Apple Acquiring Primephonic, Good or Bad for Classical Music?
Apple made a very interesting purchase. Let's talk about it.
If you haven't heard, Apple decided to purchase a classical music streaming service called Primephonic. There's a competitor out there called Idagio, but we'll get to that in a second.
Apple Music bought Primephonic. Didn't say for how much according to the Verge article that's down in the description below
Yeah, I have some thoughts about it. Let's dive right in!
So for those of you who are into tech and into tech news, let me give you a run down on of what Primephonic is (Or was). Primephonic was a classical music streaming service that was created three years ago in Europe. And what Primephonic did really well that the other streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music, and other streaming services that didn't do well, was they didn't do classical music well.
Because classical music is not just AN artist and the name of a song, right? There's a lot more than that.
There's a lot of metadata that goes into classical music such as the composer, such as the conductor, such as the orchestra, the pieces that the orchestras are playing, all of that stuff that Apple Music, Spotify, all the streaming giants really couldn't do well. And Apple knew that they couldn't do that well.
So... [Apple] found an opportunity to buy Primephonic, and so they did.
In this game, cash is king and Apple has a ton of cash that they're sitting on.
So, I think that this is a good decision for Apple. I think from a business perspective, obviously this is the most correct decision that Apple can make right now. They just introduced Dolby into their ear buds, and they're having a lot of success with that. And my two cents is that they're going to try to expand that technology into the classical music streaming world. Which I'm excited about as a consumer.
It's going to be really really great to have that spacial audio experience in my ear/earbuds. Because that was something that was really lacking in classical music streaming services. Is to have that technology where I honestly felt like I was sitting in the concert hall. THAT is a very unique experience.
Sidenote: If you're a concertgoer, or if you're not a classical music goer, I encourage you to go, by the way, support your classical music orchestras in your city or in your home town. They're really struggling right now, and they need someone like you to support them by attending a concert.
So again, from a business standpoint, this makes a whole lot of sense for Apple to acquire Primephonic.
However, there's also another streaming service called Idagio. And I'm curious, was Idagio ever in the conversation? Idagio also had the same goals as Primephonic maybe they wanted to maybe not be a part of the Apple Music ecosystem and they wanted to be their own thing.
But Primephonic, in their statement on primephonic.com they announced that to "gain a wider audience, to get a bigger audience, the most obvious decision for them is to be a part of Apple Music."
Which, again, makes sense they want classical music to be in the masses. So, Apple Music swooped them up kind of like Apple Music or Apple as a company swooped up Beats by Dre. Same kind of situation.
Will Primephonic still be its own app?
No, it will not.
According to Apple, they are going to have an Apple Music Classical app specifically for classical music which I'll be very interested to try out and give my honest opinion and feedback once that app is released.
Will it be the same pay structure as Apple Music, or will it be different?
Well, who knows. We have no idea about that.
But for people who are now enrolled in Primephonic, they were given a certain expiration date, and they're also going to be given 6 free of Apple Music, courtesy of Apple, you know, gratis, for free. So that's kind of nice that Apple Music is able tot take care of the Primephonic customers.
However, there are no new Primephonic customers as of today. You cannot go on Primephonic.com to become a new member. Just can't do it anymore.
Now, that's from the consumer side. That's from the consumer side, me wanting to purchase an experience with the Dolby Audio Experience and all that, I get it, that's fine.
But what about the artist's perspective?
What about the people who are putting music on Primephonic and on these classical music streaming platforms,
What's going to happen with their pay?
The reason why Primephonic was so beloved by the classical music community is that they paid their artists fairly.
You're starting to Apple Music and Spotify streams costing less and less and less as time goes on. To me, I feel like there is a slippery slope even though Apple is acquiring Primephonic for the benefit of the consumer, and the benefit of their company to let's face it, increase subscribe numbers and increase revenue from subscriptions, and money and all that good stuff, will that mean the same for classical music artists? For classical music artists such as myself do I trust Apple to have the same pay structure as Primephonic did or Idagio?
That is not in the Verge article and if you have more details about that or Apple, if there's an executive watching this video please email me because I would love to have a conversation with you how this is going to benefit musicians.
The pay structure, is getting less and less and less for classical musicians. We're struggling right now with orchestras and concert halls not being open. What is Apple going to do to help the artists?
That's a big question for Apple.
-
Subscribe on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/user/emrugala?sub_confirmation=1