The Sound of (Sheet) Music

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Friday, Jan. 11, 2002
When it comes to music, the Internet is mainly an instrument for recorded sounds. There are music-sharing communities, best exemplified by the now-suspended Napster. And there is no dearth of online CD retailers. However, the sheet music market has, until recently, been largely untouched by technology. But as a billion-dollar-plus industry with a history of poor distribution, it's proving an ideal market for cyber-intervention.

At the forefront is Amazing Music World, a company begun by Niels and Inge Eje, a Danish husband-and-wife team who are also professional classical musicians. The company's online shop, SheetMusicNow.com, was launched in 2000 and now has access to 1.2 million classical and jazz titles, ranging from Mozart to Miles Davis. So far, however, only 5,000 pieces have been digitized.

Obtaining sheet music has been an onerous chore for musicians, especially pieces that are not part of the standard repertoire. Published music is mostly sold in shops located in big cities, and they tend to carry only about 5% of what's available, says Thomas Rohde, CEO. That's meant there's been a healthy trade in photocopied music among musicians. The U.S. National Music Publisher's Association says sheet music is a $1.4 billion industry. But it could be worth many millions more to copyright holders if there were less photocopying. Buying online won't stop photocopying, Rohde admits, but it should reduce the practice, because it gives musicians a quick and relatively cheap alternative.

The Ejes realized that it would be "much more efficient" to put music online and, for a fee, let musicians download and print the music they want. Amazing Music World has reached rights agreements with "all of the major publishers," Rohde says, who welcome the advent of online distribution. Amazing Music World gets a percentage of the fees charged, but Rohde calls that figure proprietary and won't divulge it. Users pay by the page, but the amount depends on how popular the music is. Something from the standard repertoire costs much less than something more unique. So the cost for an entire piece can range from 50 cents to $30.

The company has rivals, mainly the more pop-oriented Net4Music and Sunhawk.com. But Rohde says Amazing Music World has acquired exclusive rights to the largest number of classical titles. Moreover, he claims, it has a better-structured database that lets musicians search for music by type of instrument.

The Ejes launched the company with funding of $2.8 million, and are now securing a second round of about $7 million. That money, Rohde says, will be used to beef up the site's infrastructure and have about 200,000 titles digitized this year. It's opening a digitization and production facility in Russia. It's also secured access to Russian archives of music hidden away during Soviet rule. The archive will be released in May 2003 — an event that will be marked by a Moscow concert — and includes new editions and revisions of masterpieces. Though Rohde won't yet name the masterpieces, he trumpets the fact that they'll eventually be available at SheetMusicNow.com.