Violinist Tasmin Little giving away her next recording.

British violinist Tasmin Little will be giving away her next album The Naked Violin  as a digital download. Check out the article on CNet.

From the article: "I've done this with no intention of making money, but I feel very strongly that classical music suffers from misperceptions, and someone should be doing something real about it," Little told Reauters. I want to make it more accessible without downgrading the product, because you don't need to put a beat to this music to make it work," she added in an apparent reference to popular cross-over acts that blend classical and pop genres. "Just the fact that people can listen to it on a computer means that hopefully they won't feel a need to have an education or be from a particular background or a certain sector of society," she said

Well, building and recruiting an audience for classical music and the arts in general is a big juicy topic in of its self. This is a good step I think and I'll follow it to see how it plays out. She got the inspiration from the Radiohead In Rainbows release lat year. Many people don't think the pay what you want scheme paid off for Radiohead, but the CD version of that album did open at number 1 in England, so I'm thinking maybe it did.

Little is not the first classical artist or label to give away music, although she may be the most noted. The Scandenavian label Bis is currently  offering a 2 hour sampler of artists as a free download on eMusic

Offering free downloads is something we are considering for our small label (our releases are mostly jazz and classical). One of our hang-ups is that our marketing budgets are pretty small and we would have to pay the mechanicals on the downloads. This does not make it prohibitive, but does require some careful budgeting and planning on our part. We may try it first with an upcoming release of Brahms and Beethoven Quartets, that way the mechanicals aren't an issue. The idea would be to offer the download for free from our own site for a while probably pre-release to drive interest in the CD and the entire release via Itunes etc. upon its release.

Update on Thursday, January 24, 2008 at 03:13PM by Cheevo

I've had a chance to go to Tasmin's site and download her CD. She really has it all there for you, audio files in differnt formats (M4a and 192 and 320Kbs mp3, album artwork that can be printed for a CD insert, and she recorded spoken introductions to each piece that can be downloaded as well. She asks in return that you take here 3 step challenge:

"Step 1: Listen to my spoken introduction and download my CD.
Step 2: Take some time to listen and get to know these pieces. Then write to me and tell me what you like (or don’t like) about each piece.
Step 3: Go to a concert, buy a CD or write and tell me what barriers still remain to prevent you from wanting to do either!"