More BBC news. The Corporation has backed down in its row with the music industry over the distribution of free classical downloads.
As previously reported, the classical music industry expressed concern when the BBC made full recordings of Beethoven's work available to download for free via its website. The downloads, which were accessed by over 1.4 million classical music fans, were part of a wider Beethoven season on the BBC's TV and radio stations, and were possible because the music had been performed by the Corporation's own orchestras, and therefore they owned the recording rights. But the main classical record companies argued that by making Beethoven's music available to download the non-commercial BBC was damaging their businesses.
Facing increasing pressure from the music industry, the BBC has now confirmed it will not replicate its Beethoven download promotion during the ten day series of programmes it will dedicate to Bach over the Christmas period. If downloads are included on the web component of the season they will be of highlights only - and the BBC might drop downloads completely from the promotion.
Having been criticised by both the music industry and certain politicians for the scale of the Beethoven promotion, the BBC, who say they themselves were surprised by the uptake for the Beethoven downloads, are keen to stress they will not stage any future download promotions without first consulting the record companies who may be affected. A spokeswoman for the BBC's main classical music channel, Radio 3, told reporters: "We only envisaged the Beethoven downloads to be a trial to see what the response would be. We are in communication with the [UK record industry trade body] BPI and record companies to assess and analyse what the response was and we are still at that stage. Nothing will happen without consultation and, should it happen, it will be nothing on the scale of Beethoven."
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The BPI told reporters: "If the BBC has decided that free downloads will not form part of Bach, it is encouraging that they are willing to take on board comments made after Beethoven ... and they've given us the opportunity to engage with them".