Digital music retailer eMusic will soon be offering releases from a smattering of independent classical labels. Giving the lie to the idea that classical music is a hard sell to online music shoppers, eMusic says that more than half of subscribers who downloaded their free classical samplers proceeded to purchase classical releases. And almost one-third of those hadn’t downloaded classical tracks before.

eMusic will be making available releases from Telarc, Harmonia Mundi, Chandos, Naïve, Vox, Lyrita, Hungaraton, Supraphon, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s label, CSO Resound.

Looks like the market is bearing out Joseph Kerman’s statement that the death of classical is “a vacuous concept that will not die.” [Hypebot]