I spoke to the buyer at Patelson's Music House, he told me that there are about four major distributors in the US for published classical music, and he specifically mentioned there were fewer publishers than years ago, but he gave no specific cite to numbers, it was more an impression he gave me. It's an area I know very little about, so I demure to his information when I made my comment, he may in fact be wrong. I do know Warner Bros Music Group spun off the classical publishing arm to someone else (I forget who).
As for the recording end of things, I was referring to larger companies, akin to what CBS Records did years ago, or even Nonesuch Records (way way back in the Terry Sterne era). There are no doubt many fine smaller companies: indeed the ones you pointed out I have never heard of. But even at Warner Bros, a US based company, none of their sublabels operations are based in the US, they're all overseas and the production on Erato and Teldec ceased years ago.
It's interesting that you mentioned 18th century publishing because that's precisely the period I'm involved with. When I was recently at the University of North Carolina's music library, I didn't notice any scores in the stacks from what I would call "desktop" publishers. I'm not sure if that's because the staff is unware these sources exist, or it's the lack of distribution for such small operations. Just an observation I had at *that* library.
Thanks for your insights!
On 2/4/06, Andrew Stiller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Feb 4, 2006, at 10:58 AM, Kim Patrick Clow wrote:
> I'm wondering if anyone has thoughts on the impact Finale has made on
> publishing music.
I could go on forever about it, but I'll try to be concise in
responding.
>
> Has it and the creation of desktop publishing had any impact on the
> business models?
I wouldn't be a publisher, otherwise. With engraving software it is
possible to publish on a shoestring, and as a sole proprietor. Almost
an 18th-c. pattern.
> I know that in the United States, there are fewer and fewer
> publishers of classical music scores (technically
> there aren't any US based labels now that RECORD classical music for
> that matter),
Now *that* at least is untrue! Innova and MMC, at the very least, come
to mind.
> so with fewer and fewer publishing houses,
> would the advent of small presses be a good thing?
I wonder where you get that figure, what standards are used to define a
publisher, and who's doing the counting. My own impression is that
there are a lot *more* classical publishers, but they're mostly people
like me, who might well fall below the radar.
>
> Supposedly computers and the Internet is the great democracy of
> things (blogs versus traditional mainstream media), mp3 swapping
> versus buying cds in stores, artists recording and offering their own
> music on personal websites etc. Has anything like this happened with
> music and Finale (or any music publication software such as Finale)
>
Well, both Finale and Sibelius have tried to set up online archives of
scores, but they're so full of junk that nobody uses them that I know
of. In our field at least it remains a truism that you get what you pay
for.
Andrew Stiller
Kallisti Music Press
http://home.netcom.com/~kallisti/
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Kim Patrick Clow
"There's really only two types of music: good and bad." ~ Rossini
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