News

Sam Tellig loves 'em and consistently sings their high-quality/low-buck praises as a cheapskate favorite ($6.99 per CD!). And now, classical music label Naxos of America is blazing new paths with its announcement last week that it and Liquid Audio have inked an agreement to digitally distribute downloads of selected Naxos recordings to leading retail and music web sites in the Liquid Music Network.

Naxos of America says it plans to begin offering downloads from approximately 200 titles from its extensive catalog of 2400 compact discs, with new releases added each month. The company says that these tracks will be pulled from the Naxos American Classics Series, Naxos Historical Series, and other popular Naxos catalog titles.

Once encoded, the label says the tracks will be available for download via retail stores and music websites, including CDNOW, Gallery of Sound, Dimple Records, The Music Network, Musicland Group, Homer's Music, Face The Music, Compact Disc World, and Mainstreet Music. Playback of the audio files will require the Liquid Player software, which can be downloaded for free from LA. Naxos adds that its tracks will be exportable to portable devices and burnable to CD-R.

Naxos' Vincent Peppe says that his label's "extensive catalog of significant classical recordings" makes it the leading classical independent label. The new agreement with LA, he says, "will benefit Naxos in two important ways. First, online retailers will be able to use promotional downloads to drive sales of Naxos CDs. Second, we will strengthen our relationship with online classical listeners, who will be able to purchase downloads of our recordings from leading sites. The sound quality and security of the Liquid Audio system make it an ideal solution for us."