Digitised back catalogues offer new opportunities for labels and collectors

Charlotte Higgins [The Guardian, 28 March 2006]

There are stirrings of a gold rush in the world of classical music, and it comes from an unexpected quarter: the web. In a market whose consumers have been written off as so doddering they have barely got over the loss of 78s, the statistics are striking. Proportionately, classical sells better digitally than on CD. Whereas classical accounts for about 3%-4% of total sales of music in shops, on iTunes it accounts for 12% of sales.