We’ve known for a while now that classical music streaming is on the up and in a big way. In 2018 streams of classical music rose by 42% in the UK (compared 33% for the whole music market). So it’s been no surprise to see orchestras and musicians alike push their recordings on streaming services.
What has been interesting is seeing a push from classical music specialist streaming services Idagio and Primephonic. Anecdotally, I can say I’ve definitely seen a lot more from them on social media – both in terms of content and adverts.
What’s also interesting is seeing the push from organisations and artists. New World Symphony and Michael Tilson announced a new partnership with Idagio, and Joyce DiDonato became Primephonic’s first official “Artist Ambassador”.
But why would you need a specialist classic music streaming service? Well, the selling points are a larger classical catalogue, the ability to find recordings and albums in a more intuitive way (compared to Spotify and Apple Music etc), and also higher quality sound files.
Awesome… but does anyone use them and is it worth orchestras and soloists aiming for partnerships to connect to listeners? Well, Idagio has 1.8 million app downloads worldwide (the same audience as BBC Radio 3), with Primephonic just having gone global and harder to find information on, having 50k users in the UK, USA, and Netherlands in 2019 before its expansion (I did find they had 22k downloads in the last 30 days so this number should be a fair bit bigger)
So, to see if it is worth it I decided to do some in depth scientific research… and by that I mean I just did a Twitter poll. But, in fairness this was asking my 12.7k followers who are largely fellow classical music nerds and would be those most likely to want and use these platforms. (If you’re one of my Twitter followers… hi fellow classical music nerd! It’s ok, we can own our nerdiness)
