The year 2023 will truly not have been an ordinary year in classical music and, by broadening perspectives, in music. Three new online listening platforms have radically changed the choices and habits of this type of music consumption for music lovers. In addition, two of the largest independent publishers, Hyperion and Bis, were sold. This is just the tip of a complex iceberg.
The big breakthrough for classical music in 2023 was supposed to be Apple's launch of a dedicated online listening service, Apple Classical, which launched in late March. This launch followed the acquisition in August 2021 of Primephonic, one of the two streaming services founded on the idea of combining the databases that power the most popular services (Spotify, Amazon, Tidal, etc.) for pop music related to the musician to develop. Song album articulations failed to effectively contain the necessary information about composers, multiple performers, and movements within a symphony, resulting in search engine optimization and search limitations.
Three actors
Idagio, launched in 2015, and Primephonic, penned by Pentatone, were promoted on their interface and database “classic” reliable. Idagio survived. Primephonic was acquired by Apple, which took almost two years reformat a service included in the Apple Music ecosystem and available only through applications for phones and tablets.
The surprise of 2023, especially here in Quebec, was that in a matter of weeks the entire landscape changed, as the long-awaited launch of Qobuz, the high-quality listening platform, suddenly appeared in Presto, UK in mid-April, according to The on Classic The online music retailer specializing in jazz and jazz launched its listening service in March, also in high resolution.
Two scenarios here. Qobuz has taken over the space and customer database of QUB musique, which ceased operations in February, and continues to be powered by the “traditional” database. Presto already had the perfect database because by selling records and sound files, all you needed was a gateway to play them.
What Presto adds, like Idagio, is a “user-centered” compensation of artists, paid based on what people actually consume and how much time they spend there, whereas in the “market-centered” logic used elsewhere, one One-hour symphony line-up counts 100 musicians are “worth” a 2-minute song.
Individual experiences
What lessons can be learned after more than six months of observing these new actors? The main lesson is that no journalist can make a definitive or general judgment, as listening modes are now individual.
In the past, a sound reproduction product was measured by music lovers sitting on a sofa in front of two speakers. The challenge was the “high fidelity” of this reproduction. It's not at all the same today, depending on whether you stream through your hi-fi (Apple is useless and Qobuz, linked to the Audirvana program, is a delight), through an amplifier that forces an integrated service on you, whether you control the music via your phone (Apple gets points back) or whether you consume the music in the background via a Bluesound, Roon or Sonos type system. For example, Presto has just integrated the “BluOS” universe from Bluesound and is therefore at least on a par with Qobuz, who is equipped with it.
The plague in classical music arises when reading is not complete, that is, when artificial gaps are created between tracks. Under these conditions it is impossible to listen to a Rite of Spring or an Alpine symphony. The disillusionment was initially directed against Apple and recently again against Qobuz, as certain listening conditions prevailed on this point. It is important that this type of information related to the experience goes back to the journalists, as no one can review or manage all listening configurations anymore.
The bottom line is that the arrival of Qobuz came at the perfect time, while Tidal was losing its feathers and its supposed sonic advantages (MQA system) and Presto seems to be adopting an eloquent maxim read on a bottle of wine: “Done with them Grapes.”, love and no nonsense.”
Almost on the contrary, because it was made with a lot of money and a lot of blah-blah, the classic Apple remains effective for those who need guidance in their decisions. But Apple needed to stand out through partnerships and exclusivity. And then, apart from a few initial sparks, we saw nothing coming except pompous but hollow press releases. The “partnership with the Salzburg Festival” came about not through the provision of concerts, but through the creation of a playlist with back catalog records made in Salzburg that have been available everywhere for a long time.
Acquisitions
Apple prepared another surprise for the classic world with the acquisition of Bis, a label that had just celebrated its 50th anniversary. Interestingly, the giant who owns a label called Platoon has not communicated on the subject and therefore we do not know the why or how of this acquisition.
This is not the first mystery. There are a number of unknowns in this universe. This is the role of billionaire patron Gordon P. Getty, composer and son of an oil tycoon. Getty had financed the Primephonic adventure. His name will be mentioned in all press releases about the launch of Apple Classic. But when Le Devoir asked about his role, no answer was given.
The same silence prevailed when we demanded to know who was at the helm of the surprise post-pandemic oversight of artists' agencies and other musicians at the University of San Francisco. However, it should be noted that the goals that David Stull, president of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, confessed to Le Devoir are the same as those that conclude an article in honor of Getty, the university's great supporter, published in December 15, 2023 on the website usfca.edu.
Will the puzzle pieces – and which puzzle, put together by which entity – come together in 2024, 2025 or 2026? The American West Coast meets Universal, which has acquired Hyperion and is taking a position with Pias (owner of Harmonia Mundi). Universal's acquisition of Hyperion quickly made it possible to stream titles from this catalog, including recordings by Marc-André Hamelin and Angela Hewitt.
Artists or shareholders?
But the world of streaming is undergoing a profound upheaval that is threatening musicians in general and classical music in turn. A change in remuneration was decided by Spotify at the end of November. The leader in on-demand listening, whose shares have increased by 148% this year, is setting a minimum number of listeners that entitle them to compensation (initially 1,000) under the guise of combating “artificial listening”. The platform has set up various systems that will generate “approximately $1 billion in additional revenue” over the next five years, targeting “emerging and professional artists,” according to the platform.
This design impresses financiers more than artists. On December 18, Philippe Astor reports in his excellent professional blog @music_zone about a study by the Duetti company, which specializes in buying back music rights from independent artists and optimizing their monetization on streaming platforms and social networks.
The conclusion of this study conducted on independent Anglo-American artists, writes Astor, is that “despite the increase in subscription prices (by Apple and Amazon in 2022; Spotify and YouTube in 2023), their average income per listen is showing downwards”. On average across all platforms and territories combined, 1000 games generated $2.95 in royalties in 2023, compared to $3.00 in 2022 and $3.27 in 2021.
$2.95
“Spotify, which Duetti says accounts for 55% of streaming revenue for independent English and American artists – compared to 21% for Apple Music, 16% for YouTube Music and 4% for Amazon – is, by its weight, the main culprit.” decline,” we read. On Apple Music, 1000 plays brings in $6.4 today (compared to $6 in 2021). Spotify now pays as little at $2.4 (compared to $3 in 2021) as does YouTube (stable at $2.3).
If we classically look for the usefulness and legitimacy of Idagio, Presto, Apple or Qobuz in the ecosystem, the answer is obvious.