Gigbloggy

While browsing the web today in search of content for the blog, I discovered one news worthy story that lead me to encounter another. Both are intimately related even though they describe two businesses that pertain to two very different musical realms.

Story number one:

“Classical music’s most advanced response to the digital revolution”

We all know the recording industry has been going down hill, and its classical music divisions are probably first in-line in the downfall. Classical music has been suffering for many years now for a number of reasons that tend to make me ask myself how it survived up until now, two of which are as follows: orchestras costs a fortune to maintain, and the number of classical music aficionados are most likely decreasing as time goes by.

In response to its potentially grim future, the Berlin Philharmonic Ochestra has partnered with the Deutsch Bank to create the first ever online classical music listening experience. They want to revitalize the classical business by bringing concerts directly into people’s homes through a paying-streaming model. They call it the Digital Concert Hall.

The Berliner Philharmonie (Berlin’s orchestra primary concert hall) is now equipped with high definition cameras, and an audio recording infrastructure that enables the performances to be captured in the highest quality possible in order to be streamed by anyone with the appropriate Internet connection bandwidth. 30 concerts per season will be broadcast to those who wish to pay to see them.

The model is innovative but ambitious as live classical music performances tend to represent to ultimate listening experience in terms of quality of musicianship, sound, dynamic range etc. Although through a streamed representation musicianship is conserved and probably improved due to the different camera angles, sound quality and dynamic range will ultimately be impoverished due to data compression. I don’t know if the delicate comprise will lead people to adhere to this new model, but it’s remains a great idea that is totally worth trying out.

Story number two:

When I read about this new venture I immediately recalled a similar project that I blogged about once or twice many months ago: FabChannel.

FabChannel had the exact same idea but for pop/rock upcoming acts in a well known Amsterdam venue, The Paradisio, and at the Roxy Theater in Los Angeles. They captured hundreds of excellent artists (Xavier Rudd, DJ Shadow, Feist, Amy McDonald, Method Man, Kate Nash, Roni Size, Sigur Rós to name a few) in high-definition video and audio, and set-up the videos on their website for people to watch. With more than 700 live concerts, festivals, performances, debates and lectures, Fabchannel.com built a substantial concert video archive.

As you might have noticed, I am using the past tense to describe FabChannel for the simple reason that to my grand demise the company put a halt to its activities in march. After reading about Berlin’s Philharmonic project, I stopped by FabChannel’s home page only to be greeted by a long heartfelt text written by its former founder and CEO, Justin Kniest, entitled The Reasons Why We Stopped. Justin’s justifications is a great read, highlighting both the recording industry’s lack of entrepreneurship and the public’s attitude towards free streaming services as two of the main reasons behind FabChannel’s death.

The company had garnered the interest of sponsors and investors. In November 2007, the city of Amsterdam and Foreman Capital each took a 25% share in Fabchannel. The city of Amsterdam paid 1.25 million euros for the share. Universal Netherlands also contracted a deal with the concert hosting site in February, 2008 to webcast the shows and perceive revenue via ads. Despite this deal, the business model underlying Fabchannel proved difficult to maintain, with no clear source of direct revenue from the end users (viewers), and with copyright holders (artists and/or record labels) being reluctant to allow premium value content to be streamed for free. Moreover, notwithstanding tight security measures, Fabchannel content got pirated on places like Youtube and Peer-to-Peer filesharing networks (wikipedia).

Read The Reasons Why We Stopped at www.fabchannel.com.

Impressions on both these stories:

Since the Berlin Philharmonic/Deutsch Bank project is new and has yet to prove its worth, I cannot fully compare it to Fabchannel, but I find it a tad ironic that a project such as Fabchannel, who’s niche market is much broader than Berlin’s Philharmonic’s, and who’s execution seemed flawless (9 years in activity, an archive of over 700 concerts, beautifully well captured shows of renowned and respected artist, some of which became massively famous over the years etc) did not succeed at creating a sustainable business model.

Ad revenue didn’t prove to be enough for Fabchannel. Maybe they should of opted for a subscription model like Berlin’s Philharmonic. Or is it just the demographic of each business that makes the difference?

What are your thoughts?