The market is actually fairly constant, because older people - usually middle class - gravitate away from pop and become more interested in classical music in middle age.
The Proms aren't going to go away, nor are concert series in most of the UK's bigger cities. Nor is Classic FM, which is pretty much just Spotify with DJ chat and someone else's playlist, and is a good gateway pusher to classical recordings.
And middle class families will keep giving their kids piano and cello lessons, because that's what they do.
What's happened more - according to people I know - is that the intake at the Royal College and the Royal Academy is almost exclusively posh kids now, because rich parents are the only ones who can afford to hothouse and support their darlings through the exams. It was much more diverse a couple of decades ago, because music education - all education, in fact - was much more freely available.
That will do more to kill classical music than Spotify's metadata will, because it will become something that isn't made available to most of the population.
The Proms aren't going to go away, nor are concert series in most of the UK's bigger cities. Nor is Classic FM, which is pretty much just Spotify with DJ chat and someone else's playlist, and is a good gateway pusher to classical recordings.
And middle class families will keep giving their kids piano and cello lessons, because that's what they do.
What's happened more - according to people I know - is that the intake at the Royal College and the Royal Academy is almost exclusively posh kids now, because rich parents are the only ones who can afford to hothouse and support their darlings through the exams. It was much more diverse a couple of decades ago, because music education - all education, in fact - was much more freely available.
That will do more to kill classical music than Spotify's metadata will, because it will become something that isn't made available to most of the population.