Idagio: the Berlin startup that wants to be the Spotify of classical music. It offers more than 1.2 million recordings of 2,500 orchestras, 6,500 directors and 60,000 soloists to its users in 180 countries. His data model, different from that of popular music, created a practical interface.
With different interpretations - and that's where their interest lies - of works, instead of the new album by Lady Gaga or Kendrick Lamar, the sphere of classical music has maintained an analogous imprint while digital technology transformed popular contemporary genres. But now a startup in Berlin, Germany, wants to be the Spotify version of J.S. Bach, Martha Argerich and Deutsche Grammophon.
Idagio is dedicated to the streaming of music that, under the name of classical, ranges from Gregorian chant to Arnold Schoemberg or Philip Glass. "While the genre represents only 5% of the recorded music market, its listeners tend to be wealthy and loyal," Bloomberg Businessweek presented. "But it requires an organizational structure very different from that of popular music, which is easily ordered by song, album and artist."
Berlin startup Idagio dreams being classical music Spotify
Till Janczukowicz, co-founder of Idagio with Christoph Lange, explained in dialogue with Deutsche Welle (DW): "There is only one Symphony No. 7 by Beethoven, one Magic Flute by Mozart and one Symphony No. 11 by Tchaikovsky, but there are hundreds of thousands of recordings and presentations of those same works that compete for the attention of consumers.This genre of classic covers, say, requires a data model different from that of Spotify. "
A catalog of classical music must satisfy very characteristic search metrics: an orchestra, a director, a recording, a soloist, for example. And many of its users are concentrated in an age group not very expert in apps: "Someone who asks his grandchildren to pass their collection of CDs to a hard drive," Janczukowicz illustrated to Bloomberg. That's why it also offers, to those concerned about the quality of sound, streaming and download in lossless compression algorithm.
But Idagio also points to new generations of classical music lovers, who are potentially 30% of the people who enjoy music in general. "Unlike the average assistant to a classical concert in Germany, who is 60 years old, our listeners are much younger between 35 and 55 years old," he explained to DW.
The idea of the app came to him in Salzburg, Austria, one afternoon in 2014, when he saw a man post posters with the announcement of a classic concert: there had to be a better way to communicate it in a world transformed by digital technologies. He sold his apartment to found Idagio, and added Lange, an entrepreneur and digital expert.
First they got funds from the Australian group Macquarie; a second round of financing, which obtained USD 25 million, left them with just over 10% of the shares but put them online. Idagio, which has exceeded one million downloads, has not yet reported how many people pay USD 9.99 for full access to the app.
With about 90 employees between the Berlin headquarters and the Bratislava office in Slovakia, today Idagio offers more than 1.2 million recordings of 2,500 orchestras, 6,500 directors and 60,000 soloists. It has users in 180 countries and, on the verge of expanding to Asia, hopes to add a fifth language to the four in which it is already presented: English, German, Spanish and French. "Asia is going to be an important market for us, how could it not be like that, with 50 million piano students in China?" He told DW.
Currently some 300 million people in the world pay for streaming music, and a third of them choose Spotify. "Goldman Sachs projected that this figure will triple by 2030," Janczukowicz added.
For now, "said Bloomberg," the app loses money and is a small company compared to industry leaders: it has 25 engineers for the entire service while, for example, Spotify has 200 for iOS alone.
He also uses other financial criteria: after two decades as manager of musicians and concert organizer, Janzukowicz also established his own remuneration guidelines. While the most popular streaming apps consider that a song was played only after 45 seconds, Idagio pays for every second.
Vogue celebrated the interface of Idagio as "at once elegant, easy to navigate and understand and solid in terms of what can be done with it". Search is easy, but also has a tab to discover (news, current trends, award-winning recordings, for example) and "large number of playlists brilliantly edited," according to the magazine. The main navigation panel offers a menu of moods to choose from: Optimistic, Melancholic, Tragic, Passionate, Soft, Happy, Sad and Peaceful, among others.
His next challenge, said the businessman to Bloomberg, is to create an experience.