Making a career of acoustic recording

[klaukholm]

Originally Posted by Jim Williams

Classical music is in decline. The audience is dying off. Those are the demographics.

Don't expect a resurgence either, look at those demographics. Kids are not exposed and not interested in classical music, they will not become future customers either.

Many classical labels are struggling or have folded. Many are not re-recording past performances since the catalog is already so full. How many versions of Dvorak's #9 do we need?

You will have better luck if you offer a location recording service that covers other music styles. The styles that people still listen to.

How do you even come up with this?
It has no link to reality.

There are a number of articles from the early 1900, prior to mahlers greatest achievements, bartok, stravinsky, shostak. and so on.
These articles go on about the art being dead in 10 years because of the age of the audiences and a bunch of other BS.

Classical recording is not what it used to be, but the art is as strong as ever.

It is clear that you are not very well informed on the subject of classical music business

One thing is for sure, the business is incredibly competitive even for backwater orchestras. The freelance scene for producers is also getting similarly competitive, albeit not as competitive as getting a gig in the band yet.

There is plenty of room for another Dvorak 9, but you like every concert we play, you are up agains the giants and better stand tall.

[aracu]

Classical represents what stays... it is the very last thing to go down. When
the Titanic was sinking the classical ensemble kept playing.

[Thomas W. Bethe]

Originally Posted by klaukholm

How do you even come up with this?
It has no link to reality.

There are a number of articles from the early 1900, prior to mahlers greatest achievements, bartok, stravinsky, shostak. and so on.
These articles go on about the art being dead in 10 years because of the age of the audiences and a bunch of other BS.

Classical recording is not what it used to be, but the art is as strong as ever.

It is clear that you are not very well informed on the subject of classical music business

One thing is for sure, the business is incredibly competitive even for backwater orchestras. The freelance scene for producers is also getting similarly competitive, albeit not as competitive as getting a gig in the band yet.

There is plenty of room for another Dvorak 9, but you like every concert we play, you are up agains the giants and better stand tall.

Somehow this topic got off track. It is about a career in acoustic recording and not about the demise of classical music but they are tied together. The supply of good classical recording engineers far outweighs the need for them. In places mentioned before there are WAY TOO MANY engineers and no one is getting rich off being one. The whole bit about classical going under has been stated since there was classical music and you are correct that Classical is not going anywhere but...there may not be as many chances for people to record it. Getting a masters degree is IMHO NOT going to help as much as networking and doing an exceptional job on everyone thing the person does.

FWIW and YMMV

[Richard Black]

It's worth bearing in mind that there was a HUGE boom in classical recording from about 1995 to 2005, roughly - just the period where actually manufacturing CDs got silly cheap and a few entrepreneurs realised that they could get pretty decent (if not household name) artists to record unknown stuff and make a fair profit on it. Obviously Naxos is by far the best known example but there are dozens of others. In terms of working classical recording people the situation's probably no worse than say 30 or 50 years ago.

[Thomas W. Bethe]

Originally Posted by Richard Black

It's worth bearing in mind that there was a HUGE boom in classical recording from about 1995 to 2005, roughly - just the period where actually manufacturing CDs got silly cheap and a few entrepreneurs realised that they could get pretty decent (if not household name) artists to record unknown stuff and make a fair profit on it. Obviously Naxos is by far the best known example but there are dozens of others. In terms of working classical recording people the situation's probably no worse than say 30 or 50 years ago.

Except all the recording schools did not exist 30 to 50 years ago so you have a lot more people wanting to be educated in/ or doing audio than you had during that time period. I would venture to say that there are 10 to 100 people for every person back then. At one time in the 70's I knew almost every audio engineer in this area of about 100 square miles. Today I probably know 10 or 15 out of the hundreds that call themselves "audio engineers" and work in some related field. It is a much different climate that when I started.

FWIW and YMMV

[JonesH]

Originally Posted by klaukholm

There are a number of articles from the early 1900, prior to mahlers greatest achievements, bartok, stravinsky, shostak. and so on.
These articles go on about the art being dead in 10 years because of the age of the audiences and a bunch of other BS.

I had a HUGE smile on my face when I first saw one of those articles. I also saw some statistics a year ago that maintained your line of thought. That had more to do with the economic crisis and all, but still...

I was happy some weeks ago when my younger brother who's 20 years old had some friends over for a bona fide music listening session, sat down and selected some LPs and let 'em rip from start to end. Then said something like "yeah, this is what music should be. we should listen more to classical music".

Another guy said something that many a grizzled old west coast rocker 55+ dude could have said; something to the extent of "todays music sucks" and "last good album was made in 1979". He was 17...

[oldeanalogueguy]

Originally Posted by Thomas W. Bethe

Except all the recording schools did not exist 30 to 50 years ago so you have a lot more people wanting to be educated in/ or doing audio than you had during that time period. I would venture to say that there are 10 to 100 people for every person back then. At one time in the 70's I knew almost every audio engineer in this area of about 100 square miles. Today I probably know 10 or 15 out of the hundreds that call themselves "audio engineers" and work in some related field. It is a much different climate that when I started.

FWIW and YMMV

closer to 1000-10,000 x