Interesting, if true

[Sashoir]

This "article" (repackaged from here: to their credit, at least it was attributed) purports to show classical composers' hypothetical earnings via Spotify. It's very back-of-a-fag-packet (actually reminds me of working in corporate finance in the 1990s), but it seems plausible (which is very different from true).
I was once told (ca. 2000, in a small market ~20m people) that albums in the classical charts could move significantly based on purchases in the low hundreds. I don't know what the split is between publisher and label (and from there, recording artist), but it looks like the mean USD .0037 is all up, so unless it's something like 1:100 in favour of the record label how are any classical record labels anywhere close to viable?
Aside from the business side of things, it was informative for me to see the relative popularity of the most popular composers; I'd have thought Händel much less popular than Mahler, for instance.

 

[Robin L]

This "article" (repackaged from here: to their credit, at least it was attributed) purports to show classical composers' hypothetical earnings via Spotify. It's very back-of-a-fag-packet (actually reminds me of working in corporate finance in the 1990s), but it seems plausible (which is very different from true).
I was once told (ca. 2000, in a small market ~20m people) that albums in the classical charts could move significantly based on purchases in the low hundreds. I don't know what the split is between publisher and label (and from there, recording artist), but it looks like the mean USD .0037 is all up, so unless it's something like 1:100 in favour of the record label how are any classical record labels anywhere close to viable?
Aside from the business side of things, it was informative for me to see the relative popularity of the most popular composers; I'd have thought Händel much less popular than Mahler, for instance.

Only problem with this is: it would only be in our time [the time of streaming] that these numbers would apply. There was no Spotify in 1750.

I recall reading years ago [when CDs were the common mode of listening and classical labels where churning out new classical releases in the hundreds every month] that sales of a Claudio Abbado/BPO recording of a Mahler symphony for DGG topped out in the hundreds. Think of it: expenses in the tens [possible hundreds] of thousands, receipts in the low thousands. Not viable then, not viable now. These days a performing ensemble can self produce for much less cost, but they can also expect to not recoup costs anyway. By way of example, "Voices of Music" produces first class [sonics, visuals, and performance] YouTube videos. Knowing the people involved [having recorded many of them years ago] I know that recordings are mostly for publicity with little expectation of recouping costs. This was the situation thirty years ago, when I was a recording engineer. Lots of performers paid for recordings not really expecting to make money from those recordings but increasing the likelihood of getting more and better paying gigs.

$6,000 for Bach would still be $6,000. "The recording industry" is a lot like the the "Tulip Bubble" in the Baroque era, a craze for something unsustainable. The Beatles and Led Zep are historical anomalies.