Primephonic survey finds classical listeners are underserved by general streaming services

Classical music specialist Primephonic shared a study into satisfaction with streaming services in the U.S. According to their results, 52% of Americans do not use streaming platforms yet, and only 21% of Americans have paid subscriptions for streaming. The company opined that with most platforms focusing on young listeners and popular genres, growth in the streaming audience will come from older listeners seeking other genres.

The survey found that more particular listeners may not be as well served by those general platforms, with results that 73% of the streaming audience cannot always easily find what they are looking for. Nearly three-quarters (74%) don’t believe that streaming services adequately introduce them to new music and 85% do not frequently listen to playlists that streaming services recommend for them.

About half of currently paying subscribers said they would be willing to pay more than the industry standard $9.99 a month for a service that met all of their needs. Specifically for classical music listeners, two-thirds of the respondents said they would pay more for a service catering to their needs.

“Major streaming services have ignored the specific needs of niche genres, and classical music in particular,” Primephonic CEO Thomas Steffens said. “Worldwide around 4% of all music consumption is classical, but classical is only 0.7% of all streamed music. Many classical music fans are ignoring major streaming services because they can’t find the works and recordings they are looking for, do not get recommendations that excite them, are not offered audio quality that classical music fans need, etc. That is why we have developed a streaming service, designed for classical from scratch, offering much better search, recommendations and audio quality.”