Mozart is Dead, live with it

Music services need to accept that Classical is a niche that cant be grown.

A recent article in The New Yorker lamented Apple’s failure at reviving the Classical Music genre with their dedicated App. Maybe The New Yorker should stick to lamenting the existence of rats that can carry a slice of pizza down a subway station’s staircase.

Music services need to accept that Classical is a niche that cannot be grown. There's a small market segment for it that is fixed in size, and a ring market around that small segment of affected pseudo intellectuals who feel that they need to be "into" classical music for effect, and/or pseudo cultural reward. Members of the latter segment enjoy classical music the way they enjoy getting their teeth cleaned.

The real segments to grow are the African and Indian music segments that have global reach, and where there is a vast pool of artists waiting to be heard. Let’s face it - most classical music was written by dead white European men with powdered wigs, hundreds of years ago. While it has mathematical and music theory value, doesn’t really reach the soul of a listener the way that say Forgot About Dre does.

The planet is full of creators who, over the last 30 years, have become interconnected via social networks and the global mixing of cultures. Peer-to-Peer music piracy actually had a salutary effect by allowing anyone with a mobile phone anywhere on Earth to hear every song on Earth. Spotify and Apple Music, and the like, followed on by not only providing a higher quality product but also a means (albeit meager) for a creator to monetize their work without having to be discovered by a roving A&R guy in a bar in Greenwich Village.

We are on the verge of a new revolution where creators can reach out to fans directly and engage. This will exponentiate the amount of good music available and create totally new genres.

The New Yorker, of course, is the classical music of magazines, a narrow true audience, with subsegments like Ivy League graduates of the 70's, Upper East/West Side apartment dwellers who think the cartoons about a dog using a telephone are funny, and a vast ring segment of people waiting to enjoy getting their teeth cleaned.