A dissenting industry voice on the Apple Classical app

Lukas Krohn-Grimberghe, founder of the failed classical streaming service Grammofy, finds fault with the business model of the new Apple streaming service.

He says: ‘From a music licensing standpoint nothing changes. Not for Apple, not for artists and rights holders. Revenue is still pooled with all of Apple Music’s revenue and then prorated based on the same model that has dominated the industry for 10+ years.’

He adds: ‘as long as Apple is only converting users of its competitors, the overall money in the pot remains equal and artists will receive exactly the same payouts. The only way artists might benefit from this new app financially is if the ratio of classical music listening to listening of other genres is significantly altered – which I would think is very unlikely – or if a huge number of classical music listeners that have not yet been music streaming subscribers before will now purchase an Apple Music subscription.’

Read further analysis on mBW here.

Lukas is presently Director Product & Editorial Strategy at WQXR.