# Streaming and classical music - new Gramophone article



## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

An interesting article on streaming, posted on _Gramophone_'s web site: http://www.gramophone.co.uk/feature/making-waves-classical-music-and-the-rise-of-streaming

Starts off suggesting that an increase in streaming of classical music will quickly destroy the industry, but gets more optimistic as it goes on.
Helped by having some actual data rather than just speculation:



> Take the example of Hyperion Records, who have decided not to make themselves available on any on-demand streaming platforms. In 2013 a well-reviewed Baroque vocal album cost them £36k to make. During 2013, this album earned £10,847 through 2,104 CD sales and £2,152 through 444 download sales. However, 34,947 streaming events on iTunes Radio earned just £22.13. Not good, even within the context of iTunes Radio paying out less than a subscription service.





> Signum have one particular artist who makes 'probably 10 times through just Spotify what he makes through any other revenue stream.' Furthermore, it could be that streaming has been a key factor in Signum's market share rising in 2014 from 0.3 per cent to 0.6 per cent.


Lots more food for thought in there, I think; whether you're a glass-half-full or glass-half-empty person, there's plenty to reinforce your beliefs!


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

£36k to make? And that's not even with a full orchestra. It sounds like a lot to me. But also 2013 isn't that long ago. I would hope classical records have a longer shelf life than pop, so there is still time to rise above the break even mark.


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

Very interesting with such detailed and concrete information.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

> However, as Paul Baxter explains, this modus operandi removes an important safety net. 'The way it affects the consumer is that, traditionally, when record labels pay there's an element of quality control before anything happens at all. The record label had a role as custodian of quality and might sometimes tell an artist, "That's not the right repertoire for you".' He continues, 'I have an idea of which projects are the right things to do with which artists, and if artists just go ahead and record their own things then immediately that level of quality control is gone.' In fact, Delphian Records takes this element of their role so seriously that they employ an artists' development manager, a post that would become unaffordable if their income drops below a workable level.


I don't know--there are things to be said both for and against labels' "branding" of performers by limiting their recorded repertoire.

That's just picking on a little detail, of course. Interesting article, in any case.


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## staxomega (Oct 17, 2011)

Hyperion also release SACD format, the licensing costs to Sony for that aren't cheap.


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## Delicious Manager (Jul 16, 2008)

Weston said:


> £36k to make? And that's not even with a full orchestra. It sounds like a lot to me. But also 2013 isn't that long ago. I would hope classical records have a longer shelf life than pop, so there is still time to rise above the break even mark.


Not very much when you consider artists' fees, engineers, editors, producer, venue costs, mastering and printing of CDs, design, printing and collation of booklets, jewel cases, copyright royalties, music and instrument hire, transportation and distributors' fees.

It all adds up (I have first-hand professional experience).


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## gHeadphone (Mar 30, 2015)

Thats a great article with a lot of food for thought.

I used to be an artist and the upfront costs to put out a quality product were always a surprise to anybody not in the industry. The pennies that you get back per play make it increasingly difficult to fund the next recording

A side note we used to struggle to feed 4 musicians on tour, i cant imagine feeding a whole orchestra!


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## mountmccabe (May 1, 2013)

I have some issues with the article, but overall it is interesting. And better than some complaints about streaming music that I've read.

This was the first I've heard of the new/forthcoming MeloMe and Idagio, classical-only streaming services. I am now looking forward to seeing how they develop.

Steve Smith of Gimell Records says


> 'Classical listeners are much more likely to sit and listen to an album or two, rather than have it on all day long.'


Is he trying to say that classical listeners listen to less music? I find this claim quite ridiculous.



> Next, think of how many different recordings of Beethoven's Symphony No 5 there are in comparison to how many separate versions of any given Pink Floyd song, and you begin to see how what profits that there are could be spread even thinner.


How is this changed by streaming? I suppose it has something to do with availability, but while there are more copies of any work on (say) Spotify than in any record store what goes with that is that any one recording is now available (more easily) to far more potential listeners.

That is to say, a local record store may have (say) 10 recordings of the symphony, so, sure, those ten all have a greater chance of being heard. But the other (say) 70 recordings have no chance of being heard. Any most record companies (especially the boutique labels being discussed) are more often in the latter group than the former.



> Then, compounding all of this is the streaming platforms' payment-by-track remuneration model. As Steve Smith explains, 'If someone listens to the Gimell recording of John Browne's music, which has just five tracks ranging between 13 and 15 minutes, and somebody else is listening to a normal pop album which may have 16 or 17 tracks lasting three or four minutes, we would only get five tracks' worth of payment whilst the pop album would get 16 or 17 tracks worth of payment. So, if you're a subscriber to Spotify and you only listen to classical and not pop music, it's more than likely that your listening is subsidising the pop acts.'


There is a disadvantage, by this model, for any music that has long tracks. I listened to _Rachmaninov Variations_ by Daniil Trifonov and the Philadelphia Orchestra (on DG) this morning. This release is 79 minutes long and has 73 tracks. Even if 18 of them are too short to register (some services don't count tracks under 30 seconds) that still leaves 55 tracks, so this album will generate maybe 3 or 4 times the revenue of a "normal" pop album of the same duration. Track lengths of around 90 seconds is not uncommon for piano pieces.

Many opera recordings have track lengths of around 4 minutes. Recordings of Bach's Brandenburg Concerti have an average track length of around 5 minutes. Dorati's recording of the complete Haydn symphonies has an average track length of 5:13. Bohm's recordings of the complete Mozart symphonies has an average track length of 4:20. These are not unreasonable.

Though of course the more popular late Mozart symphonies are have longer track lengths (7-8 minutes), and many composers in the Romantic era had much longer symphonies, tone poems, and other pieces.

There is far more variation for classical music (which is why it is good to hear the new services mentioned are taking into account track length for their payments) but this is not a classical music problem. This is a long track problem.



> ...Gimell Records... looking at the six-month period ending in June 2015, they calculated that in order to generate the same revenue for their label as a single-track download from iTunes, a track would need to be streamed approximately 100 times by a Spotify subscriber, 700 times on the Spotify free service, and 825 times on YouTube. Gimell have just removed their music from Spotify, and are in the process of removing many of their recordings from YouTube.


Articles like this frequently have such figures. I have no doubt they're correct, but I always find them so misleading, as there's never any discussion of the actual trade-off, or convertability. It'd be very interesting to hear what effect this has, long-term. Do they get more iTunes downloads, or do they become less popular?

For example I enjoyed their release of The Tallis Scholars recording of Byrd's masses but, as Smith said talking about Beethoven, there are other recordings out there. On Spotify there are releases of these pieces on Nimbus, Bongiovanni, Naxos, Etcetera, Harmonia Mundi, Veritas, Decca, Centaur, and more.

Incidentally I found it quite amazing that when I first read this I already had some recordings on Signum Records in my playlist for the day. After reading I added quite a few more. I (obviously) didn't have anything by Gimell Records.

There is a lot more in the article than I've discussed, and for the most part I find it reasonable. There are a lot of changes happening in the music industry and it is important to consider them. Creating artificial scarcity doesn't seem like a positive response. Though this is not my business.


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## Mika (Jul 24, 2009)

Good article. Curated playlists are the future? Maybe so, because there are so much music available at the moment. Somehow I would like to see more these analysis like this new platform Grammofy has. No way I have time to listen through my current music collection, but still I buy more and it's not just classical music I am collecting. Maybe I need music personal trainer. This playlist editor might be the first candidate for that position.


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## echmain (Jan 18, 2013)

> Curated playlists are the future?

Isn't that just a fancy name for a DJ?


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## mountmccabe (May 1, 2013)

Mika said:


> No way I have time to listen through my current music collection, but still I buy more and it's not just classical music I am collecting.


This certainly described my own habits, before transitioning to mostly streaming music.

I think this is one of the big changes to the music industry. It used to be more common that people would buy new albums just to hear them. Many of those albums were listened to a few times and then mostly forgotten. But the record companies still won because they had good marketing, and had me convinced of scarcity (buy this album now because who knows when you'll see it again!) and future value.

It did not make good monetary sense for me to keep purchasing CDs when I had 2000 at home, but I kept at it. I had lists of CDs I was looking for, would visit several branches of my favorite local chain in town and would visit record stores in other cities when traveling. I kept buying CDS because there was no other way to hear the music.

Now those CDs are - for the most part - unused and being gotten rid of even though they're worth near nothing. There are CDs I love, occasionally listen to (the physical copy, even), and am keeping. But they are the exceptions.


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## CDs (May 2, 2016)

Very interesting article. While I'm not into streaming and highly doubt I ever will be, the labels will go where the money and demand for their product are.
But I think (and hope) that buying habits of the public will swing back to the physical form of music. Kind of like how vinyl has seen a resurgence the last decade or so. 
Nothing better than going to your collection of music and pulling out that CD and popping it in the player. Totally beats clicking buttons on your phone. Just my opinion.


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

Nereffid said:


> An interesting article on streaming, posted on _Gramophone_'s web site: http://www.gramophone.co.uk/feature/making-waves-classical-music-and-the-rise-of-streaming
> 
> Starts off suggesting that an increase in streaming of classical music will quickly destroy the industry, but gets more optimistic as it goes on.
> Helped by having some actual data rather than just speculation:
> ...


I missed it. Where was the optimism?


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## Dan Ante (May 4, 2016)

I have streamed a little music but in general prefer my own vinyl and CD’s I have also downloaded music but some of the audio quality is pretty poor unless you get FLAC or simular. 
If I may go slightly off topic for just a wee while I recently purchased a new smart TV with built in WiFi which had an app “The BPO digital concert hall” which was available to me free for 1 week to try out and I was very impressed, full concerts or just a single work you have a good selection and 40 new concerts added each year but apart from the superb picture/audio quality what impressed me most was that it came down the www pipe line without one buffer or stutter and I have only 5mbps. The down side I have glutted out on orchestral works over the last 3-4 days.


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## Richard8655 (Feb 19, 2016)

Dan Ante said:


> I have streamed a little music but in general prefer my own vinyl and CD's I have also downloaded music but some of the audio quality is pretty poor unless you get FLAC or simular.
> If I may go slightly off topic for just a wee while I recently purchased a new smart TV with built in WiFi which had an app "The BPO digital concert hall" which was available to me free for 1 week to try out and I was very impressed, full concerts or just a single work you have a good selection and 40 new concerts added each year but apart from the superb picture/audio quality what impressed me most was that it came down the www pipe line without one buffer or stutter and I have only 5mbps. The down side I have glutted out on orchestral works over the last 3-4 days.


Yes, the BPO digital concert hall is also available as an IOS app, and I watched many performances pretty intensely via iPad Airplay to HDTV for a free 2 week period (I think it was) not long ago. It is impressive in high def and great audio quality with great music. But after a while, I found Simon Rattle and some orchestra members a little over the top in their extroverted exuberance. It almost became theatrical and seemed intented to attract more viewers. Ultimately, I thought the annual subscription ($170) not worth it partly for this reason.


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## Dan Ante (May 4, 2016)

Hi Richard, The present price is expensive at 149 euro but I get 10% discount which I will take up, I wonder if others will follow suit? it would be great if some well known ens could get together and offer a package to include all genre at a reasonable rate providing the audio was top quality.
I think streaming will become more popular for some but I still like the old steam radio and CD.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Delicious Manager said:


> Not very much when you consider artists' fees, engineers, editors, producer, venue costs, mastering and printing of CDs, design, printing and collation of booklets, jewel cases, copyright royalties, music and instrument hire, transportation and distributors' fees.
> 
> It all adds up (I have first-hand professional experience).


What proportion of the P&L is distribution and manufacturing of physical media?


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## Delicious Manager (Jul 16, 2008)

Weston said:


> £36k to make? And that's not even with a full orchestra. It sounds like a lot to me. But also 2013 isn't that long ago. I would hope classical records have a longer shelf life than pop, so there is still time to rise above the break even mark.


£36K is nothing. Remember these costs:
1) Rehearsals
2) Rehearsal venue(s)
3) Hire of recording venue/studio
4) Fees for engineers, producer, editor
5) Hire of equipment (possibly, in some circumstances)
6) Fees for all performing artists
7) Hire of music
8) Mechanical copyright fees/royalties
9) Design of CD booklet
10) Commissioning of programme notes
11) Cost of manufacturing CD
12) Marketing costs
13) Costs of transportation of CDs to international distributors
14) Contribution to overheads (salaries, office rent, stationery, power, etc, etc)

See how it mounts up?


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