Apple on Tuesday launched Apple Music Classical, born from the acquisition of Primephonic in August 2021. Apple then aimed to offer “a unique experience, which will truly be the best in the world”, but competitors are sharpening their weapons. After having identified, Monday, the competitive universe, we propose to examine the stakes and the grounds on which all await the arrival of the giant.
“In our model, we pay producers for the second of music listened to. The money collected must allow the recording of more complex works. That’s the challenge, and we’re part of the solution,” says Chris O’Reilly, founder and CEO of Presto Music Streaming Service, which launched on March 6 to everyone’s surprise.
This payment model was inaugurated in the business by Idagio: “Our calculations are done per second and per user. This is the most accurate method,” explains Idagio founder and CEO Till Janczukowicz.
The Disadvantaged Classic
The central issue of retribution is amplified in classical music. Didier Martin, CEO of independent publisher Outhere Musique, told the Duty the classification of its sources of income from streaming : Idagio is ahead of Qobuz, Tidal, Deezer and Apple. The Spotify and YouTube juggernauts are 7e and 8ebehind Amazon.
“It’s logical: the more the platform reaches a large audience, the more the income is diluted and goes to heavy users”, says Didier Martin. For the retribution, according to the rule of market centric (“market-centric”), operates as follows: the user pays a right of access to unlimited content, and the clicks are counted by ranges. The producers are then remunerated in proportion to the market shares. The big players win the loot. This is what currently explains the phenomenon of “false clicks” to increase these shares.
The trap for the classic is self-evident: the 6e Symphony by Mahler, it’s 4 clicks for a work of 90 minutes and 120 musicians to pay. A pianist alone in a studio who lines up 5 notes of what is now called the “second wind of modern classical music” can produce material within 30 clicks of an elevator music that will be in lists of reading “peace of the soul” or “joy of conscience”.
If Apple Music sits ahead of Spotify in the Outhere charts when Spotify, as we wrote on Monday, has more than double paid subscribers, it’s for two reasons. The first is that Apple pays 0.76 US cents per stream while Spotify pays between 0.26 and 0.49, compared to YouTube, 0.067 cents!
The second is one of the challenges of the classic market: the highlighting and editorial quality of the service. Far from throwing new releases into the general flow, as with Spotify, a service that wants to interest classical music lovers must contextualize the offer. For Mr. Zisman, music director at Qobuz, his customers come “for the sound quality, but also for the unique content, adapted to classical music: metadata, digital booklets and a wide choice of reviews”.
The race for exclusivity
When we ask Till Janczukowicz what will remain at Idagio, which sticks to the Flac format, when Apple, which announces high definition sound with a database devoted to classics, will have arrived, the reflection is intended to be more general. “The invention of recording generated the star-system and the music industry, an industry of a musical substitute that became the number one form of entertainment. But what is lost is the social aspect: artists and listeners vibrate together during concerts. This sense of community can be restored through education. In 2022, we tested real-time symposia. Idagio is going to bet on this paying “luxury university”, where Thomas Hampson talks about Mahler, Leonard Bernstein’s daughter tells about her father and Francesca Zambello explores the Ring of Wagner to generate valuable exclusive content.
Exclusive content is also an avenue followed by Qobuz, where, as Marc Zisman tells us, “classic music is the second most downloaded genre and the fourth among the most listened to, representing 17% of downloads and 15% of streams “. “We are working to develop exclusive partnerships on a global level with labels as prestigious as Château de Versailles Spectacles or Sacred Music at Notre-Dame de Paris,” he adds.
An exclusive agreement between Hyperion and Presto would have made sense, since Simon Perry of Hyperion, who complained so much about the market-centric, would no doubt have found his account there. The discussion did not take place: “Simon had been negotiating the sale of Hyperion since August, he had other concerns,” says Chris O’Reilly.
In our model, we pay producers for each second of music listened to. The money collected must allow the recording of more complex works. That’s the challenge, and we’re part of the solution.
The classic Apple mode of remuneration will be scrutinized. “If it’s by beach, it’s unfair, even within the classic”, notes Chris O’Reilly: “The Goldberg Variations, these are 32 tracks for one hour, while the 4e Symphony from Bruckner, it’s 4 beaches for one hour. At Apple, the Goldberg would therefore be paid 8 times more. Who will be able to record symphonies in such an ecosystem in the long term? By being a jazz and classical service that doesn’t get diluted with pop, our returns to the classical industry are going to be 20 to 30 times greater than Apple’s. »
Both therefore sharpen their arguments in the image of this “economic eco-responsibility”. Qobuz relies on “high sound quality, editorial content and the quality of [ses] recommendations”. Idagio wants to go beyond streaming and restore the artist-consumer relationship. Presto, which has thrown itself into the deep end, aims to accelerate its “integration into hardware such as Bluesound and Sonos”. This integration is the great competitive advantage of Tidal and Qobuz, which operate on a database that is not specific to classic, but are associated with major high-fidelity brands.