Classical streaming service pledges fair remuneration for artists

A new streaming service for classical and jazz music has said it is putting the fair remuneration of artists at the heart of its business.

Leamington Spa-based Presto Music's new service uses a 'pay-per-second model' rather than paying by track.

The ecommerce site said that classical artists in particular are disadvantaged by the per-track approach, due to the much longer length of individual pieces.

Chris O'Reilly, Chief Executive of Presto Music, said: "Recently there has been much discussion in the media about how poorly streaming services remunerate artists, and the regularly used track-play system certainly doesn’t favour the often much longer classical music tracks.

"Musicians are the lifeblood of our industry. We are proud that we are launching this model here in the UK which will pay artists and composers fairly."

O'Reilly added that the new service features over 200,000 classical and jazz albums available in CD-quality sound, plus more than 34,000 albums in Hi-Res Audio (up to 24-bit, 192kHz).

Subscribers to the service can also download albums to listen to offline.