As with so many services targeting the classical niche, Primephonic is focusing on metadata. “It’s important for us to educate and help make classical music more approachable and understandable,” co-founder Simon Eder told Billboard. Thus, it offers track information and search by composer, sub-genre, era, performer, and chronology. It is designed to offer recommendations accompanied by more information than other algorithms such as Spotify’s Discover Weekly.
“Rather than call a playlist ‘Classical Music for Sunday,’ that’s not really ideal for the real classical music listeners who probably want to learn more about the Baroque era,” Eder said. “So it’s important for us to educate and help a little bit, to also make classical music more approachable and understandable.”
Many parties have emerged to cater to classical music fans over the years, but few have demonstrated much staying power. Striking a balance between the demand for high audio quality at an appealing price point has proven difficult for the streaming industry.