In Sunday’s (5/3) Philadelphia Inquirer, David Patrick Stearns writes, “The means to discover music we don’t even know exists has been threatening to die for a while—an ancillary fatality as the CD store threatens to go the way of the auk. But now, massive musical archives—some of them previously inaccessible—have parked themselves online, which is particularly good news for classical-music types who tend to be too isolated and specialized to enjoy the kind of word-of-mouth recommendations common in pop-music circles.” Stearns mentions the Metropolitan Opera’s site, Naxos Music Library, PristineClasssical.com, and Spotify.com. “But the sociological breakthrough represented by these libraries is this: So much music accessible in one place accommodates the kind of wandering—no matter where you’re located—that’s still possible in the bricks-and-mortar world only at specific spots like the Broad Street F.Y.E. (For Your Entertainment), where you can still pop in with 20 minutes between meetings, hit a play station, and walk out with something that expands your worldview.”
Posted May 4, 2009
