San Francisco Opera Adds "Cinemacasts"

Following in the footsteps of the Metropolitan Opera, The San Franciscio Opera has also started an HD Cinemacast series this month. Click here for more information and for some preview video clips.

eMusic Driving Online Classical Music Sales

eMusic recently added the catalogs of Chandos, Telarc and Harmonia Mundi to its online offerings.

They also revealed that more than half of customers who downloaded one of two recent exclusive free classical music samplers went on to purchase additional classical music. Of those, nearly one third had never downloaded a classical track before. Click here for more information.

Metropolitan Opera Offers Broadcasts on Cable

In another leadership move, the Metropolitan Opera has begun to offer its live simulcast performances for cable television viewers to watch on demand. Here's an excellent example of an arts organization leveraging its content library for a variety of distribution channels - beginning with movie theatres, moving on to home viewers via on demand cable services, and then to DVD. Click here for more information

iTunes Tops 3 Billion Downloads

Apple recently announced it's 3 billionth download!

New York Philharmonic Download Success!

An article in the New York Times gives some exciting information about the early success in the NY Philharmonic's efforts to offer concert performances for download from iTunes.

New Digital Music Report Shows Significant Growth

A new report released by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industires contains the following exciting figures for Digital Music adoption:

• Digital music sales estimated to double to around US$2 billion in 2006
• Single track downloads estimated up 89% at 795 million
• Available tracks double to four million, via 500 online services in over 40 countries worldwide

Chicago Symphony Multimedia Initiative

The Chicago Symphony announces a new multimedia initative- starting its own record label and returning to nationally syndicated radio via the WFMT network.