published 
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