Great orchestra in your front room: Berlin's Digital Concert Hall

The Berlin Philharmonic has launched the world's first digital concert hall, which will broadcast its performances live on the internet and has the potential to widen the audience from a few hundred to millions around the world.

Sir Simon Rattle, the Berlin Philharmonic's artistic director and chief conductor, said the orchestra's decision to broadcast most of its concerts as live video streams for a fee from next month was the "way of the future" for classical music.

"It's a marvellous thing for both the orchestra and the public and it's a wonderful thing to be able to welcome far more people to the Philharmonie [concert hall]than before," he said.

Under the slogan Any Place, Any Time, music lovers are being invited to take a front-row seat at the mustard-yellow concert hall from January at a cost of €9.99 (£9.50) for 48 hours' access, or €149 for a season of about 30 concerts. They will also be given access to an archive of previous performances.

The project, which is being sponsored by a German bank, is the most comprehensive of its kind. It will start on 6 January with a performance of Brahms's 1st Symphony and other works. Music critics said it would help to secure classical music's place in the multimedia world.