New research suggests that classical music is quickly gaining popularity with content creators on YouTube, with its use reportedly rising 90% globally over the past year.
That’s according to Sweden-headquartered royalty-free soundtrack provider Epidemic Sound, which found that classical music has been the fastest-growing genre used by content creators in 2022.
The genre witnessed the fastest annual growth in use across Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and the United States, which Epidemic described as a “creator-led movement.”
The company says that it analyzed metadata and user-generated content from YouTube videos that included songs from its catalog of more than 35,000 music tracks.
Epidemic says that the growing use of classical music for YouTube content was also evident on its own platform, with downloads of classical tracks from Epidemics rising 64% year over year. Epidemic added that its classical titles have been played more than 200 million times on music streaming platforms.
“The right song is vital in setting the scene,” said content creator Cecilia Blomdahl, whose videos document her daily life in Svalbard, the Northernmost town in the world between mainland Norway and the North Pole.
Blomdahl added: “Classical music provides a great range of emotions. It can be both melancholic and joyful depending on the footage, so the genre fits really well with the feeling I want to evoke in my videos.”
Classical artists have also gained popularity. Epidemic identified five of the fastest-rising stars of classical music this year including Christoffer Moe Ditlevsen, Trevor Kowalski, Hampus Naeselius, Megan Wofford and Franz Gordon.
Epidemic Sound CEO Oscar Höglund says classical music “is certainly timeless, but our research shows this genre is particularly relevant right now”.
He added: “Perhaps it’s that sense of comfort and escapism that people are looking for, but we do know that the genre has this unique ability to move people on an emotional level – and storytellers are catching on to that. I expect there will be an even larger movement towards storytellers using classical music in their content, which also creates an opportunity for classical music artists to continue to modernize the genre and appeal to new audiences.”
News of the increasing popularity of classical music amongst YouTube creators follows Universal Music Group-owned Deutsche Grammophon’s launch of its own high-res classical music streaming service called STAGE+ less than a month ago.
The label describes it as the “latest milestone in classical music’s digital development”.
“There’s an enormous appetite for great classical music content online,” Frank Briegmann, Chairman & CEO Universal Music Central Europe & Deutsche Grammophon, said at the time.
The genre’s potential also attracted interest from tech giant Apple, which bought Netherlands-headquartered classical music streaming service Primephonic last year.
Elsewhere, according to Epidemic’s inaugural Sound of the Internet Report, published Wednesday (December 14), the company says that its own music was used in more than 14 million videos and heard 1.5 billion times per day on YouTube in 2022.
Epidemic also says that its 100 most popular tracks of 2022 amassed more than 20 billion video views this year in over 2.5 million creator-made videos. On TikTok, Epidemic Sound says its tracks were heard 11.5 billion times per month.
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