Opinion

Steve Harris on the UK-based, classical music-focused streaming and download platform that aims to give its artists a fair share of the pot – while still looking out for lovers of Compact Disc

Something in the press release for Tim Garland and Geoffrey Keezer’s superb new album caught my eye. ‘Mezzo’, it said, ‘will not be available on Spotify’.

For Spotify, artist protests are nothing new, but a wave of defections began in June 2025 when founder Daniel Ek doubled down on his investments in the AI defence tech company he also chairs. Having joined the rebellion, Tim Garland says, ‘I didn’t set out to start a movement, I just came up with “Spot-Defy” as a little pun really!’.

Splitting the pot

Politics aside, Garland’s argument is about fair artist remuneration. In simple terms, a streaming platform may keep 30% of subscriber revenue. The remaining 70% is pooled, and the rights holders to the songs receive a percentage of this, reflecting the number of their streams as a percentage of the total streams. At the end of 2025, US industry body Luminate reported that the world’s streaming services hosted an amazing 253 million tracks, but of these 88% received fewer than 1000 streams – the payment threshold set by Spotify and Deezer.

You can find classical and jazz on the major platforms, but it’s not what they do best. Classical listeners need in-depth metadata, not just artist names and song titles. And the usual payment model, counting anything over 30 seconds as one play, doesn’t make sense.

One of the first to address both issues was Idagio, launched in Berlin in 2015 with detailed metadata, paying royalties by the second rather than per play. Amsterdam-based Primephonic followed in 2017, again paying by the second and offering hi-res (24-bit) streams.

Apple bought Primephonic in 2021 and made it the basis for Apple Music Classical, which emerged in 2023 as a free extra for Apple Music subscribers. Yet artist payouts were now pro rata from a pool, as on other platforms.

Voyage of discovery

Also in 2023 came the new UK-based classical and jazz streaming service from Presto Music. From its beginnings as a small record shop in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, Presto had become a leading international online seller of CDs, musical instruments and sheet music. Download sales started in 2011, with hi-res added a year later.

At launch, Presto’s streaming service offered 200,000 albums at CD quality, 34,000 in 96kHz/24-bit hi-res, and ‘a new level of discoverability to classical streaming’, backed by online news, reviews and interviews.

Like Idagio, Presto pays rights holders by the second, not per track, which can make a tenfold difference. One example Presto gives is an album of two Brahms string quartets, eight tracks running a total of 79 minutes. According to Presto, this would earn less than 2p when streamed once on Spotify and only slightly more on YouTube. With Qobuz, it would receive 9.1p, but Presto’s payout would be no less than 56.9p.

Presto CEO Chris O’Reilly explains that this is possible precisely because the company focuses on classical music. Classical fans, he says, tend to stop what they are doing, sit down and actually listen. ‘Because of that’, he says, ‘a lot of our listeners will listen to maybe an hour of music a day’.

On the big streaming services, where most users choose non-classical, ‘People may get through six, eight, or ten hours of music a day. Because all the revenue is pooled before it’s paid out, it means the classical music is being diluted by the other genres’.

Meanwhile, Presto Music still offers downloads in various formats on all titles and looks after its CD customers – if a wanted CD is no longer available, Presto can provide a one-off copy indistinguishable from the original. If you’re yet to take the streaming plunge, that’s a comforting thought.