Do Classical Composers Make Money off of their music today?

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As an example, Bach has approx. 6 million listeners monthly on Spotify. Who gets those royalties? Are they profit for streaming services? Donated? Given to a trust?

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14 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

IIRC most classical music is in the public domain. But the recordings of said music is owned by music companies who pay royalties to the orchestra that played the music.

Anonymous 0 Comments

A lot of classical music is public domain, so the people who make money are the performers and publishers. For example, if you were to buy Edger Allan Poe collection, his family or domain would most likely not get any money. It would be the person who complied / edited it and the company who sells the physical book. If you were to buy a classical CD of Bach pieces, the performer would make money and the company that published the CD would make money. It’s one of the reasons why you can buy those massive compilations of classical music pieces, because if publishers have recordings of multiple pieces they might put them all together since there are no strings attached with publishing rights.

Anonymous 0 Comments

In your imagination, do musicians not exist, or do they not get paid?

Anonymous 0 Comments

first of all, there is no absolute definition of “classical” music

secondly, for what is *generally* considered classical music, the vast majority of composers do not, because the vast majority are dead

there are a fleetingly small number of composers of “classical style” music nowadays, but also consider themselves “modern” composers, whatever in the fuck that means

and they make virtually no money because virtually no one wants to hear the by-in-large garbage that they write