Hyperion Label

[Kit]

Yesterday's number seems to be 77 rather than the promised 200 and very Stephen Hough and Steven Osborne heavy (48 of 77).

They've apparently opted for completing the discographies of the keyboard players Driver, Esfahani, Gugnin, Hough, Kolesnikov, Namoradze and Osborne first.

[Maestro267]

I didn't even realize any had gone up. Shame no more Robert Simpson showed up this time.

[AnotherSpin]

No Florestan Trio's Schubert yet.

[DavidW]

No Florestan Trio's Schubert yet.

Their Schubert are my favorite recordings of theirs and I'm surprised that they didn't even make the first cut.

[Spotted Horses]

Yesterday's number seems to be 77 rather than the promised 200 and very Stephen Hough and Steven Osborne heavy (48 of 77).

The cynic in may says they didn't see any significant bump in revenue from streaming Hyperion and they're thinking "why bother" when they could be working on another reissue of the Three Tenors.

[Todd]

The cynic in may says they didn't see any significant bump in revenue from streaming Hyperion and they're thinking "why bother" when they could be working on another reissue of the Three Tenors.

Sellers know more than buyers.  The owners of Hyperion and BIS sold the companies rather than set up some type of succession plan that kept the companies independent.  (That is, they cashed out, and good for them.)  Classical music is small time and low margin.  UMG is in the same space so Hyperion's catalog will likely fare decently in terms of reissues long term, and some Hyperion branded releases will likely trickle out for some time.  BIS is one tiny acquisition for Apple, and it is not and never will or can be a major revenue center.  It's no Shazam, let's say.  Expect it to be gone before the decade is out, with legacy titles floating around the streaming service, with no one listening.  I'd love to see Apple's full analytics on streaming.  Sure, Olivia Rodrigo alone is likely streamed more than all classical titles combined, but I'd love to see just how puny streaming is for classical.  If YouTube views offer any type of proxy, classical streaming barely rates as miniscule.

[Roasted Swan]

Sellers know more than buyers.  The owners of Hyperion and BIS sold the companies rather than set up some type of succession plan that kept the companies independent.  (That is, they cashed out, and good for them.)  Classical music is small time and low margin.  UMG is in the same space so Hyperion's catalog will likely fare decently in terms of reissues long term, and some Hyperion branded releases will likely trickle out for some time.  BIS is one tiny acquisition for Apple, and it is not and never will or can be a major revenue center.  It's no Shazam, let's say.  Expect it to be gone before the decade is out, with legacy titles floating around the streaming service, with no one listening.  I'd love to see Apple's full analytics on streaming.  Sure, Olivia Rodrigo alone is likely streamed more than all classical titles combined, but I'd love to see just how puny streaming is for classical.  If YouTube views offer any type of proxy, classical streaming barely rates as miniscule.

Could the last person leaving the "Classical House" please turn out the lights.......... thankyou

[Todd]

Could the last person leaving the "Classical House" please turn out the lights.......... thankyou

French micro-labels and Japanese domestic market labels will never disappear from the face of the earth. 

[Spotted Horses]

Could the last person leaving the "Classical House" please turn out the lights.......... thankyou

Classical labels are not profit centers, they are passion projects that the founders manage to eek out a living from. Ted Perry funded Hyperion recording sessions by driving a cab. When the founders age out or the labels fall into the hands of the bean counters they tend to evaporate. I don't expect new productions from BIS after von Bahr goes out of the picture. Maybe Hyperion will last longer in Universal, but even Philips dissolved into Decca and has no independent existence. The most optimistic outcome is that the catalog somehow remains available. That's not the case for some defunct labels, like ASV or Westminster.

The good news is there are new classical labels appearing that are the BISs and Hyperions of the present day.

[DavidW]

but I'd love to see just how puny streaming is for classical.  If YouTube views offer any type of proxy, classical streaming barely rates as miniscule.

Apple obviously feels differently than you do given how aggressively they have marketed Apple Music Classical.  And they certainly didn't buy up BIS to just forget about them and let them be lost.  They are trying to build up the prestige of their brand.

Not saying CM can compete with Olivia Rodrigo but if there wasn't money to be had, Apple wouldn't be working so hard at it.

[Todd]

Apple obviously feels differently than you do given how aggressively they have marketed Apple Music Classical.  And they certainly didn't buy up BIS to just forget about them and let them be lost.  They are trying to build up the prestige of their brand.

Someone in Apple does, sure, maybe an entire (small) division.  I doubt Tim Cook pays much attention, but maybe.  Here's the thing, Apple has pursued a variety of ventures with evident passion and thrown money at various ventures, only to see them fail.  Apple Music Classical has the whiff of AirPower more than iPods or apps.  But who knows.  Maybe Apple has the secret applesauce that will make classical music popular for the masses and a big, fat profit center that will be bullet pointed in an annual shareholder presentation in, say, 2026. 

If we're considering Apple products to get pumped about, then clearly it's Apple Vision Pro.  That secret applesauce will make VR a consumer hit at long last, I tell you.

[DavidW]

I don't think that Apple Music Classical has to be a hit or failure on its own.  It is part of a complex strategy to draw consumers into their ecosystem and retain them.  Their services are fast growing $80+ billion per year including the cloud, streaming and most importantly Apple Wallet.

The future for them is in services, Iphone growth is unsustainable in the long run no matter how good it is now.  I see AMC as a small part of growing their services revenue not just because people will pay for it, but because they might stay for the rest.

[Todd]

I don't think that Apple Music Classical has to be a hit or failure on its own.

It must be a success on its own.  Apple is a publicly traded company and its shareholders will demand it.  Analysts will pore over shareholder reports, 10-Qs, and 10-Ks and search for ways to increase shareholder returns.  Activist shareholders will demand that Apple kill off money losers, as they should.  I'd have to see both public shareholder reports from Apple and third-party analysts' assessments of the significance of Apple Music Classical in terms of revenue and customer retention.  Apple Music as a whole generated about $8 billion in revenue, and if Apple Music Classical represents the same proportion of sales that classical music as a whole does, that means it will generate somewhere between $160 million and $300 million in revenue per year, depending on which calculation of classical music sales you prefer to use.  Not nothing, sure, but not much in context.  Apple does not possess magical powers and it cannot make classical music popular. 

[San Antone]

Apple Music Classical is irrelevant to me.  I have Apple Music, and it includes all of their classical music items; granted with a more clunky search engine.  Plus, AMC seems to be an app only available for iPhones and iPads.  I listen mostly on my iMac.

[Madiel]

Could the last person leaving the "Classical House" please turn out the lights.......... thankyou

Could the last person who bothers to take Todd's relentlessly cynical viewpoints seriously turn off his microphone. Thank you.

[Spotted Horses]

Apple Music Classical is irrelevant to me.  I have Apple Music, and it includes all of their classical music items; granted with a more clunky search engine.  Plus, AMC seems to be an app only available for iPhones and iPads.  I listen mostly on my iMac.

I have the Apple Music Classical App on my phone, but I've never used it because I also listen to classical using MacOS and there is no MacOS version, so Duh. My impression is that the search capabilities on the ordinary Apple Music App for MacOS pretty much duplicates anything in Apple Music Classical for iPhone.

[AnotherSpin]

I like Todd's posts. It's always amusing to see extremes from which we can scale back towards sanity.

[Brian]

The good news is there are new classical labels appearing that are the BISs and Hyperions of the present day.

Curious if you have any favorite new/recent labels that show that kind of curation and potential staying power.

[Madiel]

The release of Hyperion on streaming has given me new opportunities to hear just how bad and sleep-inducing the London Haydn quartet are.

Though they don't yet have op.33, where I wanted to hear the outrage of switching the order of movements, because back in the day some LONDON publisher did that and they wanted to embrace the historically authentic practice of being wrong.

But op.76 will do as an opportunity to be bored by their playing.  Allegro con spirito? No spirito whatsoever.

[JBS]

The release of Hyperion on streaming has given me new opportunities to hear just how bad and sleep-inducing the London Haydn quartet are.

Though they don't yet have op.33, where I wanted to hear the outrage of switching the order of movements, because back in the day some LONDON publisher did that and they wanted to embrace the historically authentic practice of being wrong.

But op.76 will do as an opportunity to be bored by their playing.  Allegro con spirito? No spirito whatsoever.

I rather liked LHQ. Chaconne a son gout and all that.

The Kodaly Quartet Opus 76 I think qualifies as boring. Of the installments of their cycle I've heard, it's the one I like least.