DETROIT — Orchestras and opera companies in the United States and Europe, facing uncertain futures and rapid changes in how people listen to music, are increasingly making forays into web streaming, taking one of Western culture’s most traditional live art forms out of theaters and concert halls and putting it onto small screens.

The Vienna State Opera recently joined the Berlin Philharmonic in charging for subscriptions to its own streaming portals and smart-television apps, seeing them as potential sources of new revenue. The Bavarian State Opera streams some live performances free, seeing the webcasts as a way to build excitement around its work. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s free live stream of the Verdi Requiem last year drew more than 130,000 viewers, who caught it on more than 30 different websites.

But perhaps unexpectedly, given the dire state of Detroit’s fortunes, the cutting edge for the phenomenon in this country lies here, where the Detroit Symphony Orchestra has the most ambitious free web-streaming program of any major American orchestra, as it looks online to help secure its future after surviving a bitter strike, the struggles of the auto industry and the bankruptcy of its city.

The orchestra now streams about 20 live concerts from Orchestra Hall here free each season. And it is getting an upgrade this week: six tiny new cameras, positioned around its restored 1919 hall and controlled remotely by a joystick in the basement. They will be used for the first time on Saturday night to shoot the orchestra’s concert of Ravel, Rimsky-Korsakov and a James MacMillan piano concerto played by Jean-Yves Thibaudet.