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Too bad. One of my favorite sites, and as the article notes, a wonderful resource.

Classical Music Website Andante Shuts Down

The demise of the site came two years after it was purchased from its founders by the French record label Naïve. According to Matthew Westphal, the editor of the site's magazine section for most of its history, Naïve told members of the site that it was no longer able to provide the resources to run the site, particularly given recent technical problems.

Andante was founded by attorney Alain Coblence, with funding from Pierre Bergé, the co-founder of Yves Saint Laurent and the former chair of the Paris Opera; it went live in March 2001.

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Yes, it was a wonderful resource. There's a related article in today's New York Times.

When Andante was in its infancy, they invited me to participate, along with perhaps a dozen other people in various performing arts professions, in a meeting to discuss their plans. The people couldn't have been nicer, their goals were noble, and you had to root for them 100%. I immediately subscribed. I do remember thinking, however, that their huge ambitions, despite the influential people backing them (Pierre Boulez was one), seemed unrealistic. They wanted to be all things to all people; it would take a staff the size of an army, all with a serious music education, plus a king's ransom to bring their plans to fruition. (In retrospect, it's ironic they were eventually bought out by a label called Naive.)

Many of their early ideas were never implemented. But their online listening library and magazine and the CD label were just fantastic while they lasted. After they moved their offices to Paris, though, some of us began having billing and technical problems. E-mails were rarely answered until, suddenly, a couple weeks ago, I got a curt message stating they were shutting down.

I'm no business person, but I think Andante's fatal mistake was that they seriously undervalued their product. A subscription was obscenely cheap. They were on the right track, though, and Naxos Music Library and Classical.com show that with the right business model it's possible to make a success of streaming audio. It's not hard to imagine a world where WiFi is as prevalent as cell phone use. When that happens, it is my belief--my hope!--that subscription streaming services will take the place of downloading. Who needs to bother with shopping and downloading and copying when, for a reasonable fee, you can have access to most anything you want, whenever you want it, without using up any disc space on your computer?

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It is such a shame about andante.com. I was a subscriber from the beginning, too, and I have to agree with you, Anthony, that the original owners undervalued the site. So much was available without subscription, and the material that was accessible by subscribers only -- archives, Kobbe Opera Book, Oxford Music Dictionary, music library -- was a steal for $99 USD per year. Radio and Magazine were free. It seems to me that those were worth a subscription fee, with a higher fee for premium archives. Although I do wonder whether the Magazine was meant to be free to get people to purchase the archival CD's.

I took a survey by the Metropolitan Opera within the last year or two, in which I was asked what I would pay for streaming access to their opera broadcast archives. I'm hoping that that bears fruit. In the meantime, thank you so much for the link to the NY Times article. There were a number of sites mentioned that I didn't know about, and I'm planning to visit them all.

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The NY Times also reported on February 9 that the New York Philharmonic will soon make concerts available for digital downloading.

Deutsche Grammophon, using live recordings by the orchestra, will release four concerts a year, probably through iTunes and perhaps through other Web sites, said Zarin Mehta, the orchestra's president. The first is due in about two months and will be priced at about $8 to $10, he said. It will consist of this weekend's program at Avery Fisher Hall, Mozart's Symphonies Nos. 39, 40 and 41, conducted by Lorin Maazel. Listeners will probably have the choice of downloading a movement, a symphony or the whole concert, Mr. Mehta said.
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Today I got an e-mail message:

"Dear Members,

After we faced up several technical problems which damaged the site, we are now able to announce the Andante website is working again. Please bear in mind that some functions are still unavailable, but should be fixed very soon.

Be sure we are doing our best to continue as long as possible to give you satisfaction with this great access to classical music of highest quality, and maintain the Andante website.

Thank you for your trust and understanding.

With our best regards,

the Andante team."

Piece by piece, it does seem to be coming back. I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

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