Passionato – iTunes for classical lovers

Former Baltimore Symphony Orchestra president and music industry veteran James Glicker has recently launched his newest project: Passionato.  The online retailer will be first launched in the UK, with a potential rollout into US markets at a later date.  Why the favoritism for old world residents?

James Glicker - Founder and CEO of Passionato

“First, the UK and Europe have an incredibly vibrant classical music scene in terms of concert attendance, record labels and journalism – though of course the US is the biggest single country in terms of actual classical music sales,” he said.

“Second, the UK has several innovative entities that sponsor creative projects, including the Creative Capital Fund, which invested in Passionato. So another reason for setting up Passionato in the UK is to take advantage of the financial support that was being offered to us.”

Passionato features the world’s largest collection of high quality classical downloads, with more than 18,000 recordings available on the launch date.  But what makes passionate different from say…hmmm…iTunes?  Glicker and co. tackled this problem by first investigating what was prohibiting listeners from heading to the world leader in digital music downloads first.

Quality.  Passionato offers single track, work, or full album downloads at a high-quality 320kps MP3 or (for the slightly more technical) lossless FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) files.  Glicker describes classical music aficionados as “a fastidious lot” which have been slow to adapt the digital revolution, often complaining of the poor audio quality of compressed files.

“Online music stores have typically offered MP3s at 128kbps, i.e. very compressed files, which is fine for pop music but it’s not exactly high-fidelity,” he said.

“There are a handful of online stores currently offering small catalogues of classical music at 320kbps. This is high quality audio and our research tells us people can’t readily distinguish between 320kbps MP3s and CD quality wavs. We are offering 320kpbs and also lossless FLAC.”

Glicker isn’t about to bury his head in the sand.  He realizes that the classical music arena is a difficult one, especially in a format connoisseurs have traditionally shied away from.

“This is a major motivation for us,” he said.

“It’s ironic that while classical music concert attendance is on the rise, labels are reducing their recordings and physical retailers are shutting down like there is no tomorrow.

“So the future of classical music distribution is online. The only thing that has stopped this inevitable shift from happening to date has been audio quality, plus the DRM issue.”

Speaking to the DRM (Digital Rights Management), Passionato tracks are free of DRM, therefore allowing purchasers to transfer the songs to another computer or portable music player (iPod).  A wise move as while the ‘industry’ tends to love DRM, consumers have often felt cheated as their ‘purchase’ has certain limitations after they’ve plunked down the cash.

Passionato’s online store features 60 second samples of all works, allowing users to give a listen before deciding to complete a transaction.  A free music player and organizer are also available, although I’m going to bet the farm that 90% of users will stand by the industry standard: iTunes.

As a special ‘Welcome to Passionato, how can I help you?’ launch promotion, anyone registering at passionato.com can download 10 free pre-selected tracks including a 30 minute work.

My $.02 – while Passionato currently features major label artists, what about hand selecting independent classical artists on a weekly basis and featuring them as an either free or minimal cost download?  It might be a great launching platform for a number of artists in a highly competitive industry, and provide Passionato a wealth of free press and all-important traffic.