BBC backtracks on Beethoven digital downloads

Posted on 24 Nov 2005 at 10:40

UK digital rights campaigners are calling on Roger Wright, the controller of Radio 3, to reconsider his decision to limit the amount of free downloads available during the station's forthcoming 10-day Bach celebration.

Radio 3 will broadcast the complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach between 16 and 25 December. Last year the station played all nine Beethoven symphonies and made them available to download for two weeks. The response was overwhelming and unexpected, with 1.4 million downloads over the fortnight.

However, following pressure from classical record labels, the giveaway will not be repeated.

'Nothing will happen without consultation and, should it happen, it will be nothing on the scale of Beethoven,' a Radio 3 spokesman confirmed.

The Open Rights Group has sent an open letter to Wright urging him to think again.

'We believe that the BBC's offering of downloads during its Beethoven season was a wonderful idea for which the BBC should be commended, not criticized,' it says. 'The level of downloading should be taken as a demonstration of the public value of this activity and a reason to continue, not curtail, it.'

Record labels fear that further free downloads will hit sales, saying that had the Beethoven downloads been priced at a commercial rate their resultant revenues would have been huge.

The ORG argues that the publicly funded BBC should be promoting the widest possible access.

'We find the complaints of various parts of the recording industry not only selfish but short-sighted. It seems to follow from an assumption, expounded without any evidence, that downloads of classical music from the BBC deleteriously affect music sales from other, primarily commercial, entities. In our view it seems likely that the very opposite is the case: by promoting access, exposure and interest in classical music such schemes, especially in the long run, increase the demand and interest in these works, as well as in those who perform them,' it writes.

'Even were it the case that there were negative effects on the sales of record labels the benefits to British society would greatly outweigh these losses.'

However it should be noted that 21 per cent of the downloads went to the US as opposed to 17 per cent to the UK.

A spokesman for the BPI said that its members were unhappy that the BBC gave Beethoven away for free without consultation, adding that it was pleased to see that its views have now been taken on board.

Author: Simon Aughton