Highbrow Lament
When Mary Bragg got an iPod for Christmas, one of the first things she wanted to do was download some of her favorite classical pieces from the Internet -- just as her friends were doing with pop songs. But trying to locate a Chopin prelude she had read about in a novel, Ms. Bragg quickly got frustrated and turned instead to her father's and brother's CD collections.
"There's a need for better organization, especially for people who need to find something fast," says the 23-year-old financial-services worker.
Pity the classical-music fan. While lovers of pop, rock, jazz, folk and rap can surf the Web and easily download everything from Iggy Pop to 50 Cent, the digital age has left consumers with a taste for portable Tchaikovsky more or less in the lurch. Popular sites like Napster, Yahoo Inc.'s Musicmatch and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN Music devote only 2% to 10% of their offerings to classical works, and the hunt for a specific track can be tough going, especially for classical fans with sophisticated tastes.
"It's like the budget bin at a record store," says opera singer Susan Graham, who has searched sites like Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes for specific recordings of works such as Mahler's "Songs of a Wayfarer" or his "Ruckertlieder" but has come away empty-handed. ITunes's selection, she says, "was very mainstream, with only the most popular or generic offerings."
But even if fans manage to find the classical tracks they want online, MP3 players aren't set up to easily sort classical music. When a digital song is purchased from an online site, or even "ripped" from a compact disk, it's more than a file containing audio information: each track also contains text that identifies the artist, album name, track name and track number, which software programs on PCs and in digital music players use to organize and display songs.
Pop tunes are generally known by their original performers and are easy to categorize. But there are hundreds of recordings of Beethoven symphonies under different conductors with different orchestras. Many classical-music fans often purchase more than one version of the same work, to compare performances and build their libraries. It's not uncommon for an opera lover, for example, to own several recordings of Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro" with different casts or conductors, or a Baroque-music fancier to have two or three different recordings of Bach's "St. Matthew Passion."
As it now stands, the amount of information required to pinpoint a particular digital passage of a particular work isn't readily processed by a personal music player. In addition, the small screens of iPods and MP3 players can't display all the data needed to precisely identify classical-music selections. Some aficionados end up developing their own shorthand, such as "Btvn Sym 5 - 1 Mvt" and still can't readily find whether the track is by a particular orchestra, say the Boston Symphony or the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Aaron Zak, an MBA candidate at the University of Denver, creates his own cataloging system for his Rio Karma MP3 player, listing just the composer and the name of the work. "I end up skipping the performer field entirely. It's easier to retrieve the information," he says.
Another gripe: When some longer pieces are imported into an iPod through iTunes, they are divided into tracks, resulting in audible gaps -- sometimes a click -- in music that should be seamless, fans say.
Apple advises those who complain about this to use iTunes's "join tracks" function, which allows a user to convert multiple tracks into a single track for continuous play. But that prevents the user from locating a particular passage within the combined track. "With classical music, it gets tricky if you want to jump to a specific movement," says Scott Pelzel, a film and video editor in New York who owns an iPod. "Combining seems odd," he says. "It's a trade-off."
The classical crowd can take some comfort in knowing their plight is being addressed, at least as far as the paucity of selections. Virgin Group's Virgin Digital, a Los Angeles-based downloading and music-streaming site launched last September, is working on incorporating and cataloging classical pieces for its site and now has 70,000 classical tracks, out of a million tracks overall. Also in the past year, Yahoo's Musicmatch has built its classical selection from 3,000 to more than 12,000 tracks (out of a total of 850,000).
Record companies say they are tuning in now because they see downloading of classical music, among other categories, as a growth area. Currently, classical music represents about 3% of the $12 billion recorded-music market, a figure that has been fairly flat over the past few years, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. Some companies, such as EMI Group PLC, think that revenue from downloaded music of all types could balloon -- to 25% in 2009 from the current 2%. And at Naxos of America, the largest independent distributor of classical music in the U.S., Jim Sturgeon, chief executive officer, Naxos North America, says that in the first two months of 2005, U.S. sales of its downloaded music were up 40% over the same period last year.
Vivendi Universal's Universal Classics, a New York-based company, says classical music is a much bigger part of the digital business than of the CD business. At Universal, classical music's share of total digital sales is almost three times as high as its share in the world of CDs. "The potential in classical-music downloading is the first really positive sign we've had in a long time in this business," says Chris Roberts, president of Universal Classics and Jazz.
Apple's vice president of applications, Eddy Cue, says that Apple is continuing to build its iTunes library, adding classical content "on an ongoing basis," he says. "We have some staff dedicated 100% to classical and jazz, looking for what we're missing and what we need."
As for the cataloging issue, there are also signs of progress. The tiny screens of MP3 players can't be helped but identification of classical tracks by the players is a problem being addressed by digital music data providers that include Gracenote Inc. of Emeryville, Calif., and Loudeye Corp., of Seattle.
Major makers, however, aren't lining up with orders. For now, they say, they are waiting for a critical mass of consumers to ask for better capabilities before doing anything further. Fans of digital classical music may complain to one another and to the press, but Patrick Markel, senior project marketing manager for iRiver America, Milpitas, Calif., says, "We haven't seen a lot of requests from classical enthusiasts" about cataloging.
古典音乐迷们自感被iPod时代忽视
玛丽?布瑞格(Mary Bragg)在圣诞节得到一个iPod作礼物后，第一件事就是上网下载她最喜欢听的几首古典音乐，就像她那些爱听流行音乐的朋友一样。她想搜索一本小说中提到的一首肖邦(Chopin)序曲，但很快便沮丧地放弃了，那还不如到她父亲和哥哥的CD收藏中去淘呢。
这位23岁的金融服务行业员工说，应该有一套更好的组织，尤其对那些需要很快搜索某些信息的人来说更是如此。
古典音乐爱好者们真的很值得同情。流行、摇滚、爵士、民歌，还有说唱乐，都很容易从网上下载，从Iggy Pop到50 Cent的作品应有尽有。数码时代的来临让偏爱便携式柴科夫斯基(Tchaikovsky)音乐的消费者或多或少处于劣势。知名的下载网站，如Napster, 雅虎(Yahoo Inc.)的Musicmatch，还有微软(Microsoft Corp.)的MSN Music，它们提供的下载内容当中只有2%-10%是古典音乐。要在这当中找到某首特定的乐曲更是难上加难，何况古典音乐的爱好者往往都有自己独特的品味。
歌剧演唱家苏珊?格拉汉姆(Susan Graham)曾经在苹果电脑(Apple Computer Inc.)的iTunes等网站上搜索过马勒(Mahler)的《旅人之歌》(Songs of a Wayfarer)或《Ruckertlieder》等作品，但总是空手而归。她说，iTune的目录“非常主流，只能找到特别流行、特别大众化的曲目。”
不过，即使古典音乐的爱好者在网上找到了他们想找的曲目，MP3播放器归类起来恐怕也不容易。一般说来，从网站购买一首数码音乐，或者从CD上“扒”一首下来，其实包含的都不只是一份音频文件，还有确认艺术家、唱片名称、歌曲名称和排号等文字信息，电脑软件和数码音乐播放器通过这些信息来归类和播放音乐。
流行音乐往往以原创者出名，很容易归类。但如果是贝多芬的交响乐，哪一首都会有上百种灌录，不同的指挥，不同的乐队。许多古典音乐爱好者都会购买同一首作品的好几种版本，进行比较，慢慢积累自己的收藏。对一位歌剧爱好者来说，拥有好几种版本，不同指挥的莫扎特(Mozart)《费加罗的婚礼》(The Marriage of Figaro)的情况很常见。喜欢巴洛克音乐风格的爱好者也常常会拥有两到三套不同的巴赫(Bach)作品《马太受难曲》(St. Matthew Passion)。
而对一台个人音乐播放器来说，指明一首特定作品的数码路径所需的信息还不具备。此外，iPod和MP3播放器的小小屏幕也不能完全显示确认一首古典音乐作品的所有信息。一些古典音乐迷自己想出了特定的缩写形式，比如“Btvn Sym 5 - 1 Mvt”代表“贝多芬第五交响曲第一乐章”，但还是不能区分演奏的乐队，比如说，是波士顿交响乐团还是费城交响乐团。
阿龙?扎克(Aaron Zak)正在申请丹佛大学的MBA，他为自己的Rio Karma MP3播放器自创了一套分类系统，只列出作曲家和作品名称。“演奏者名单浩如烟海，搜索起来会累死，”他说。
还有一个障碍：有些较长的古典音乐作品通过iTune下载到iPod以后，会分成好几条磁轨，这样播放起来中间就会有停滞，有时是噪音，但流行音乐就不会。
苹果电脑向那些抱怨这一点的用户建议，使用iTunes的“合并音轨”功能，这项功能可以把好几条音轨合并成一个，连续播放。但又不能在一条合并后的音轨上找到某个特定的乐章。司各特?裴泽尔(Scott Pelzel)是纽约的电影和录像编辑，他说，对古典音乐爱好者来说，如果想单听某个特定的乐章，需要很多技巧。合并音轨似乎是个暂行办法，只不过有得有失。
如果知道自己的问题已经引起了关注，古典音乐爱好者们会感到一些安慰。Virgin Group去年9月份推出了一个下载和流式音乐网站Virgin Digital，这个网站正在归类合并一些古典音乐作品，现在已经能够提供大约7万首。也是在去年，雅虎Musicmatch的古典音乐作品库也从3,000首增加到了12,000首。
唱片公司表示，它们正在开拓古典音乐下载市场，因为这是一个蕴含增长潜力的地方。美国的唱片业协会(Recording Industry Association Of America)数据显示，目前古典音乐占总额达120亿美元的唱片市场的大约3%，这几年一直表现平平。百代(EMI Group PLC)等唱片公司则认为，各类音乐的下载市场都会迅猛发展，从目前的2%激增至2009年的25%。美国最大的古典音乐独立分销商Naxos of America的北美业务首席执行长吉姆?斯特金(Jim Sturgeon)说，2005年前两个月，该公司美国下载业务销售额就较上年同期激增了40%。
Vivendi Universal旗下总部位于纽约的Universal Classics也表示，古典音乐在数码业务中所占的比例远远超过了CD业务。而在Universal，古典音乐占数码产品销售总额的比例几乎是CD的三倍。克里斯?罗伯兹(Chris Roberts)是Universal古典音乐和爵士乐部门的总裁，他说，“古典音乐下载市场的潜力是很长时间以来我们看到的第一个乐观迹象。”
苹果电脑应用产品部门副总裁艾迪?库埃(Eddy Cue)说，苹果电脑不断增加iTunes的作品库，“持续”添加古典音乐作品。在古典音乐和爵士乐方面，公司还配备了全职员工，时刻搜索遗漏的内容和需要添加的内容。
归类方面也有好转迹象。MP3播放器的屏幕太小，这一点很难改变，但Gracenote Inc.和Loudeye Corp.等数码音乐数据供应商正在努力解决通过演奏者归类古典音乐的问题。
但订单并不多。这些公司表示，截至目前他们期待著大量消费者扩充存储空间的呼吁，然后才能有进一步行动。数码古典音乐爱好者们可能互相抱怨，或者向媒体抱怨，但iRiver America的高级项目营销经理帕特里克?马克尔(Patrick Markel)则说，我们尚未看到大量古典音乐迷们对归类编目的强烈呼声。
