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The Berlin Philharmonic Digital Concert Hall: New Strategies of Music Knowledge and Conception
Chapter · February 2018 CITATIONS 4 READS 1,661
1 author: Álvaro Gabriel Díaz Rodriguez
Autonomous University of Baja California
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CHAPTER 5
THE BERLIN PHILHARMONIC DIGITAL
CONCERT HALL: NEW STRATEGIES OF MUSIC
KNOWLEDGE AND CONCEPTION
ÁLVARO G. DÍAZ RODRÍGUEZ,
UNIVERSIDAD AUTÓNOMA DE BAJA
CALIFORNIA
Today’s society is immersed in a system in which Information and Communication Technology has been integrated to such an extent that it is impossible to live, work, research and socialize. It is essential in all areas of daily life and is part of a global process in which information flows instantly and without geographic boundaries. It allows communication in ways unimaginable just five years ago. Statistics of users world-wide show how the Internet has transformed societies as well as the preferences of users in their gregarious or isolated lives.
Cyberculture, understood as the link between man and machine, has become a way of communication in everyday life creating new ties and new rituals of coexistence. In turn, new forms of community integration have been generated, in many cases virtual, thus creating a dichotomy between ideological association and geographic division. It is no longer necessary to physically meet in order to establish a relationship with different types of folks.
The basic idea of this utopian world was the provision of information in cyberspace and through intertextuality. However, it has also generated diverse types of websurfers as well as new modes of transmission and reception of information (active or passive) which in turn has given the option of deciding which road to take within the virtual networks.
Art is not isolated from this process. Since its inception, cyberculture has conceived and stimulated new audiences who can often recognize the artistic objects and generate virtual not physical possession of them in a fleeting space. The audience possesses the work in a virtual way by feeling
the experience of being the co-creator through the interaction of an entity that cannot be owned forever because it has an expiry date. All of this is a result of the speed with which the virtual systems and platforms are changing.
In the music environment, we have observed how this relationship with cyberculture has reconceptualized the way of appropriating this artistic discipline generating new types of knowledge that originate from the actual experience of the listener. This is the case of the Digital Concert Hall (DCH) of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra which was first announced in 2009. It never ceases to amaze that the orchestra with the greatest tradition, discipline and link to world technology would seek to penetrate the world of cyberculture. But having delved deeply into the history of the Philharmonic and its relationship with technology, this was a natural and logical step that could not have been otherwise.
The Berlin Philharmonic has become a pioneer and a leader in technological innovations. Although currently the real-time transmissions of concerts are a common everyday occurrence, the Digital Concert Hall was the first live transmission project with an unsurpassed quality in video and audio. It has been an effective catalyst motivating other orchestras and opera houses to explore cyberculture.
The DCH breaks the paradigms of the listener to create a unique experience by modifying the conventional rituals of listening to music. Its reproductions can now occur in any place with no geographic limits, democratizing the process through the use of social media like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, building a new approach to concert music.
The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra manages to create a virtual audience that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. Websurfers can listen to concerts of the highest quality online or offline, receiving and reproducing the music from any portable media with access at any time.
Accordingly it can be seen that cyberculture has had a potent influence on the transformation of the aesthetic concept of music. This new concept, likewise, leads the world of the Internet to recreate or even reinvent itself. Dialogism is the resultant process between the media and the music. The knowledge of this discipline arises within the context of the growth of globalization, whose incidence and expansion is democratizing, which was the goal of the first Internet users.
Digital Concert Hall: Public Virtual Platform
With the creation of its virtual platform, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra continues its efforts to create a new public and to maintain its image as
leader in the development and innovation using new technology. According to Herbert Von Karajan, the search for a massive audience through television and recordings, and the link with the creation of the media necessary for this end, was one of the wisest decisions of the time. The arrival of Simon Rattle in 2002 as the Principal Conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic meant a new scenario for the Berlin group which entailed planning new possibilities for an audience immersed in the twenty-first century. The initiative that arose within a number of ideas for change was Zukunft@BPhil,1 which also began an educational program for the entire population:
“Zukunft@BPhil should remind us that music in not a luxury but a fundamental human need. Music should be a vital and essentials element in the lives of all people,” said Rattle about the program (Berliner Philharmoniker 2013). The musicians’ awareness of younger generation as their future audience grew in the process.
Zukunft@BPhil also led to a more in-depth consideration of “new” technologies. The idea was to use new media as distribution channels in order to adapt to the consumption behavior of the new generation.2
Within these new possibilities, the Digital Concert Hall (DCH) emerged to solve two problems that were noticed at this time. The first problem was the substantial reduction of compact discs and recordings due to the arrival of the digital formats and platforms which allowed music sharing. The second was the search for a new market absorbed in social networks and cyberspace.
In the first case, the creation of mp3 revolutionized the way of listening to and distributing music and above all, the revenues stemming from the sale of compact discs and LPs. The music industry would become imminent in the digitalization of music. Its main enemy was piracy where anyone could obtain any music by exchanging digital files. At the beginning of the 20th century, this was a new challenge for the Berlin Philharmonic.3 The Berlin Philharmonic had to create new methods of distribution within the market. Before the eminent collapse of discography, Robert Zimmermann, Managing Director of Berlin Phil Media, was asked if the main objective of the DCH was for the orchestra to reach farther than the community of Berlin to which he responded:
Yes and no. Yes, we wanted to connect to our fan base because up until 2008, the orchestra did not have any contact to the fan base except for a few thousand people who go to the hall every two weeks. … As an artist, you were basically cut off. The [music] labels make the recordings of the
concerts; you never get any feedback from any fan directly on what you’re doing. So, yes, one aspect was outreach.
The other important aspect was that the distribution through labels and TV broadcast were doomed to die. Television stations had less and less slots for classical music. In the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, there were traditional slots on television every Sunday afternoon. You had lots of Saturday-evening classical music or opera or ballet.
The labels were not willing to record the classical orchestral repertoire. They were gearing more and more towards soloist stars. The orchestra became a kind of companion.
We had to find a way to compensate, and we decided that the space where we were going to live was going to be the Internet.
That was the motivation for the orchestra. The revenues from TV and physical CDs were just disappearing. That was an important part of a musician’s income.4
The second case was the search for a new public immersed in the social networks and cyberspace. It should be noted that from their two trips to Asia, the members of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra cautioned that their success was more from the screens outside the concert hall than from the live concerts. As was previously mentioned, the first concert took place in Japan in 1957. The second was in Taipei, Taiwan in 2005 where, upon exiting the concert hall, a crowd of more than 25,000 people treated the members of the orchestra like true rock stars5. Olaf Maninger, cellist and Media Director, observed the fact that there were listeners who regularly remained outside the concert hall which prompted the idea of a platform to reach them. Thus the proposal for a digital concert hall was conceived on the basis of various market studies.
The project’s motivation are according to the main initiator, principal cellist and member of the media board, Olaf Maninger, a reaction on the decline of CD sale in the last couple of years, but also a reaction to the fact, that many of the orchestra’s concerts in the Berlin concert hall are often sold out and hence difficult to visit. So, in order to enhance the concert’s accessibility the new web platform enables both the creation of new audience communities and opens up for an approach to classical music that you Could call more democratic and non-elitist. Moreover, with help of this Project the orchestra is strengthening further it´s already strong brand “Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra” and the important of the place “Philharmonie”, since all live streaming exclusively happens at/from the concert hall.6
An example of the importance of the Internet is the 2010 surveys that show how adults spend their free time. For example, in England:
The Internet is now the media space where people spend the most leisure time (even longer than watching TV). The following are weekly averages for estimated time spent, across the sample of 2,000:
•25 hours: Online leisure time
•12 hours: Watching TV (apart from sport and movies)
•4 hours: Watching movies on TV
•4 hours: Playing video games
•3 hours Watching DVDs/Blu-rays
•3 hours: Watching sport on TV
Additionally, the majority find the Internet ‘important’ (although the nature and degree of this attachment varies across user types), as this quote from qualitative research illustrates:
‘When I haven’t got the internet I just feel completely lost… it’s scary how much you rely on it…’ 18-24 year old.7
As mentioned previously, Olaf Maninger was able to develop the idea of placing one of the most important orchestras in the world in a new, rejuvenated panorama closely related to global trends, thereby productively continuing in all areas with the projection of the Philharmonic. In an interview with Das Orchester in 2011, Maninger indicated what the origin of the Digital Concert Hall was:
The Digital Concert Hall is still a huge adventure, we have not yet exhausted the full potential. The popularity of the audience, which has been very positive from the outset, has increased considerably. The technical prerequisites have also continued to develop in our favor worldwide. The handling of Internet technology is becoming ever easier. That comes very much to us. Because we want to appeal not only to technicians, but also to all those interested in classical music who want to visit our virtual concert hall without great hurdles. The artists with whom we work together also support us sustainably. The enthusiasm of the startup phase has by no means faded.8
To live, work and take advantage of new technologies is, in short, a "great adventure.” The unlimited possibilities offered by the Digital Concert Hall are based on the immediateness of information that the digital platform for concerts can provide. On the platform, live concerts can be seen from almost any device that is connected to the network at any time and in any place.
A significant part in the consolidation of this project was the identification of the phases of technological evolution that the Berlin Philharmonic has had since its origin. Throughout its development, the Philharmonic has
observed the cyclical model of technological change formulated by Thusman and Anderson in their 1990 article “Technological discontinuities and dominant designs: A cyclical model of technological change”, as cited by Brian Kavanagh. This article claims that after the emergence of a technological discontinuity, there is a period of replacing and positioning in the market until the dominant product is positioned and repeats the schema:
In this schema a technological breakthrough instigates a period of intense competition (ferment) where variations of the original design compete until a 'dominant design' (a single architecture that establishes dominance in a product class) emerges and the era of ferment begins to subside. Following the emergence of a dominant design, order is restored to the technological regime, and further improvements to the product class take the form of incremental changes through relatively long periods of retention (learning by doing) until the next discontinuity initiates a new cycle of variation, selection, and retention.9
Faced with the positioning of the compact disc and its withdrawal from music digitalization, the Berlin Philharmonic has been developing an alternative to incorporate into its digital systems. In order to consolidate itself as a dominant and innovative product in its time, the Berlin Philharmonic has established and constructed a platform where the music is digitized and reproduced live as well as recorded, allowing it to remain a technological leader in its sector.
Kavanagh clearly points out that the public really does not want to pay for a live broadcast, but for a concert experience using new technologies.
The digital concert hall is a long-term project and any assessment must consider a number of variables, not least the fact that the target audience (classical music enthusiasts) represents a relatively small niche market in the context of the larger music industry. Another consideration is the fact that, in general, consumers do not feel they should pay for streamed online content in an era when much online content is free. Lastly, there is the issue of hardware; how many consumers have a large HD screens on which to view a concert, broadband speed that can deliver (uninterrupted) HD audio and visual content, and a sound system that can do justice to the dynamic range that is so central to classical music performances? There is a huge distinction to be made between experiencing a live transmission of an opera in a cinema, with the advanced audio and visual infrastructure in place, and watching a performance on a laptop with poor audio output. With this in mind it is no surprise that the Berlin Philharmonic are working
closely with both Sony and Samsung, both leaders in the production of high-definition Internet-enabled televisions.10
The term “new technologies” that we are using to analyze this case is based on the description of Bakhshi and Throsby who define it as follows:
Although the term ‘new technologies’ in the cultural field could be used to describe any form of technical advance affecting cultural production from the invention of the printing press onwards, it is used nowadays as shorthand for new information and communication technologies arising from two related late twentieth century sources: the explosion in computational speed and capacity that has transformed day-to-day life in countless ways, and the advent of the Internet. These technological revolutions have affected the operations of cultural organizations in a number of ways.11
One of the situations that the Berlin Philharmonic had to overcome in order to use the new technology and implement the project was the necessity of getting the sponsorship of the Deutsche Bank for more than 25 years:
The Deutsche Bank has supported the Digital Concert Hall from the beginning. This season the partnership was given fresh impetus with the joint education initiative “Explore Classical Music”, which makes classical music more accessible to young people. The extensive concert archive of the Digital Concert Hall makes it possible to introduce great works of the repertoire acoustically and visually in the classroom. For this purpose, the Deutsche Bank provides 500 schools and universities all over the world with access to the Digital Concert Hall every year. […]12
This initiative to bring the Digital Concert Hall to more than 500 schools not only consolidated the education project but also gave the Philharmonic another ally and sponsor, SONY, at the end of 2012. Remember that the Japanese industry had collaborated in the Karajan period with the incorporation of the Philharmonic in the compact disc market. On this occasion, SONY provided the technological equipment for the recordings and production of the concerts, raising the quality of the transmission from what it had been initially.13
The contract with SONY ended in 2014. On August 31, 2016, a new partnership with Panasonic was announced. With this change, a further development in high-tech audio and video was attempted by installing 4K cameras and high-impact audio technology.14
In his book Analysing Musical Multimedia, Nicholas Cook clearly describes his idea of medium:
The basic idea of a medium, in other words, is that it is just a medium, a channel of communication, and as such transparent. […]
We are a nowadays inclined to think of ‘the media’ as determining, rather than reflecting, public opinion. And in the same way, my argument in this book is predicated on the assumption that media such as music, texts, and moving pictures do not just communicate meaning, but participate actively in its construction.15
As noted, the use of media for the Berlin Philharmonic has been a highly relevant factor in the development of the DCH with the transformation of the formats and channels for dissemination evolving in recent years in an accelerated manner. Part of the acceptance and the growth of music lovers who join the DCH is its portability. The incorporation of the app for platforms such as iOS and Android has facilitated public access to the Philharmonic on mobile phones and tablets, and provided the interactivity that the public wants. Adkins and Adams point out:
What is clear is that the digital consumption of music and other digital content that accompanies it will become ubiquitous. The level at which the audiences choose to consume or interact with this ‘content’ is the variable that seems most likely to develop as interaction design and the ergonomics of user experience come to play a larger part in the consideration of the nature of the final product.16
One item that has made this platform different from others is the quality of the audience’s visual and sound experience from any space in the concert hall, and this feature of the DCH has improved year after year. In an article published in 2015, Rebecca Schmid writes about the platforms:
In 2010, Sony worked with DCH to develop an app for its Smart TVs. By 2013 there were apps for Samsung, LG, and Panasonic, covering altogether about 60 percent of the general smart TV market. “We never could have predicted that the development of mobile and TV device would be so rapid,” recalls Zimmermann. “But we had the advantage of having the content.”
Although 30 percent of users watch on mobile devices, over half of those do so through a WI-FI connection to their computer or smart TV. The rest are equally divided between smart TVs and Computers. Zimmermann considers smart TV the market´s most promising sector. “The usability is always getting better and faster”, he says. “It won’t be long before clients are practically unable to tell the difference between cable and Internet”.
The Hall is also available over TV boxes such as Nexus TV and Amazon Fire. PC-based application have proved less viable. A Windows 8 app developed last year has been successful on Microsoft tablets but not on desk- and laptops. There will be another attempt, however, when Windows comes out in August.17
This reference fails to mention Apple applications which at that time were used on both iPhones and iPads. All of this shows the importance of the development of these apps for all platforms always keeping in mind the audience’s experience with the DCH. Birgit Stöber goes even further to point out that this experience affects not only the audience but also the musicians:
This Project creates several different emotional experiences both for the audience and the member of the orchestra. For the audience in front of their computer –theoretically all over the world-, the project offers the visual experiences of the space of the Berlin Concert Hall as well as the audiovisual experience of a particular life concert. The live streaming among others realized by fixed cameras installed in the concert hall opens up for the possibility to come closer to the musicians than sitting in the Concert Hall itself. Hence, the audience in front of their Computers gets emotionally tied to the particular place, event and group of people, the musicians, in Berlin as well as to the virtual community of a global music audience. The musicians acting in Berlin might also be affected by being aware of a much bigger audience than present in the Berlin concert hall. So, due to the use of high tech new media the understandings of belonging and social agency are altered both on the side of the audience and of the artist.18
Stöber continues her reflection on the attitude of the musicians:
The musicians acting in Berlin might also be affected by been aware of a much bigger audience than present in the Berlin concert hall. According to [Olaf] Maninger playing a concert while being aware of the fact that there are a lot more people listening and watching than being physically present in the Berlin concert hall gives “an extra kick” and motivates eminently. It is clear, that some orchestra members get an extra exposition depending on the piece of music and their entrances.19
The emotional factor here contributes to rethinking the model of the concert ritual where the audience goes to a physical space and the musicians can see their audience as they perform. Now the audience and the space acquire traits that move away from the traditional experience.
Ruth Finnegan raises an interesting panorama of this ritual in her article Music, Experiencesand Emotion:
Amidst the inescapable diversities –part of findings– some points are worth drawing out. It is striking how often rituals are intershoot with music, managing fraught situations in human lives and presenting organized public occasions for emotional deployment. Through music, public ceremonies can exploit the encompassing capacity of sound to marshal a sense of communitas, where, as Van Leeuwen suggest (1999, 197), “listening is connection, communion.” Experience is dynamically co created too as people dance with each other, beat time, move together, construct and reexperience their recollections later –realizations of human sociality that recall Schutz’s “mutual tuning in relationship” (1951, 92). The collective experiencing of music can divide as well as unite of course. 20
This ritual that Finnegan describes is precisely what is deconstructed with the DCH. The format of the ritual is the same but what changes are the conditions and the kind of society that wants the visual and auditory experience. The DCH manages to create this sense of communitas within a virtual community. Bakshi y Throsby identify four categories of innovation that are common to cultural institutions seeking to anchor themselves in new technologies:
• Innovation in audiences reach: this relates to the generation of new audiences, including through use of digital technologies such as live high-definition (HD) broadcasts […]
• Innovation in artform development: one of the most significant innovative contributions cultural institutions can make is to the development of the art-form in which they operate, through the encouragement of new and experimental work in their programming.
• Innovation in value creation: cultural institutions are searching for new ways to measure the economic and cultural value they create audiences and their wider Group of stakeholders, and to translate these into terms that policymakers, funding agencies, donors and private inventors can relate to.
• Innovation in Business Management and governance: cultural organizations face challenges in strategic Management that are peculiar to the artistic or cultural are in which they operate; dealing with these challenges requires a constant review of the organization’s business model and a search for innovative Financing strategies in response to a changing funding environment.21
These categories fit into the model of the Berlin Philharmonic through the DCH. It had to renew and innovate in a virtual society that perhaps has the same needs but which needed new tools to meet them. The change has not exactly been in the type of audience but in the way in which the Philharmonic approaches the audience. New technological tools are used to reclaim those who no longer have access to record stores or who have a geographical barrier to listening to one of the best orchestras in the world. In October 2016, Google presented a report titled “How People Use Their Devices” in which they surveyed 1,974 residents of the United States between the ages 18 and 49. The results revealed that in a single day the devices used are as follows: 80% smartphones (intelligent phones), 16% tablets, and 66% computers. More than one in every four people or 27% use only their smartphones and only 14% exclusively use their computers. On an average day, users consult their smartphones for 170 minutes, their computers for 120 minutes, and their tablets for 75 minutes. Thirty-nine percent of searches are done on smartphones followed by 32% on computers.22
From the above statistics, it is understandable that the new model of the DCH live concert transmissions has had to develop an innovative technology for mobile applications with quick and easy access to live concerts as well as the archives. An alarm on mobile phones was developed to alert users ten minutes before live concerts begin. It is interesting to note that this alarm sounds similar to the sound of the bell announcing the start of a concert at the Philharmonic. Other mechanisms to attract an audience to the DCH as well as announce concerts and news have been the social networks, particularly YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. As seen in the previous report from Google, portability has become a major factor in recent years and trends show how the public is increasingly in contact with the Philharmonic through social networks. When Tobias Möller, Director of Communications, was asked what role social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, and the video platform YouTube have on the Berlin Philharmonic, he responded:
In the acquisition of new customers, the social networks are our most important communication channels. Our audiovisual material fits in perfectly. In our own YouTube channel, we place three minutes of video clips, which are also linked to Facebook and Twitter. A very lively community has been grouped around these offers. Often we realize that we have an incredibly informed audience. There are questions about an unknown horn player, for example, who had jumped as a help. Or it is discussed intensively about Bruckner‘s conductors.23
The creation of new Internet communities has been a determining factor in the consolidation of the DCH which is educating new communities of listeners in cyberspace in a way unimaginable just two decades ago. In this respect, the “Manifesto for the Digital Music Revolution” by David Kusek and Gern Leonhard published in 2005 precisely predicted this development:
Performers and their managers are beginning to use technology to create new live forms of Entertainment, and new delivery mechanisms that go directly to their fans. […] Imagine a virtual concert that was streamed directly to subscribers, in a pay-per-view model, with the band playing on a Studio soundstage, and the performance streaming live via satellite, and then subsequently made available as a digital archive to the subscriber base.24
It seems that the predictions of Kusek and Leonhard were realized when years later the DCH format was permanently linked to these “new mechanisms to attract fans.” Robert Zimmermann, Managing Director at Berlin Phil Media, responded to the question of what has been the experience that has been most surprising in the building of the DCH:
The one important thing we did not expect when we started the project is the impact of social media. When we started in 2007… Facebook and YouTube were small. WhatsApp and these kinds of communication tools and community-building tools didn’t exist.
Now [Berlin Phil] clips on YouTube have been watched 45 million times. For classical music, it’s a lot. And to generate 800,000 Facebook fans you can inform and contact: that’s a very powerful way of keeping in touch with your fan base, and building a community around what you’re doing. It’s very important for the musicians and for the institution.25
As of March 26, 2017, the YouTube page of the Berlin Philharmonic had had 159,013 subscribers and 56,232,872 views since its creation on January 19, 2009. 26 With respect to other social networks, there are currently 1,104,587 followers on Facebook and more than 116,000 followers on Twitter since its creation in May, 2009. There were more than 750,000 users registered on the DCH as of May, 201627 . According to Uhl, Schmid and Zimmerman, in June, 2013 there were 47,000 subscribers on YouTube, 49,000 on Twitter and 390,000 on Facebook with 135,000 users who had installed the DCH app on their mobile phones.28 These figures demonstrate that the potential of social
networks to convince the public to accept music concerts in cyberspace should be reevaluated.
Innovations in social networks have managed to capture, attract and increase a public that today lives immersed in the Internet as described by Bakhshi and Throsby:
However, the more profound innovations come through the far-reaching potential of new communications technologies that are constantly being introduced. We can interpret these developments in the first instance as relating to the first of our innovation categories – expanding the audience reach. There are three dimensions to this sort of innovation (McCarthy and Jinnett 2001):
• Audience broadening – capturing a larger share of the population already known to be audiences
• Audience diversifying – attracting new groups of consumers that do not currently attend.
• Audience deepening – increasing and/or intensifying the engagement of audiences. The latter may be achieved through enhanced interactivity between arts organizations and audiences on social networks and creative websites on the one hand, and technological convergence, which is allowing audiences to access cultural experiences any time, any place and in any form on the other.29
Data presented by Robert Zimmerman in München on May 31, 2016 showed the following information about the contents of the DCH after seven seasons:
• 400 HD concert recordings, including 340 live broadcasts
• 1.100 works (650 hours) in the concert archive, plus 270 interviews
• 40 documentaries and educational projects
• 20 Mill visitors in the Digital Concert Hall website
• 5 Mill hours streamed, or 1.200 times the capacity of the Philharmonic Hall
• 750,000 registered users have created an account
• 380,000 newsletter subscribers are kept up to date each week
• 1,5 Mill Social Media contacts are informed constantly
• 30.000 subscribers have a paid ticket30
The following figures show the Digital Concert Hall on social networks in May, 2016: there were 120,000 subscribers on YouTube which is more than any other artistic institution, 800 video clips of concerts and interviews, and 45,000,000 visitors. In the case of Facebook, there were 850,000 followers which is a significant growth since 2009 when there were only 9,000. There were 4,000,000 impressions31 per month in 120
publications, and 600,000 Videostreams per month of the published videos. In Twitter, there were 111,000 followers, 7,500 tweets about concerts and videos, and 1,200,000 tweet-impressions per month. Finally, 380,000 copies of the Berlin Philharmonic’s electronic bulletin (Newsletter) are sent every week, and 70 DCH bulletins are sent each year in German, English, Japanese and Spanish32 .
As has already been mentioned, these figures show the potential of the networks as well as the number and the ages of people who have accessed the DCH: 13% of 20 to 29 year olds, 16% of 30 to 30 year olds, and 20% of 40 to 49 year olds. This data closes the generation gap in an emphatic way. These audiences are found mainly in Germany with 27%, followed by the United States with 16%, and Japan with 10 %. The rest of Europe has 28% while the remainder of the world has 19%33 .
The advantage that the Berlin Philharmonic has obtained from its positioning and technology impact is unambiguous. It has gained many followers in social networks by returning to its origins, paradoxically to the recordings market which had been considered lost. In April, 2014, the Berlin Philharmonic announced the launching of a new label called Berliner Philharmoniker Recordings. These recordings are only sold on their official website and in their concert hall although digital versions can be downloaded on iTunes. This project is described on their official website.
For more than 100 years, the music of the Berlin Philharmonic has been available in the form of recordings. With the Berliner Philharmoniker Recordings label, the orchestra is for the first time publishing its own recordings
One of the particularities of the label is that it goes beyond the usual in the offering of their products. In most cases, audio recordings are accompanied with Blu-ray and the associated video version with various extras. As well, the recordings can be reproduced on CD or for better enjoyment, in high fidelity, high resolution audio format. For fans of vinyl, LP versions are also offered. No less luxurious is the presentation offered. Each recording comes in an exclusive hardcover edition with an extensive, carefully designed booklet. The aim is to provide a complete musical experience. These high-quality publications are heard joyfully and also are pleasant to behold.34
This begs the question of why a company that is succeeding with its Digital Concert Hall would return to the other almost obsolete formats. The answer could be a little callous: “and why not”. In an interview about the creation of the new recording label, Simon Rattle said:
The recording World has changed so much recently we are all on a journey to somewhere; I think nobody really knows what be that, the major labels seem to be changing form, shape and even names on a weekly basis. We don’t know what recording will be. But I think any of us who visited New York, year after year, after year, and saw that Tower Records was no longer there must have thought, O.K.; so the model is changing. And what is it going to be? Surely it is going to be, as it is in other parts of music, people making their own stuff and simply putting it out there.35
It is pertinent and revealing to analyze a concept that emerges from the DCH’s new image for a public immersed in daily life and network connections. The audience is seduced into returning to old formats such as vinyl and compact disc. However at the same time they continue to receive the message that the sound quality of the digital download, which is 24 bits, is better than the compact disc. Thus a double dialogism shows something new in an old format, and this old format comes from digital techniques. Music lovers who have argued that digital recordings do not maintain the standards of quality are left without arguments when contemplating this new label from the Digital Concert Hall. When asked in an interview who had left a professional footprint on his DNA, Robert Zimmermann replied:
In the end, probably my deceased partner and companion, Oliver Hermann, who brought me close to classical music and gave me the stamina and daringness to start something crazy like this.
A good example of this is probably, we’ve been preaching that the future is digital and online and that the CD and media industry is dying. But having said this, two years ago, we started our own physical label with recordings of the orchestra — because the orchestra wants and needs to be a recording orchestra. That’s in the DNA of the orchestra. They have to record their core repertoire. Even if they have recorded it 50 times before, this composition of this conductor, soloist, and orchestra has to record. So we said, “We have to establish our own recording label but we do it in a completely different way than all the others.” The packaging doesn’t look like a standard CD. It doesn’t only contain the CD [but also] everything around the concert experience … in this one physical package. You get the videos, documentaries, and download codes. The retail doesn’t know what to do with us. Critics say, “Well, this is a lavishly wonderful packaging, but I can’t do anything with it because it doesn’t fit into my usual CD shelf.” In the end, that was the point. You have to break the common understanding and make something new. By doing this, we also got out of the usual pricing mechanisms. Usually you say, that’s an in-consumer price: 30 percent remains with the retail; 30 percent remains with the distribution; the labor gets so and so much; and the artist, if he’s lucky, gets 5 percent of the revenue. By creating this big
online community, we were suddenly in a position to address our fans directly and say, “… Look what we’ve made: It’s craftsmanship, it’s special.”
That’s only possible because the orchestra is managing itself. They love trying out new things. They love being experimental. They love going new ways. They don’t care about industry standards. That’s not their world. Their world’s the creative world.36
Starting with the "great online community", the Berlin Philharmonic has been able to set up this facet. More and more people are joining the project and having the experience of listening to a music concert from both a new business model and a new methodology of music knowledge. An important aspect that draws attention is the DCH experience with virtual reality. In April 2015, it began experimenting in collaboration with We make VR, and in October of the same year with the Google Cultural Institute. Robert Zimmerman’s idea for the future of the DCH covers three main points. The first point with respect to technology is to continue the development of recordings and transmissions (4K/VR) by changing the transmissions to 5.1 format and the recordings to 3D. In addition, improve the administration of the relationships with customers (CRM) through social networks. The second point relates to the exclusive content aiming to increase the attractiveness of the DCH through the archive of concert recordings as well as the inclusion of “behind the scenes” content with information about the musicians and the orchestra. Also produce more master classes and educational content. The third point to be covered in the future refers to distribution which will allow new markets in accessories and applications to open to the public, the achievement of greater institutional access in schools and universities, and the opening of the large Chinese market for the DCH.37 When asked what he has learned in this whole process, Robert Zimmerman replied:
I think the most important lesson is that the opportunities developed through the change of technology are always bigger than you can ever imagine. We never imagined when we started that, just one or two years later, every television set was suddenly Internet-enabled. We never imagined that social media would explode like they did. We never imagined that these iPhones suddenly were able to play high-resolution video and audio, which is immaculate. We learned that it is wise never to underestimate what will happen. Today, we sit here and we think, “Wow, three, four, or five years ahead, how do we imagine the time to be?” … Just imagine what will happen to virtual reality, for example … and what will happen to 3D sound or high-
resolution sound replication, where you suddenly have an immersive feeling of actually sitting in a concert hall. You will be able [to] decide, “I want to go to Carnegie Hall,” “I want to go to the Royal Opera House,” or “I want to go to the Berliner Philharmonic,” and say, “I would like to sit in block A.” You put on your glasses and your headphones and you have the feeling that you are there. … I think we still have a lot of interesting technological developments in front of us.38
The obligatory question after this narrative is to what degree the Philharmonic is attempting to replace itself with technology in which it does not physically need musicians. The initial response is that it is impossible to substitute the experience of a live concert and it is evident that this is not the intention of the DCH. Their intention is to take the Berlin Philharmonic to the public that does not have direct access to the concert hall in Berlin due to geographic or economic issues. In the second place, the music continues to be the same music executed by the musicians belonging to the Philharmonic. Although the way in which the music is heard is different, it’s not just the sound quality but also the ritual of the experience that was previously mentioned. The music has a portability that had not reached that degree of sound fidelity and would have been unthinkable just ten years ago.
The Digital Concert Hall has come to change the established paradigms for listeners. We are far from an argument about sound quality because this has already been achieved with richness through the Internet. Now the Digital Concert Hall will continue to seek new experiences and innovations as occurred more than a century and a half ago when Emil Berliner invented the phonograph.
References
Adkins, Monty and Adams, Tom. “Digital Music, Digital Distribution” presented at Proceedings of the Electroacoustic Music Studies Network, Conference Electroacoustic Music Beyond Performance. Berlin: June, 2014. Accessed January 31, 2017, http://www.emsnetwork.org/IMG/pdf_EMS14_adkins_adams.pdf
Art Council England. Digital audiences: Engagement with arts and culture online. London: November, 2010. Accessed January 25, 2017, http://www.aandbscotland.org.uk/documents/2012-05-28-13-11-39-10Digital-audiences-for-arts-and-culture-november2010.pdf
Bakhshi, Hasan and Throsby, David. “New technologies in cultural institutions: theory, evidence and policy implications.” International JournalofCulturalPolicy 18, no. 2, (March 2012): 205-222.
Berliner Philharmoniker Recordings. “About us”. Accessed February 17, 2017, https://www.berliner-philharmoniker-recordings.com/about-us/ Chen, Christie and Cheng, Sabine. “Taiwan's love for music is rare: Berlin Philharmonic conductor” Focus Taiwan, News Channel, May 5 2015. Accessed January 13, 2017, http://focustaiwan.tw/news/aedu/201605050032.aspx
Colbe, Korina. “Digital Concert Hall. Der Markt ist noch längst nicht gesättigt”. DasOrchester, June, 2011.
Cook, Nicholas. Analysing Musical Multimedia. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Finnegan, Ruth. “Music, Experience, and Emotion” in The Cultural Study of Music: A Critical Introduction, edited by Martin Clayton, Trevor Herbert and Richard Middleton, 353-363. London: Routledge, 2012. Google. How People Use Their Devices. Last modified September, 2016. https://storage.googleapis.com/think/docs/twg-how-people-use-theirdevices-2016.pdf
Kavanagh, Brian. “Art in the Age of its Digital Reproduction: Organisational Responses to Digital Music in the Classical Music Industry”. Lecture DRUID Academy 2012, January 19 - 21, 2012. Cambridge: The Moeller Centre University of Cambridge. http://druid8.sit.aau.dk/acc_papers/nt3x9nxqlqg2hia1tqcvfvb4dybb.pdf
Kusek, David and Leonhard, Gerd. The future of music. Manifesto for the digitalmusic revolution. Berkeley: Berkeley Press, 2005.
PALMER, James. “The Berliner Philharmoniker Digital Concert Hall Expands,” Musical Opinion. London: England. Accessed February 14 , 2017. http://musicalopinion.com/berliner.html
Plackis-Cheng, Paksy. “Robert Zimmermann on the Berlin Phil Digital Concert Hall,” Impactmania, 2016. Accessed January 13, 2017. http://www.impactmania.com/2040/robert-zimmermann-berlin-philmedia/
Rhythm is it!. Directed by Thomas Grube and Enrique Sánchez Lansch. 2004. Berlín: Kultur, 2004. DVD.
Schmid, Rebecca. “The Berlin Philharmonic performs in three different spaces: The Philharmonie, the Philhanmonie´s Chamber Hall, and the DCH,” Musical America Worldwide, June 2, 2015. http://www.musicalamerica.com/news/newsstory.cfm?archived=0&storyid =34012&categoryid=7
“Simon Rattle about the new label of the Berliner Philharmoniker”. Youtube Video, 02:49 Published by Berliner Philharmoniker, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXB-gVHzXZ0&feature=youtu.be
Stöber, Birgit. Berlin Phil goes global – the ”Digital concert hall”Überall und jederzeit. 2009. Copenhagen: Copenhagen Business School. Accessed July 30, 2016.
http://begivenhedskultur.dk/_events/2009/motion_emotion/proceedings/St oeber.pdf
Teranishi, Kasuro. “Panasonic to aid online streaming of Berlin Philarmonic,” The Asahi Shimbum, September 1, 2016. http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201609010077.html
Uhl, Axel, Schmid, Alexander Y Zimmermann, Robert, “Digital renewal of 130 years of World class music” in Business Transformation Essentials. Case Studies and Articles, edited by Axel Uhl and Lars Alexander Gollenia, 39-50. England: Gower Applied Business Research. 2013.
Witt, Stephen. Como dejamos de pagar por la música. Translated by Damilà Alou. Barcelona: Contraediciones, 2016.
Notes
1 A translation of Zunkunft@Bphil would be Zunkuntf=future, @=in, BPhil=Berlín Philharmonic, “future in the Berlín Philharmonic”.
2 Axel Uhl, Alexander Schmid & Robert Zimmermann, “Digital renewal of 130 years of World class music” en Business Transformation Essentials. Case Studies and Articles, eds. Axel Uhl & Lars Alexander Gollenia, 44 (England, Surrey: Gower Applied Business Research, 2013).
3 Stephen Witt, Como dejamos de pagar por la música, trans. Damilà Alou (Barcelona: Contraediciones, 2016), 125.
4 Paksy Plackis-Cheng, “Robert Zimmermann on the Berlin Phil Digital Concert Hall”, Impactmania, 2016, http://www.impactmania.com/2040/robertzimmermann-berlin-phil-media/.
5 Rhythm is it!, directed by Thomas Grube & Enrique Sánchez Lansch (Berlín: Kultur, 2004). DVD, 1:22’15-1:37’00; Christie Chen, & Sabine Cheng “Taiwan's love for music is rare: Berlin Philharmonic conductor” Focus Taiwan, News Channel, May 5, 2015, http://focustaiwan.tw/news/aedu/201605050032.aspx.
6 Birgit Stöber, Berlin Phil goes global – the ”Digital concert hall” - Überall und jederzeit. (Copenhagen Business School, 6, 2009), http://begivenhedskultur.dk/_events/2009/motion_emotion/proceedings/Stoeber.pd f.
7 Art Council England, Digital audiences: Engagement with arts and culture online, November, 2010 (England: Art Council, 14). http://www.aandbscotland.org.uk/documents/2012-05-28-13-11-39-10-Digitalaudiences-for-arts-and-culture-november2010.pdf.
8 Korina Colbe, “Digital Concert Hall. Der Markt ist noh längst nicht gesättigt” DasOrchester, June, 2011 (Mainz: Schott Music), 30.
9 Brian Kavanagh, “Art in the Age of its Digital Reproduction: Organisational Responses to Digital Music in the Classical Music Industry”,Paper presented on DRUIDAcademy January, 2012, 9 (Cambridge: The Moeller Centre, University of Cambridge), http://druid8.sit.aau.dk/acc_papers/nt3x9nxqlqg2hia1tqcvfvb4dybb.pdf.
10 Kavanagh, “Art in the Age of its Digital Reproduction: Organisational Responses to Digital Music in the Classical Music Industry”, 19.
11 Hasan Bakhshi & David Throsby “New technologies in cultural institutions: theory, evidence and policy implications” en International Journal of Cultural Policy 18, no. 2, (March 2012): 208.
12 James Palmer, “The Berliner Philharmoniker Digital Concert Hall Expands”, MusicalOpinion (London: England) http://musicalopinion.com/berliner.html.
13 Idem
14 Kasuro Teranishi, “Panasonic to aid online streaming of Berlin Philarmonic”, The Asahi Shimbum, sec. culture (September 1, 2016, Japon) http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201609010077.html.
15 Nicholas Cook, Analysing Musical Multimedia (New York: Oxford University Press. 2001), 261.
16 Monty Adkins & Tom Adams, “Digital Music, Digital Distribution” Proceedings of the Electroacoustic Music Studies Network, Conference Electroacoustic Music Beyond Performance (Berlin, 8, June 2014) http://www.ems-network.org/IMG/pdf_EMS14_adkins_adams.pdf
17 Rebecca Schmid, “The Berlin Philharmonic performs in three different spaces: The Philharmonie, the Philhanmonie´s Chamber Hall, and the DCH” Musical America Worldwide, June 2, 2015, http://www.musicalamerica.com/news/newsstory.cfm?archived=0&storyid=34012 &categoryid=7.
18 Stöber, Berlin Phil goes global – the ”Digital concert hall” - Überall und jederzeit, 3
19 Ibid. 10-11.
20 Ruth FINNEGAN, “Music, Experience, and Emotion”, in The Cultural Study of Music: A Critical Introduction. eds. Martin Clayton, Trevor Herbert & Richard Middleton (London: Routledge, 2012), 358.
21 Bakhshi & Throsby, “New technologies in cultural institutions: theory, evidence and policy implications”, 208.
22 GOOGLE, How People Use Their Devices, September, 2016, https://storage.googleapis.com/think/docs/twg-how-people-use-their-devices2016.pdf
23 Colbe, “Digital Concert Hall. Der Markt ist noch längst nicht gesättigt”, 30.
24 David Kusek & Gerd Leonhard, The future of music. Manifesto for the digital musicrevolution (Berkeley: Berkeley Press, 2005), 159.
25 Plackis-Cheng, “Robert Zimmermann on the Berlin Phil Digital Concert Hall”.
26 The first video uploaded was a 3.02 minutes of Beethoven’s Symphony No.7 recorded during a concert on October 18, 2008. This video refers only to the Internet page of the Berlin Philharmonic. This information can be seen on the same YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/user/BerlinPhil/about
27 The figures can be found on social networks. The number of users of the DCH was obtained from the May 31, 2016 report submitted by its General Director Robert Zimmerman.
28 Uhl, Schmid & Zimmerman, “Digital renewal of 130 years of World class music”, 47.
29 Bakhshi & Throsby, “New technologies in cultural institutions: theory, evidence and policy implications”, 209.
30 Robert Zimmermann, “The Berliner Philharmoniker’s Digital Concert Hall”, lectured on Münchner Medientage TV - Apps – The World of Connected TV, 9 (München, May 31, 2016) http://www.medientage.de/fileadmin/user_upload/weitere_Veranstaltungen/Smart_ TV_Special_2016/Zimmermann_Robert.pdf.
31 Impressions are the number of times a post from your Page is displayed. People may see multiple impressions of the same post. For example, if someone sees a Page update in News Feed and then sees that same update when a friend shares it, that would count as 2 impressions. [source: Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/help/274400362581037?helpref=related]
32 Zimmerman, “The Berliner Philharmoniker’s Digital Concert Hall”, 12.
33 Ibid, 11.
34 Berliner Philarmoniker Recordings, “About us”, Berliner Philharmoniker Recordings, https://www.berliner-philharmoniker-recordings.com/about-us/
35 Berliner Philharmoniker, Simon Rattle about the new label of the Berliner Philharmoniker (April 23, 2014, 0:05 al 0:52) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXB-gVHzXZ0&feature=youtu.be.
36 Plackis-Cheng, “Robert Zimmermann on the Berlin Phil Digital Concert Hall”.
37 Zimmermann, “The Berliner Philharmoniker’s Digital Concert Hall”, 17.
38 Plackis-Cheng, “Robert Zimmermann on the Berlin Phil Digital Concert Hall”.
Sound in Motion:
Cinema, Videogames, Technology and Audiences
Edited by Enrique Encabo
Sound in Motion: Cinema, Videogames, Technology and Audiences
Edited by Enrique Encabo
This book first published 2018
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Copyright © 2018 by Enrique Encabo and contributors
All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
ISBN (10): 1-5275-0874-9
ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-0874-3
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter One.................................................................................................1 Why there is Not Such a Thing as Popular Music
Simon Frith
Part 1: Music and Technology: New Horizons Part 1: Music and Technology: New Horizons Part 1: Music and Technology: Horizons Part 1: Music and Technology: Horizons
Chapter Two..............................................................................................
Sound Hyperreality in Popular Music: On the Influence of Audio Production in our Sound Expectations
Jordi Roquer González
Chapter Three............................................................................................
The Influence of ‘Audio Correctors’ in the Creative Process: Between the Performative Reality and the Artifices of the Digital Musical Production
Marco Antonio Juan de Dios Cuartas
Chapter Four..............................................................................................
Mimetextuality: An approach to Cultural Studies from the Phenomenon of Music in Streaming
Rubén Fernández Fernández
Part 2: New Audiences Part 2: New Audiences Part 2: Audiences Part 2: Audiences
Chapter Five ..............................................................................................
The Berlin Philharmonic Digital Concert Hall: New Strategies of Music Knowledge and Conception
Álvaro G. Díaz Rodríguez Chapter Six..............................................................................................
Diego Calderón Garrido, Josep Gustems Carnicer and Caterina Calderón Garrido
Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 111
How to Learn with Symphonic Metal lyrics: An Analysis of Different Songs and their Relationship to Literature
Eduardo Encabo Fernández, Isabel Jerez Martínez and Lourdes Hernández Delgado
Part Part 3 33 3: : : : Identities in Movement in Movement
Chapter Eight........................................................................................... 128
Phonographic Industry and Classical Music in French Modern Cinema: Image and Sound of Long Play (LP) Vinyl Records in Films
Luiza Alvim
Chapter Nine............................................................................................
144
The Tragedy of Fado in Portuguese Cinema of the 40’s and 50’s:
Amália Rodrigues and the Cult of Pure and Delicate Women
Pedro Miguel Oliveira Nunes
Chapter Ten.............................................................................................
155
Theoretical Proposal for the Study of Enunciation and Focalisation within the Framework of Film Music Narrative
Celia Martínez García
Part Part Part Part 4 44 4:
Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................
Scoring for Exploration Gameplay
Luka Lebanidze
Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 182
Music Mediatisation as a Matter of Valorisation: From Performance to Background Music in French TV Programs (1953-2015)
Guylaine Gueraud-Pinet
Chapter Thirteen...................................................................................... 197
Hugo Niebeling and Herbert von Karajan: Experimental Music Films from the Perspective of Artistic Musical Tradition
Ramón Sanjuán Minguez