Originally from European International Arbitration Review

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I.    Introduction

Music is a business, and classical music is no exception. While the “pop” field dominates the music industry, classical music has held a persistent share of the industry, ranging from 3% to 5% of the world market, more or less depending of the territory involved.  In absolute terms, this translates, for the recording industry alone, into approximately $450 million annually on a worldwide basis.  Periodically classical albums have sold in the millions of copies (such as The Three Tenors first album, Cecilia Bartoli’s debut album, Anna Netrebko’s debut album and “Chant,” a one-off new age hit of Gregorian chants).  In a recent annual survey, Opera America noted that over 6.5 million people attended live performances of opera in the United States in the 2010/2011 season.  This same survey reports that box office receipts for American and Canadian Opera companies were $136 million.  Symphony attendance in the United States in 2013 was at 32 million.  

In fact, among the highest grossing live performances in United States’ history are two concerts given by The Three Tenors—Detroit, 1999, which grossed over $8.5 million and New Jersey, 1996, which grossed over $20 million dollars.  Certain classical performers, such as Lang Lang, Placido Domingo, and Andrea Bocelli, continue to command six figure concert fees to this day.  Though, while the earning potential of rank and file classical musicians may be meager by comparison to other genres of music, this is not to say that classical music is not a real and substantial business.