Bravo San Francisco Classical Voice

A lot of us in the media have been casting about for the best way to support and promote the artists who create the classical music that we live and breathe.  Their place in newspapers is shrinking, shrinking.  In some communities the symbiotic relationship between the classical radio station and local musicians is strong and vibrant.  In others not so much.

San Francisco has one great answer for our common dilemma, and it just turned 10 years old.  It’s the website San Francisco Classical Voice. SFCV is celebrating its 10th anniversary with a complete redesign. The site has a great concert calendar, previews and reviews, music downloads from local music groups, classical music resources, and a list of blogs (including this one; thanks, SFCV!).  And apparently people use it.  So congrats, SFCV and thanks for giving the rest of us a workable model for our own communities.

I’ve been trying to get a website like this going in Seattle and it’s tough.  If the whole community wants it, it’s probably sustainable, but it takes a certain amount of capital to get it up and running.  San Francisco has a couple of big foundations helping out.  We in Seattle are moving at a glacial speed in that direction.

I’ve always believed that if the classical music stations really cared about the musicians they claim to serve, we wouldn’t need independent websites, because the stations would serve this function in their communities. Some do, but many stations are so into self-promotion, they forget that it really isn’t about them.  Their job is to connect the music community with the audience.  Does your station keep the arts calendar for the city, and are people using it?  Do you have previews and reviews?  To what degree are you helping the arts orgs build audience?

It’s easy to pose questions without giving any answers.  🙂

On another note: as we speak, the Senate is arguing over the Performance Royalty.  Musicians believe they deserve to be paid for their work; broadcasters believe they’re already paying them with free promotion.  If the musicians had to pay market rates for the promotion we give them, they couldn’t afford it.  On the other hand, musicians say radio stations are making money off their labor and aren’t willing to share the profits.  It’s a dilemma.

We’ve already dealt with this in classical music.  It’s nearly impossible to get and keep American orchestras on the air because we have to pay huge broadcast fees to musicians.  The stations are not the ones paying the orchestra members — it’s the orchestras themselves that have to find the money and it’s a lot of money.

At the Chicago Symphony, every time I air an older live performance, staff members have to find the original roster for that piece, find the retired players who were on that recording and pay each of them a fee, in addition to paying all the current orchestra members whether they were on the recording or not. The administrative cost adds a huge amount to the cost of the royalties themselves.  If stations have to start paying these fees, they’ll switch formats so fast it’ll make your head swim.  Musicians are in real danger of killing off their best friends in the media world.