SME#21: Debunking the Classical Music Stereotypes
Streaming Made Easy #21
Welcome back to Streaming Made Easy. This week, we take a look at the Music Streaming Landscape and for this edition, I have a guest: Guillaume Descottes, CEO of Vialma, a Classical & Jazz Streamer.
We’ve been collaborating for the past year and he managed to open up my musical horizons (I’m more of a Pop Rock nut). Let’s take you on a similar journey.
© Candlelight concert
Today at a glance:
Analysis: The Music Streaming Landscape with a Classical twist
Streamer snapshot: Vialma TV, the FAST channel that overturns stereotypes about Classical Music
Content recommendation: Going backstage with the orchestra from “Tár”
💡 Analysis:
Spotify is the Netflix of the Music Streaming landscape. They even have their own Netflix show: The Playlist.
It means that Spotify grabs most of the industry news (as the market leader with 205M subscribers).
But the ecosystem has seen the birth of dozens of other music services. Deezer, Tidal, Apple Music, Youtube Music, Amazon Music, Tencent Music, are household names when it comes to music streaming.
As you can see, we have a mix of pure players (Deezer, Tidal) and GAFAs (Apple, Google, Amazon) active in the space.
In the perpetual fight for our attention, music plays a major role as we listen to 48 to 86 minutes of music every day depending on the region.
Source: GlobalWebIndex 2021 “Music streaming around the world”
A big difference between music and video streaming is the rights’ structure:
Non exclusive and worldwide rights are the norm in music streaming while video operates in an exclusive and often fragmented world.
Historically, rights were indeed sold market by market, window after window (i.e. movie theaters → video → TV/SVOD), with exclusivities and holdbacks for each.
With the emergence of global streamers, this has changed though. Netflix drops exclusive releases in its 190 markets. These titles will never be live on another streamer.
Disney+, Max followed in Netflix’s footsteps only to realize that they weren’t maximizing program revenues. Max now licenses its library to other local outlets even if they have their streaming service available in market.
What does this rights’ structure mean for music streaming?
Essentially, all music platforms have the same catalogue so their acquisition strategy is not about exclusivities or depth but is more feature and UX focused:
Audio quality
Personalized experience
Fan engagement
Editorialization (human and algorithmic)
Branded playlists e.g. AnimeVerse by Deezer
New verticals like podcasts, video clips
Cross-media partnerships e.g. Deezer & DAZN
Does Music have its Niche Streamers?
It sure does. Spotify and co. are mainstream. It leaves room for genre specialists. One genre with its own set of streamers is Classical Music.
Adagio, Primephonic (now part of Apple), Quobuz or Vialma are streaming platforms dedicated to Classical Music.
They all have in common a special care given to audio quality (Hi-Res quality which provides better-than-CD quality), metadata enrichment, extensive sub-genre offering and editorial curation. These services lean more towards being a cultural platform than a pure audio platform. You don’t just listen to music. You read about music. You watch music.
The big guys understood the power of Classical Music too:
In March 2023, Apple Music released a separate Apple Music Classical app (based on the Primephonic platform they acquired).
On Spotify, Classical Music playlists are legion on the service and Beethoven currently has 6.9 million monthly listeners.
Why all of this attention given to Classical Music?
The numbers are there.
According to Luminate, Classical Music has been experiencing double-digit growth in streaming volumes for over 3 years, significantly higher than the average for other music genres.
Let’s break the stereotypes about Classical Music listeners. It is not the land of the old nor the elite.
It is a more female and younger audience that listens to Classical: Deezer indicates that 31% of Classical Music streamers on its platform are under 35 years old.
In addition to these figures, the BBC reports that young people are more attracted to Classical Music than ever before, and that they are very interested in emerging artists and in the new ways of staging this genre made possible by the advent of digital technology. They also listen to this music to concentrate, to study, to relax and meditate.
And rightfully so. I’ll leave you with two statistics from the British Academy of Sound Therapy (BAST):
Listening to 78 minutes of music each day is recommended for maintaining good mental health.
An average of 5 minutes of music each day makes you feel happier.
You know what to do next, don’t you?
📺 Streamer snapshot:
Vialma is a subscription multimedia platform dedicated to Classical and Jazz. Multimedia because it offers both audio, video and articles about the two musical genres.
The service first launched in 2015 and is now available worldwide across web, mobile and selected Telecom Operators like Free in France.
This week, Vialma enters the ad-supported space with the launch of Vialma TV on Samsung TV+ in France and Switzerland.
On Vialma TV, there will be as many great concerts, film music, operas and ballets, as there will be innovative short films featuring established and emerging artists. You can watch Ennio Morricone conducting his own legendary film scores, or young dancers doing pas de deux in the street, or the latest video recordings from the London Symphony Orchestra, one of the world's finest orchestras.
Tune it to channel 4737 to watch Vialma TV on Samsung TV+
🎬 Content recommendation:
If the last film you’ve seen about Classical music was “Amadeus” by Milos Forman, it’s time to change that and go watch “Tár” by Todd Field.
The Pitch: The film centers on Lydia Tár, one of the greatest living composer-conductors and the very first female director of a major German orchestra (the Berlin Philharmonica). She’s about to perform Gustav Mahler’s Symphony n° 5 when her perfect career turns out to be not so perfect.
The Topic: It’s a movie about the work place more than anything else. The orchestra is the company, the conductor is the CEO. The movie depicts the power abuses one can endure at work.
The Cast:
Cate Blanchett (who won best actress at the Mostra and a Golden Globe),
Noémie Merlant (the French actress you should know about as she’s part of a new generation of rising stars in France) as her assistant,
Nina Hoss who you may recognize from Jack Ryan or Homeland.
The Music: Blanchett conducts the orchestra playing live. There is no click track, it’s not done in post-production. I find this incredible. Imagine the amount of training it must have taken.
Fun Fact: Cate Blanchett has never seen any of her movies. She hates seeing herself on screen.
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