Apple Music Classical
Strange feelings looking at this... This is almost exactly the product I failed to get into YC with back in 2017... All the same ideas as far as the UX goes with one main difference: the business model. I wanted to apply the Steam business model where people would actually buy album again (and not tracks a la iTunes).<p>The issue is that while it&#x27;s nice to have a UX tailored for classical, this won&#x27;t likely help the classical industry to thrive again.<p>To simplify a bit, the classical music industry is composed of:<p>- the majors labels (Universal Music, Sony, Warner and EMI)<p>- A dozen large independent labels (Naxos being the largest)<p>- hundreds of small labels<p>The majors mostly care about promoting a few star performers and milking their huge existing catalog. They have no problem with putting everything on subscription services for pennies. This what you find on all subscription services.<p>The larger independent labels also have significant catalog and some will also put part of it on subscription services but mostly won&#x27;t.<p>However, it is totally financially impossible for the smaller labels which are actually recording most of the interesting new records to survive on the pennies they would get from subscription services. Most of them have rejected that model and caters to the increasingly niche market of audiophile still ready to buy new high quality music.<p>As a classical music fan, I&#x27;m happy to see that there will finally be an offering offering a good experience and massively increasing discoverability (which is terrible in mainstream services).<p>But unfortunately, this wont change the fact that the classical recording industry is dying and that the sector is only surviving thanks to public and private subsidies.