The eMusic message boards are buzzing over the addition of over 4,000 recordings from the classical Naxos label. This addition makes eMusic more attractive to budget-conscious classical fans and will give existing subscribers lots of good options when it comes to building their classical music library. Although reviews of these disks aren't generally provided, you can get them on other sites, most notably the ClassicsToday.com site.

Yesterday, for example, a neighbor was telling me how much he liked Schubert. As soon as I got the news about the Naxos addition to eMusic, I went to ClassicsToday.com and searched for reviews of CDs from the Naxos label, where the composer is Schubert and the rating is high, both for artistic quality and sound quality. This led me to a recording of Schubert's Winterreise piece, which is available on eMusic.

One eMusic subscriber posted the following advice recording the Naxos offering:

..when you're considering downloading a CD with a large number of tracks, you may want to consider this particular bit of cost/benefit analysis. Naxos CDs are available for online download from other sites for $5.99 a disk (both iTMS DRM and DRM-free MP3s). I have the $19.95/90 track [eMusic] account. That works out to approximately $0.22/track. $6.00 works out to about 27 tracks. Hence, any CD with 27 or fewer tracks is a solid download choice. Keep in mind that multidisc sets are typically $5.99/disk.

One other thing to keep in mind: the retail price of Naxos CDs is now around $8.00/disk in the U.S. It's not too hard to find them on sale for $6.00/disk. If you're considering a download that's close to the $6.00 price point, you may want to consider whether it would be worthwhile to buy the physical disk and rip it.

For more background on Naxos and its catalog, see the column by Justin Davidson. Listmakers and reviewers on eMusic have also been busy. See "Music Lover's" list Naxos Albums rated 9/9 or better on classicstoday, reviews of Sonatas on Naxos by Dawn Chen, and American Mavericks on Naxos by Anastasia Tsioulcas.

—Andy Breeding

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