Dilettante Launches Online Classical Community

On Monday 28th January 2008 Dilettante Music goes live.
www.dilettantemusic.com

Dilettante is the first specialist classical music community on the Internet with tools for musicians, listeners and novices. The site aims to create a global network where classical musicians and fans can discover, present and share the music they love.

Why "Dilettante"?
Dilettante comes from the Italian dilettare meaning "to delight", so a dilettante is anyone who enjoys the arts.

Why classical? Why now?
Record industry sales figures show that classical is currently the fastest-growing genre of music, with digital downloads of classical music outpacing those of any other genre. Meanwhile, the demographic of classical music listeners is changing. Boasting a total listenership of 6.5million, the UK's ClassicFM recently reported a 52% increase in listeners under the age of 15 in a mere three-month period. As the Canadian news magazine Maclean's put it, "maybe classical music isn't dying, just relocating to the Internet."

Juliana Farha, the company's Canadian founder, was determined to use the Internet to revive the true spirit of dilettantism in music.

She says: "I was convinced that new listeners could discover classical music if they were given the right tools. Dilettante is designed to guide listeners on a journey through that often-daunting world". At the same time, Juliana wanted to support talented and committed young classical performers. "The best way to accomplish both was to help them find each other," she says.

The Site
At the heart of the Dilettante site is an unprecedented level of integration between the members' network and music pages. The Dilettante music catalogue is enhanced by the web's most comprehensive data about classical performers, composers and their works; supplied by All Media Guide.

Web 2.0 tools enable classical music lovers and novices alike to harness the power of the Internet for covert exploration and discovery. Members of the Dilettante community create online profiles that:

- showcase their repertoire and influences
-'fingerprint' (tag) music according to mood and other criteria
- highlight other skills, such as composing or teaching
- use blogs to share their news and views
- link their profiles to their own recordings for sale in the Dilettante shop, powered by Amazon.

In the coming weeks, we'll be adding tools to enhance user profiles, including:

- mp3 uploads of musicians' own performances and compositions
- a public events calendar, with concerts linked back to performer's profiles.

In addition, Dilettante will collaborate with producers to present classical music events in non-traditional venues.

These are the ingredients for a classical revolution; the only qualification to join is curiosity.


Rising Stars Webcast
The Dilettante uprising begins with a series of webcasts featuring some of the UK's rising stars. On 28th January 2008, The Harpham Quartet are first in the spotlight. Recent music college graduates, these fantastic young musicians have already made their Wigmore Hall debut and been featured live on BBC London.