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Classical Recording - From the Inside

Klaus Heymann

A positive essay about the situation of classical music by Allan Kozinn in the New York Times elicited a
doubting response from Greg Sandow in his blog at www.artsjournal.com/sandow/2006/06/. An
extensive discussion by contributors followed, including this very interesting response from Klaus
Heymann, the founder and CEO of the Hong Kong-based classical budget label, Naxos. Klaus is
responding to comments made in the discussion and not reproduced here. The comments are easily
enough implied from the response. (The financial data are in US dollars – add one third for the
Australian dollar equivalent.)

The classical record business has not become a nonprofit operation -- most of the independents make a
profit although it may not be the kind of profit or return on investment financial investors might be
interested in. For us independents being in the classical record business is a lifestyle, that allows us to
live reasonably or very well depending upon how good we are at what we're doing. And there are
different business models -- most of the independent full price labels actually make money through
sales of CDs and, in some cases, DVDs. Naxos being a budget-priced label has to rely on other sources
of income to make a profit -- licensing, downloads/streaming, subscriptions.
Quite a few of our recordings and those of our competitors are subsidized -- either by sponsors, by the
taxpayer, by foundations or by the estates of composers.
All of us pay our artists ‘almost nothing’ and those of us who can afford it also buy out all the rights
from the musicians. And yes, it is practically impossible to make money from selling contemporary
music if it is not Adams, Glass, Corigliano and a handful of other commercially viable composers.
Whether or not orchestras bear some of the costs depends on the kind of contracts they have with their
musicians. In most of the rest of the world, recording is part of the musicians' salaried jobs and
orchestras actually make money from recordings because they can fill empty slots in their schedules. In
the United States, too, some orchestras have deals with their musicians that include a limited number of
recordings for which they have to pay the musicians whether they can sell them to a label or not.
Others have to find sponsors to subsidize recordings.
I do object, though, to Allan Kozinn's ‘Dickensian pay to musicians’ (although he does admit that
musicians think our terms are in their interest because at least they get a fee and we pay all expenses
such as travel, hotel accommodation and per diems). ‘Dickensian’ is defined in dictionaries as
describing ‘poor social and economic conditions’ [of the working classes]. But somehow, in the
context of his contribution, he seems to imply that like the Dickensian capitalist of the past we are
exploiting the poor working musicians and make a fortune from doing so. Nothing could be further
from the truth -- like the musicians recording for us we don't make any money from new recordings,
especially not when contemporary music is involved.
Here are the facts: when we sell a CD to one of our distributors we get $2.00 (yes, $2.00) because we
sell our CDs at budget price. Manufacturing cost is about 65 cents per CD which gives us a gross
margin of $1.35. 35 cents go towards overhead which leaves us $1.00 per CD to pay for the investment
in the recording. In other words, for every dollar we spend we have to sell one CD. When it comes to
contemporary music, another 50 cents come out of the $1.00 to pay for mechanical royalties (more in
the United States and Canada because there the mechanical rates are based on playing time and not on
the selling price, as in the rest of the world).
An instrumental recording costs us around $6,000.00 ($2,000.00 for the artist including expenses and
$4,000.00 for production --producer/engineer, hall rental and piano rental and piano tuner if a piano is
involved). The first 4000 copies sold pay for the cost of actually releasing the CD (cover picture and
cover design; booklet notes; mastering; marketing and promotion, etc.). This means we have to sell at
least 10,000 copies to break even -- most artists understand this calculation and are happy with our
business model. Composers understand it too -- and at least they get some mechanicals back if they
deliver a fully paid master to us.
Orchestral recordings cost us between $15,000.00 and $20,000.00 and, if copyrighted repertoire is
involved, we have to pay another $3,000.00 to $5,000.00 to publishers for the right to record the
repertoire (it's called ‘material rental’). You can do the numbers yourself -- with the first 4000 discs
covering the release cost, we have to sell between 15,000 and 20,000 CDs to break even with public
domain repertoire and double that if the works are in copyright. For example, each of the six volumes
of the complete orchestral works of Barber cost us $25,000.00 to record but, on average, we've sold
only about 25,000 CDs per volume -- which means we have yet to recoup our investment. On the other
hand, we paid more than $100,000.00 to the publisher in material rental and mechanical copyright. The
calculation is not much better for other big projects like our complete Lutoslawski and Penderecki
orchestral works and many others.
Then how do we make money? We're selling lots and lots of compilations -- The Best of Mozart, The
Very Best of Mozart, Chill with Mozart, and so on. And there are a few evergreens that keep selling
year after year -- my wife's (Takako Nishizaki's) Four Seasons has sold more than a million copies to
date since it was first released in 1987 and continues to sell between 15,000 and 20,000 copies per year
-- and we have another 20 or 30 titles that do almost as well. Then we license many of our recordings
as background music to movie and television production companies. At the 2004 Olympics all the
national anthems performed at the medal ceremonies were our recordings, generating healthy public
performance income. Then there is the Internet -- many people subscribe to our naxosmusiclibrary. We
are regularly the most downloaded classical label on iTunes, E-Music and others and in Germany and
Japan we even had the most downloaded album across all genres (classical, pop, and rock).
This is one of the reasons why I'm optimistic about classical music -- it is doing much better on the
Internet than in the record shops and in the concert halls. On iTunes, classical music accounts for 12%
of revenue as compared to only 3% in the record shops (although the percentage is slightly higher in
other big markets). This means, there are many people out there who don't go to shops to buy their
classical music or to concert halls to listen but who nevertheless enjoy classical music and are willing
to pay for this enjoyment. Classical music is also alive and well in Asia -- we had a record year in
Japan last year -- we sold 200,000 sets of a 10-CD box with Mozart's 100 most popular works.
2 million pianos are sold in China every year and more than 30 million young Chinese are taking piano
lessons.
The market is there but people and performing arts organizations will have to learn how to adapt to
changing market conditions. I think that, in the not too distant future, orchestras will have to change
and become cooperatives providing all kinds of music to their communities with the cooperative
providing a minimum but stable income to their musicians and with all members sharing in any profits.
Orchestras will have their own chamber orchestras, modern music ensembles, chamber music groups,
jazz ensembles and rock bands -- and they will enjoy a lot more support in their communities than at
present. And management needs to improve in today's orchestras -- too many are run by music lovers
who have no idea of how to run a business or by business people who have no idea of music.
How many chief executives of orchestras and other performing arts organizations could successfully
run a normal business with 150 full-time employees and turnovers of between 20 million and 100
million per year?

The larger discussion about the future of classical music (and in particular, orchestras) can be found
at
http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow/2006/05/new_book_episode_and_allan_koz.html
 

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