classical music
More than 230 years after his death, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is dropping new music. While the vaunted classical composer died in 1791 at age 35, according to Agence France-Presse a previously unknown piece of music experts believe was written by a teenage Mozart was recently discovered at a library in Germany. Explore Explore See latest […]
BERLIN — Deutsche Grammophon marked its 125th anniversary in Berlin last night (Dec. 6) at the first of three concerts to celebrate the classical music label’s legacy, as well as its current stars. At the city’s storied Konzerthaus, new signing Joana Mallwitz conducted her orchestra; violinist Bomsori Kim and cellist Kian Soltani performed Ludwig van Beethoven‘s Triple Concerto, and Bruce Liu played the German master’s Choral Fantasy. Liu, one of the label’s rising stars, in 2021 won the International Chopin Competition.
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The Berlin concert will be followed by concerts in Philadelphia and Seoul. The U.S. event, on Dec. 9, will feature María Dueñas, Hélène Grimaud and Moby, who has recently released some work on the label; and in South Korea, on Dec. 15, Vikingur Ólafsson will perform the “Goldberg Variations.”
“To this day, Deutsche Grammophon is home to the biggest classical stars of their time,” said Frank Briegmann, chairman and CEO of Universal Central Europe and Deutsche Grammophon, at a reception before the concert. “It is the guardian of a cultural treasure of incredible proportions.”
Deutsche Grammophon, a cultural institution in the classical music world, is the oldest operating record company. It was founded in 1898 by Emile Berliner, a German Jew who moved to the U.S. and in 1887 patented the “Gramophone,” a technology for recording and reproducing sound by engraving and tracing it with a stylus – initially on a cylinder and then on a flat disc. After licensing the rights to manufacture his invention, he sent his nephew, Joseph Sanders, to open a German subsidiary, which severed its relationship with the parent company in 1914.
In 1941, the company was purchased by Siemens & Halske, a corporate ancestor of today’s Siemens company. Over the next two decades, Deutsche Grammophone became known for its distinctive yellow logo and high-fidelity classical music recordings that were marvels of technology at the time and are still considered iconic today. As its rival recording companies shifted toward pop, Deutsche Grammophone focused on classical, and then also contemporary music. In 1962, Siemens formed a joint venture with the Dutch company Philips to run the company that became PolyGram International – which in 1999 was purchased by what was then the parent company of Universal Music Group and merged with it.
The company’s catalog, reputation and logo still endure, and about a year ago it launched Stage+, a high-fidelity subscription streaming service that includes access to performances on video. The label’s anniversary concerts will be shown on the service.
“Nothing has changed,” said label president Dr. Clemens Trautmann, referring to the company’s record for using the new technology of the time. “And everything has changed.”
Joe Hisaishi and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra’s A Symphonic Celebration: Music From the Studio Ghibli Films of Hayao Miyazaki makes a splash on Billboard’s album charts, and sets a modern-era single-week U.S. sales record for a classical album on vinyl.
First released on June 30 via digital download, CD and through streaming services, the album was issued on vinyl on Sept. 29. In the week ending Oct. 5, the album sold a total of 12,500 copies in the U.S. according to data tracking firm Luminate, with 12,000 of that sum on vinyl. The latter figure marks the single biggest sales week for a classical album on vinyl since Luminate began electronically tracking music sales in 1991.
The Symphonic album’s vinyl sales were bolstered by its availability across five different vinyl variants. All were double-LP sets – a standard black vinyl, a picture disc set, and three color variants: clear, yellow and sky blue.
In total in the week ending Oct. 5, Symphonic earned 13,000 in equivalent album units*, of which 12,500 were in traditional album sales. That marks the second-largest week for a classical album released in 2023, in both units earned and pure album sales, following the debut frame of Def Leppard’s Drastic Symphonies (16,000 units; of which 15,000 were in album sales; June 3-dated charts).
The new Symphonic Celebration album surveys composer Hisaishi’s work with film director Hayao Miyazaki and his many animated films for Studio Ghibli. Hisaishi teamed with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra to present symphonic arrangements of familiar music he created for such films as Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle and Princess Mononoke.
A Symphonic Celebration returns for a second week at No. 1 on Billboard’s Classical Albums chart (jumping 11-1, with 13,000 equivalent album units earned; up 1,418%) after it debuted atop the list dated July 15 (following its initial digital download, CD and streaming release). On Traditional Classical Albums, it also bumps back to No. 1 for a second week (rising 2-1), after debuting at No. 1 (July 15). The two charts rank the week’s most popular overall classical albums (by equivalent album units) and traditional classical albums (by pure album sales), respectively.
A Symphonic Celebration also debuts in the top 10 on Billboard’s Top Album Sales (No. 4), Vinyl Albums (No. 2) and Tastemaker Albums (No. 9), and re-enters at No. 4 on Top Current Album Sales (a new peak). The four charts rank, respectively, the week’s top-selling albums overall, the top-selling vinyl releases, the top-selling albums at independent and small chain record stores, and the top-selling current albums (not catalog, or older titles).
Finally, on the overall, all-genre Billboard 200 chart, A Symphonic Celebration bows at No. 74. The Billboard 200 ranks the week’s most popular albums, overall, across all genres, by equivalent album units.
*Equivalent album units comprise album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). Each unit equals one album sale, or 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams generated by songs from an album.
Even if classical music made up just 1% of U.S. music consumption in 2022, according to Luminate, Apple’s new streaming service dedicated to the genre could mean big things for the subscription market.
Global recorded music revenues rose for the eighth straight year in 2022 — but markets are maturing, and the once high-flying growth rate fell to single digits. That doesn’t mean the music subscription business is getting stale, though. In fact, there are plenty of new ideas and much-needed innovations that can help push the streaming market forward.
The latest, and one of the best, examples of how the music business can build a better mousetrap is Apple Music Classical. Apple wanted to better serve classical music fans but realized the best path was to break away from the Apple Music subscription app that works fine for every other genre. So, it built Apple Music Classical, a standalone app for Apple’s iOS devices — the Android app will arrive later — that launched on Tuesday to some rave reviews (GQ called it “a ton of fun”).
Classical music has always been a second-class citizen in digital music because of the way its metadata — information about the recording — is organized. For most genres, describing music by artist, track and album is an adequate way to organize a massive number of recordings. Download stores and streaming services are built around this classification system. But since the advent of iTunes and download purchases, people have recognized that classical music doesn’t fit well in the standard metadata system. In classical music, music is better organized by such categories as conductor, orchestra and movement. This could help explain why classical music accounted for 2.7% of U.S. digital album sales but just 0.8% of on-demand streams in the U.S. last year, according to Luminate.
“It’s the works-based nature of classical,” says Dart Music founder Chris McMurtry, now a vp at Pex, a digital music rights company. “That’s why Apple had to build a separate app.” McMurtry addressed that problem at Dart Music, a digital distributor that focused on classical music and built a database with metadata fields better suited for the genre.
Apple wasn’t the first company to see an opportunity in classical music. Dart Music launched in 2015 to tackle the metadata angle (its assets were acquired in 2017 by Haawk), and classical-focused streaming isn’t new, either. Idagio debuted in 2015. Primephonic launched in 2019 and was acquired by Apple in 2021. Universal Music Group’s Deutsche Grammophon imprint debuted its own service, Stage+, in 2022.
But Apple’s entry into the classical music streaming market could be the most impactful to date. Apple has billions of customers around the globe and an increasingly successful services business that includes the Apple Music subscription app and Apple TV+, a streaming video-on-demand platform. Those cloud-based services, combined with Apple’s bread-and-butter business of selling smartphones and laptops, give the company the resources and marketing might to activate a passionate group of music aficionados that has been underserved by streaming platforms better suited for rock, pop and hip-hop.
“It exceeded my expectations,” says McMurtry, who looked up well-known names and obscure composers to appreciate the app’s level of detail. He says he was impressed by the depth of metadata — the producers, engineers, mixers, other contributors, year of the recording and even the composers’ birth and death years. “It’s a very educational experience.”
If Apple Music Classical can hook McMurtry, maybe it can lure more people into the music subscription market. In 2022, there were 92 million subscribers to streaming services such as Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube Music, according to the RIAA. In total, 214 million Americans — 75% of the population 12 and older — streamed music in the past month, according to a January 2023 survey by Edison Research. Younger consumers were far more likely to stream music than older listeners, however, with 53% of people over the age of 55 having done so compared to 89% of 12-to-34-year-olds and 85% of 35-to-54-year-olds. A good classical music app can help narrow that sizable gap, attract more subscribers and generate more subscription revenue.
Going after classical music fans makes financial sense, too. For starters, they’re plentiful, says Russ Crupnick, partner at market research firm MusicWatch. “By comparison, they are somewhat larger than the entire population of vinyl buyers,” he says. As older consumers, they can afford a standalone classical music app: Crupnick says classical music fans’ mean income is 35% higher than average. They’re also twice as likely to purchase expensive, audiophile stereo equipment. When asked if obtaining the highest-quality sound format is important, 64% of classical music fans said yes, and 54% are willing to pay more to get it. Fortunately for them, Apple Music Classical is free of charge to Apple Music subscribers. “It will be interesting to see whether Apple eventually adds fees to monetize the service, or subsidizes it as they have higher resolution audio,” says Crupnick.
There’s great potential outside of the United States, too. Apple Music Classical will eventually be available in three strong markets for classical music: Japan, China and South Korea. In China, the fifth-largest recorded music market in 2022, according to the IFPI, classical music has been a phenomenon since the Cultural Revolution. Gramophone magazine described it as a “gargantuan market for the consumption of recorded classical music even if only as a study aid or as a residue of having Mozart and Beethoven sonatas tinkling through the family home.”
The digital market has performed incredibly well without a mass appeal offering tailored for classical music fans. Record labels generated $16.9 billion from streaming in 2022 while mostly ignoring an important subset of the market. With Apple Music Classical, Idagio and Stage+ super-serving classical music fans, there’s potential to do better.
Classical music has been in the news this month, with the launch of Apple Music’s new classical-specific streaming app and Universal Music Group’s purchase of classical label Hyperion Records. But under the hood, another notable classical music story was brewing: for the first time in its history, Decca Records has nine of the top 10 songs on the classical U.S. on-demand audio streaming songs chart, according to Luminate.
The achievement is the fruit of several different strategies to help boost those artists, including Ludovico Einaudi, Max Richter, Cody Fry, Chad Lawson and Lang Lang, across streaming services, from reworks, playlisting and, of course, TikTok. And it helps earn Decca Records U.S. senior vp of marketing and artist strategy Joseph Oerke the title of Billboard’s Executive of the Week.
Here, Oerke tells Billboard about several of those strategies, which go beyond boosting individual artists and songs but also includes growing the genre’s footprint at streaming — which will be helped by Apple Music Classical, but also Deutsche Grammophon’s own streaming service, Stage+, that it launched last November to showcase DG and Decca’s roster of artists. And the growth of classical streaming is becoming apparent in the numbers: on-demand audio streaming of classical music has grown by double-digit percentages in each of the past three years, and outpaced the growth of the on-demand audio streaming business at large in 2022, according to Luminate.
“There is a massive population of people who listen to instrumental and classical music during activities like meditation, yoga, cooking dinner, studying and so much more,” Oerke says. “We’ve intensely focused on these spaces and created opportunities to highlight the genre.”
This week, Decca has nine of the top 10 on-demand streaming audio songs in the U.S., according to Luminate, the first time in the label’s history it has achieved that feat. What key decisions did you make to help make that happen?
It is quite an exciting week for us. There is an amazing team here at Decca Records US and across the larger Verve Label Group, led by President/CEO Dickon Stainer. This is a tribute to each department. While we always study the charts, our focus remains on artist development and bringing classical music to the widest audience possible. Each track had its own journey to the chart including TikTok virality, the undeniable talent of the artist, the perfect alignment of music and function and so much more. There is no one plan that works for every track, so we constantly analyze audience and streaming data to inform how we tailor each approach. For example, prolific pianist-composer Chad Lawson embraces the healing power of music and writes works that are not only beautiful to listen to but also can inspire mindful moments. We’ve worked with Chad to not only position his music as classical but also as music that can serve a purpose.
Additionally, we’ve released alternate versions of key tracks including sleep re-works that have helped expand the audience. Working with such a collaborative and flexible artist as Chad has increased the opportunities we have for success. We’ve also fully embraced a global outlook and these nine tracks represent artists from the U.S., Iceland, U.K., Italy and China which gives us even more music to work with and broaden our overall appeal. We have the honor to represent classical labels including Decca Classics, Deutsche Grammophon, ECM New Series and Mercury KX as well as working with artists locally signed around the world. This industry-leading wealth of artists and music is a key to our success.
With streaming’s dominance, many people have lamented the struggles that genres like classical and jazz have had in breaking through such a crowded and pop-heavy marketplace structure. How have you guys positioned yourselves to succeed at streaming in particular?
Rather than lament I’ve always chosen to fully embrace how listening habits have evolved over the years and find every possible outlet and platform for classical music. With instrumental music we work with both artist-forward listening as well as more passive forms of consumption. It’s this combination of listening styles that has helped us to grow our market share consistently over the last few years. One approach is to create moments or events that draw attention to our artists and music, with one example being World Sleep Day. We partnered with the World Sleep Society and curated a selection of new music from a range of artists around the world. We then worked with our commercial partners to drive overall awareness for the genre, which many people consume as part of their daily lives, which then drives increased consumption. There is a massive population of people who listen to instrumental and classical music during activities like meditation, yoga, cooking dinner, studying and so much more. We’ve intensely focused on these spaces and created opportunities to highlight the genre.
Deutsche Grammophon also launched its new streaming service, Stage+, in November. How has that service fared so far and what has it allowed you to do with the catalog?
Stage+ is a beautiful platform where you can enjoy some of the greatest musical performances from around the world. I’ve always been a fan of classical music and I attend operas and concerts in New York weekly, but I almost never get to see the Vienna Philharmonic at home, and I’ve only been to the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam once in my life. There is so much amazing work being done in concert halls around the world and now classical audience members everywhere can enjoy performances that we might only ever hear about. We are working hand in hand with Deutsche Grammophon to continue growing the audience for Stage+ and look forward to bringing these performances to many more fans in the years to come.
There seems to be more and more interest in classical-specific streaming lately, not only with Stage+ but with the official launch this week of Apple Music Classical. How do you leverage these types of platforms, and how does that help you break through with your fan base?
There has been, wrongly, a stigma that most streaming platforms only carry pop music but not classical or not all of classical music. That’s incorrect, but the perception remains. These classical-specific platforms highlight just how vast the available catalog is and can present recording information in a clean and easily understandable format. Personally, it makes me as a listener feel seen and heard which is not something classical music fans who grew up digging around CD bins in the back of a music store have enjoyed. I think part of our job now is to educate listeners that you can have the entire music store with one tap and find both popular and obscure recordings quickly and easily.
Several streaming services also have added additional data, such as performer, composer and conductor data. What else would you like to see added to better reflect the classical space?
One thing that was missing but now is less of a problem is improved sound quality. The dynamic range of classical music is so vast that higher quality audio was an issue in the past, but now most services offer it which is a huge benefit. While metadata display is an on-going conversation, I’d like to see more contextual information offered to listeners, such as a booklet or liner notes. Classical music has traditionally been about numerous artists recording the same piece — just imagine how many recordings of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony there are — and so each artist’s individual interpretation is the key and listeners are keen to know the back story and the artist’s thoughts on the repertoire. With opera, which is really a challenge at streaming, there is a need for a libretto to understand what is being sung. This extra material helps with a richer listening experience deepening a listener’s connection to the genre.
You guys have also had success leveraging TikTok, particularly with Ludovico Einaudi’s 2013 track “Experience,” which went viral on the platform last year and is still the No. 1 on-demand streaming audio track in the U.S. this week. What was the story there and how have you been able to utilize platforms like that to benefit your artists?
In November 2020 our vp of digital analytics and advertising spotted the increasing uses of “Experience” on TikTok and that it was driving more streaming. We quickly identified the video where the trend started, which was of a student listening to “Experience” which dramatically helped increase his focus while writing a paper. It clearly resonated with a large audience and we could see the potential. From there we quickly delivered the official audio to Einaudi’s TikTok profile, ran influencer campaigns to boost engagement, drove awareness for Einaudi’s own channels, and then encouraged him to deliver an alternate solo piano version of the song. We had already been planning a YouTube livestream for December and decided that a performance of “Experience” needed to be added ASAP. I think most importantly, we looked at how people were engaging with his music and the cultural conversation around it to tailor our approach at broadening and consistently growing the audience.
In general, we are constantly monitoring trends and daily activity on social platforms like TikTok, Reels and Shorts and with our deep understanding of fan behavior we can double down on our consumer-led marketing. Elevating UGC with initiatives like influencer campaigns and plugging our artists and music into relevant cultural trends are just a few ways we work to position our artists at the forefront of online culture to give their music a chance to stand out amongst the thousands of tracks released every day.
How do you keep growing the genre moving forward?
We need to make sure artists and their music are present where fans are and that means a lot of content both premium and casual. The decline of classical music has and always will be lamented but despite that it is still here, both in the concert hall and coming through our speakers. I attended the opera earlier this week and soprano Lise Davidsen gave one of the most thrilling performances I’ve heard and now my job is to make sure others know about her and excite their curiosity to seek her out. She’s but one example of the countless performing and recording artists today who are giving phenomenal performances night after night, and they are the catalyst for moving the genre forward while we are here to amplify their art.
Previous Executive of the Week: Mike G of UTA
The Metropolitan Opera in New York will mark the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with a concert to remember victims of the war.
Met music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin will conduct Mozart’s Requiem and Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Soprano Golda Schultz, mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo, tenor Dmytro Popov, and Ukrainian bass-baritone Vladyslav Buialskyi will be the soloists at the Feb. 24 performance.
“Mozart’s Requiem is to remember the innocent victims of the war, and Beethoven’s Fifth is in anticipation of the victory to come,” Met general manager Peter Gelb said in a statement Friday (Jan. 20).
The concert will be broadcast on radio and will be presented in association with the Permanent Mission of Ukraine to the United Nations and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. All tickets cost $50 and go on sale Feb. 1, and the Met is encouraging ticket buyers to make donations to Ukraine relief efforts.
BERLIN – Subscription streaming services have ushered in a recorded music business boom, but the medium’s focus on hit singles has boosted genres like hip-hop and Latin more than some others. Starting today, Universal Music Group’s Deutsche Grammophon is offering its own service, Stage+, which will offer music from its own archive and that of sibling label Decca Records, plus video programming and a new live performance every week — at a cost of $14.90, or €14.90, a month.
Universal Music has no plans to remove its classical recordings from mainstream music streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music. Rather, the idea is to offer a specialist service that can appeal to classical music fans and create a more favorable business structure for a genre that hasn’t been well-served by mainstream services. Since many artists and orchestras record some of the same compositions, it can be difficult for aficionados to find the recording they’re looking for — and the mainstream streaming services tend to curate music for a general audience.
“There’s the urge of consumers and artists to have everything in one place, with all the right data,” says Deutsche Grammophon president Dr. Clemens Trautmann. “You can punch in a work or a recording or an artist and you’ll see the next livestream, the archive, the albums, and if there’s a documentary, behind-the-scenes footage or interviews.”
So far, no big label has managed to build its own streaming service, and it’s hard to know how many consumers will be interested in one that only offers certain recordings. But Deutsche Grammophon, with its iconic yellow logo, has culturally significant repertoire going back more than a century, as well as significant stars like Lang Lang, Anne-Sophie Mutter and Max Richter. It also has enough brand equity to get streaming rights to major live events, and its first streamed performance will be Víkingur Ólafsson’s presentation of his album From Afar in the Harpa concert hall in Reykjavík, Iceland. (Some of the live performances featured on Stage+ will be time-delayed for various reasons.)
For Universal Music, Stage+ also offers business advantages. The price is higher than the current cost of mainstream services, although it includes high-fidelity audio as well as livestreamed events. The core classical repertoire is in the public domain, which means it will not have to pay publishing royalties on about three-quarters of the music it streams. The service can also operate in a way that makes sense for the genre, and it plans to divide up the royalty pool according to the time consumers spend listening to certain recordings, rather than paying a royalty on each track, which advantages shorter songs in a way that’s arguably unfair to genres with varied or longer track lengths, like jazz and classical music.
Stage+ faces competition — from livestreaming video services like Medici TV and Carnegie Hall+ on one hand and specialist streaming services like Berlin-based classical-focused Idagio on the other. And since so many households in the U.S. and Europe now subscribe to a mainstream streaming service, in many cases Stage+ will need to have enough appeal to succeed as a second service. Apple also seems to have plans that involve a classical music service; last summer it purchased the streaming service Primephonic, whose website says, “We are working on an amazing new classical music experience from Apple for next year.” (Apple did not respond to a request to comment.)
Trautmann says that Stage+ grew out of DG Stage, which was established during the pandemic and offered ticketed livestreams of performances by Deutsche Grammophon artists. A little over a year and a half ago, he started working to develop the service with Deutsche Grammophon vp of consumer business, Robert Zimmermann, under Frank Briegmann, Universal Music chairman and CEO, Central Europe, who also serves as chairman of Deutsche Grammophon.
“DG Stage is simple and very effective, but we realized that the artist community and consumers were looking for a service where everything our artists create can be presented holistically in one place and audiences can follow their journey,” says Trautmann, who is himself a Julliard-trained musician who plays classical clarinet.
It’s hard to imagine that Stage+ will ever have enough subscribers to rival the mainstream players, but its premium price could potentially allow it to make money with a number of subscribers in the low six figures. It also offers an interesting model for genres that don’t fare as well in the streaming world as pop music — especially if they have fans who can afford a premium price.
And although no major label currently runs a streaming service, there’s no reason that Stage+ couldn’t also offer music from other labels or rightsholders — and it could potentially offer them better deal terms as a more appealing cultural and commercial environment than Spotify and Apple Music. “We’d be open to enlarge the content offering, provided it’s the right match for our curated approach,” Trautmann says, although there are no immediate plans to do so. “It might be better coming from potential partners instead of us.”
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