Tag: classical music

Starving amidst plenty

In my last post I wrote about the power of Tido to aid discovery. In this post I want to cast the net a little wider.

It’s a truism that in the developed world, we live in an age of plenty. More music recordings, scores, and certainly video materials are available to us than ever before. But, just as in big farming, industrialisation doesn’t necessarily equate to diversity. And, just as in big farming, an emphasis on productivity, size and scale can lead to some unintended but significant distortions in both provision and consumption.

The idea of a ‘canon’ of music – indeed, the idea of ‘classical’ music altogether – is an invention of the Renaissance. Before that time, music was always contemporary, enjoyed and forgotten. The concept of a revival, the same motivation which drove the creation of a new genre called opera which would reanimate ancient Greek theatre, has been with us ever since. And, of course, when seventeenth-century Florentines hypothesised about what Greek music theatre might have been like, they projected their own, contemporary, assumptions on to that particular Platonic cave wall. You could say the same about ‘authentic’ or ‘historically informed’ performance practice. Such ideological movements have always said more about us than about the objects we act on – and in this sense, ‘authenticity’ can only be claimed for what we currently are engaged in. I can’t tell you that J. S. Bach would have recognised the style of Emmanuelle Haïm more than von Karajan, for instance.

But I’m wandering off track! To come back to Tido, the digital universe offers everything…in principle. Abundance does not equal quality, although it includes quality. The benefit becomes, more and more, about curation and selection. Unfortunately, much of the music industry is driven by the ‘if you liked that, then you will LOVE this’ paradigm. Like a decrease in crop diversity, this farming of music has some serious and distorting consequences. Female composers continue to be neglected. Why? Because…well, female composers are not generally as well-known or as powerfully promoted as male composers. And so the cycle, without correction, will continue repeating itself indefinitely.

The same is true for ‘most popular’. You could die of thirst drinking only Bollinger champagne; sometimes you want water. But the relentless promotion of ‘more of the same’ means that we are surfeited on J. S. Bach. We don’t hear nearly enough Graupner, for instance. And even within the output of J. S. Bach, we don’t hear nearly enough of the neglected works. What about if, instead of ‘if you liked that, then you will LOVE this’, a platform could steer users in wilder directions? ‘If you liked that, then THIS will come as a complete shock to you’. Algorithmic recommendations can be built in infinite variety, so we could highlight ‘least listened’ as easily as ‘most popular’.

And what would the effect of all this be? It would be pretty much the journey I have been on, developing Tido. In the past few years, as Tido has taken shape, my listening habits have become wider than ever. The discoveries I have made reinforce my realisation that I have been dancing on the head of a pin, musically speaking. There is so much more great, neglected, diverse and sometimes bizarre music out there. The world is wide, and Tido is playing its part in opening doors. Not just to the well-loved, familiar rooms we know so well, but to corners we didn’t even know existed.

I want to share an important piece by Kathryn Knight, CEO of Tido, to conclude this post. I think you’ll find it very germane to the thoughts above!

Until next time

A classical crescendo?

There’s some excitement in the music industry about the publication, by the BPI last week, of figures indicating a more-than-10% rise in classical music UK streaming and sales.

These figures, at first glance, look very heartening. Classical music is used to being the ugly sister in music streaming and sales, but the percentage rises–including a 6.9% rise in classical CD sales–indicate real confidence and growth. The most dramatic increase is in classical music streaming, up 42% year-on-year.

Dig a bit deeper, though, and the figures–although encouraging–must be seen in context. What the BPI doesn’t mention in its release, understandably enough, is that classical hasn’t represented even 5% of overall music consumption since the early 1990s. It managed to represent 6% of digital consumption in the early 2000s. Since then, its share of digital consumption has plummeted to 0.9% of overall digital consumption. And for reference, classical’s share of what remains of the CD market has also fallen, even though the majority of pop music is no longer released on any physical format. 

If we analyse revenues on physical product, classical’s global share of physical revenues has been falling steadily since the early 90s. It is currently around 2%–and that is a generous figure. So a rise of 6.9% within that niche equates to a global increase of 0.014% in the marketplace. Not much cause to break out the champagne.

The question for all of us in the classical music industry must be:

 If classical listeners are still so demanding of all the things which they are supposed to be demanding of (high audio quality, tangibility), why is classical’s physical market share falling?

And in more general terms, why and how has classical found itself in this ghetto? How has the culturally-dominant musical style of a century ago fallen so far from visibility, market share and relevance?

My life’s mission–and the driving force behind Tido’s vision–is to connect people with the richness of music in all its forms. And that certainly includes classical. I have been quoted as saying that my industry (the classical music industry) has done its best over the past century to alienate, patronise and exclude its own audience…an audience which was once its own but which it has now largely lost.

This is the elephant in the room – not noteworthy increases within a tiny ghettoised niche, but the collapse of relevance and connectedness to a larger audience.

Chaz Jenkins of Chartmetric has some trenchant observations on precisely this.

If classical wants to reach a massive new audience who are receptive and accessible, it should be focussing on marketing itself to new listeners in its established markets plus the fastest growing markets for streaming (South East Asia, LatAm).
Creating classical ghettos is simply a shortcut to irrelevance.

Chaz Jenkins, chartmetric.io

Tido views the world of music as one unified field. We don’t make hard borders between genres or styles, and our innovative search and discovery model will address the biggest perceived issue with classical streaming: its discoverability and relatedness.

Einaudi’s immense chart popularity reflects the strength of his engagement with audiences, in the way we all hope and need to. But when the BPI announces that he represents one in twelve of all classical streams, followed by film music and artists including Bocelli and Jenkins, it’s clear that the definition of ‘classical’ may be shifting from our understanding of what that has meant in the past.

And this for me is the biggest concern about the BPI’s press release. The positives it celebrates can be seen as insignificant in the much bigger global picture. What it frames as important is in danger of missing the horizon view.

Metaphors about the Titanic are overused. But in this case the classical music industry has not only lost the mother ship, its life-raft is far from shore with no immediate sign of rescuers.

Such isolation is what Tido seeks to address. The music industry has been seeing threats for so long that it can lose sight of the opportunities digital offers us. A connected world of music means more to us than product, new monetisation channels or a rescue package. It means a re-attachment to the essentials of music: a humane experience which provides life-long learning. Such learning–whether as a child, student, amateur or professional–enriches the context, usability and understanding of our musical universe. This is a universe without walls or hard borders, where the ‘lost child’ of classical music can re-connect with the audiences and interests of the larger world.