The sound of success, on the Web

The future of the Boston Symphony Orchestra may be upstairs at Symphony Hall, in a cramped room with a crumbling ceiling. That's where a crew of scruffy 20-something technicians filmed the first episode of the BSO's soon-to-launch Internet video program.

Working joysticks, they manipulated six cameras to record a May 18 Boston Pops concert, which will be posted on bso.org in August. Planning to broadcast concerts from the Pops, the BSO, and Tanglewood, the BSO is the first symphony in the country to launch such free online programming. With a subscriber base whose average age is 51, the BSO hopes the new videos will reach a younger crowd.

"This technology is finally good enough that it'll do justice to the orchestra," said BSO marketing director Kim Noltemy. "You won't see those jerky video clips you see on websites."

The BSO Internet initiative is part of a larger movement by classical-music presenters nationwide to use technology to reach new audiences as their existing base ages and traditional recording deals expire. In addition, the Web allows relatively inexpensive experimentation: The BSO will spend $75,000-$100,000 on each video episode, just a fraction of the organization's approximately $77 million annual budget.

The costs are important, as these ventures -- which range from podcasting performances to start-up music labels with online downloads -- are anything but a sure bet. In many cases, they are not expected to make money for years, if ever.

"This is about not losing money," said Deborah Card, president of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which started its own music label this year. "This is about image, presence, and awareness."

In addition to video programming, the BSO is about to join the ranks of symphonies releasing CDs on their own labels and is considering making them available for download on its website. Mark Volpe, the BSO's managing director, said two discs recorded under music director James Levine will appear this year.

The BSO is also using the video-sharing site YouTube for the first time in its POPSearch talent contest, which culminates in a guest-starring spot at the Pops' July 4 concert on the Esplanade. Of this year's 238 POPSearch contestants, 112 submitted auditions through YouTube, and 43,505 votes were cast online in the first three weeks.

In another local example, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum launched a twice-a-week podcast last September featuring concerts recorded over the years in its Tapestry Room. The free podcasts have been downloaded more than 130,000 times, rising into the iTunes Top 40.

"These young people, they're not going to go into the concert hall, not quite yet," said Scott Nickrenz, Gardner Museum music director. "But I'm positive, once they hear this music -- this is good music -- they are going to start loading it onto their iPods and then take the next step, entering the music hall."

The shift toward new technologies is driven by necessity. Years ago, orchestras could depend on record releases for revenues and publicity. Now many major labels do not release orchestral recordings, and even institutions as renowned as the BSO have struggled with budget deficits.

The changing landscape pushed the Chicago Symphony Orchestra to create its own label and cut a deal with iTunes to offer a free sample from the orchestra's debut recording of Mahler. The New York Philharmonic signed a three-year agreement with Deutsche Grammophon to put four live concerts a year on iTunes as downloads only, along with an additional concert on disc. The Philadelphia Orchestra created its own digital download site where it can offer recordings with less compression -- hence better sound -- than on iTunes.

Institutions are using new technology in other ways to attract audiences, too. San Francisco Opera recently installed high-definition video screens showing close-ups, as in rock concerts, for people sitting far from the stage -- an innovation for opera. The Metropolitan Opera's new live simulcasts in movie theaters across the country have been so successful that they will be expanded next season. And Washington National Opera is planning free live national simulcasts in colleges and high schools this September.

Arthur Cohen, chief executive officer of the New York arts marketing firm, LaPlaca Cohen, said he is encouraged by the way orchestras are using technology. "They're expanding on all that is great about orchestral music, but also connecting in a way that art form has never been able to before," he said .

In fact, the BSO has been trying for two years to strike a deal with a TV network to present the Pops. The PBS program, "Evening at Pops," broadcast Pops concerts for more than three decades, but the show's regular run was canceled in 2005.

The BSO did not want to foot the production costs of a TV venture . Each program could cost as much as $1 million, Noltemy said . The Internet video programs, combining concert footage with interviews and behind-the-scenes material, will be much cheaper.

"We still would like to have a traditional TV series," Noltemy said . "But we'll do our best to train our traditional audience members to use this new technology because it actually offers more than traditional TV offers."

The speculative nature of the new ventures has its risks. In Chicago, the orchestra will need to sell 15,000 CDs to break even. It's too early to tell whether it will. And at the Gardner, Peter Bryant, chief operating officer, said he did not immediately understand the value when the podcast program was proposed.

"I asked, 'What are we going to get out of it, and how would this compare to doing more advertising to get more people to come to the concerts?' " he recalled .

Charlotte Landrum, the Gardner's 23-year-old music marketing manager, pushed hard. She explained that the cost of remastering old concert recordings for podcasts was low. She received free legal advice from Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society. And once the podcasts were launched, she organized a grass-roots publicity campaign.

In the end, thanks to a posting on the popular Internet site Boing Boing, the podcasts became popular.

"We were optimistically hoping 25,000 would download this thing in a single year," Landrum said. "Now it's going to be about 10 times that."

Gardner concert attendance is up 14 percent from last year, though the increase cannot be traced specifically to the podcasts. Still, one San Francisco downloader recently signed on for a $60 museum membership, though he doubts he'll ever step foot in the Gardner.

"The content itself is fantastic, and I just really like the idea of free culture, sort of a 21st-century idea of a library," said Charles Haynes, a 36-year-old web designer.

As for the BSO, it plans to create three video programs over the summer, including two shows from Tanglewood.

"It's worth a shot, and we'll see if it catches on," Volpe said . "But if it doesn't, we'll do something else."

Geoff Edgers can be reached at gedgers@globe.com. For more on the arts, go to boston.com/ae/ theater_arts/exhibitionist.