Ted Gioia looks at some surprising numbers for the music industry showing that of all genres, classical music suddenly became much more popular in 2022:
Last year, I went viral with an article about the rising popularity of old music. But I focused on old rock songs. Many of these songs are 40 or 50 years old. And in the world of pop culture, that’s like ancient history.
But if you really want old music, you can dig back 200 or 300 years — or even more, if you want. But does anybody really do that?
Conventional wisdom tells us that only around 1% of the public cares about classical music. And it doesn’t change much from year to year.
For proof, just take a look at this chart:
If you love concerts at the philharmonic, you read these figures with much weeping and gnashing of teeth. If classical music were any smaller, it would be a rounding error. Or — even sadder — it would be like jazz.
But that data only covers the period up to 2021. And 2022 was different.
In fact, it was remarkably different.
Over the last 12 months, I’ve started to see surprising signs of a larger audience turning to classical music. Last year, I wrote about the amazing saga of WDAV, the first classical music radio station in US history to take the top spot in its city.
I analyzed the numbers, and tried to get to the bottom of this unexpected success story. At the time, I wrote:
Women are the key drivers here. The station boasts a double-digit share in the female 35-44 category. But this probably is tilted heavily toward mothers, at least if we factor in the next bit of evidence — which reveals that WDAV has a mind-boggling 38% share among young children.
But then a few weeks later, this research report was issued:
I need to point out that respondents were allowed to mention multiple genres — but even given that loophole, who would expect classical music to rank ahead of country music, hip-hop, or folk?
This can’t be true. The numbers must be wrong. Or, maybe, people are lying to pollsters.
But then a survey of holiday listening trends in the UK revealed the unprecedented popularity of orchestral music — especially among younger listeners.
