The MacAlba

Some people say the most daft things.

BBC Radio 3 recently broadcast all the works of Beethoven and then made all nine symphonies available as MP3 downloads. The latter were performed by the BBC’s own Philharmonic.

In an article in The Independent, the Managing Director of the Naxos record label says something which I can only assume he later regretted. He said that by making these works freely available as downloadable MP3 files, “You are also leading the public to think that it is fine to download and own these files for nothing.”

Given that the BBC owns the recording and performance rights of a non-copyrighted work, and that it can decide what it can do with its own property, then it is fine to download and it is OK to own those files for nothing. The BBC has its own term and conditions attached, and the MP3 file quality was limited (to minimise file size and download time). I hardly think that record labels have anything to fear.

I can only assume that the record labels mentioned in the article are short-sightedly worried about their own company’s short-term profits rather than the promotion of Classical Music to an as yet untapped potential audience in the longer term.