A Classical Music Resurgence

An allegory of classical music, circa 1684, by Antoine Coypel. Public Domain

When Frank Dominguez took his lunch break to check his classical radio station’s monthly Nielsen ratings report for January 2022, he couldn’t believe his eyes. Dominguez, station manager for WDAV in Charlotte, North Carolina, thought there had to be a glitch in the reporting. The small college radio station dedicated to classical music was listed as the No. 1 radio station in Charlotte. To get this rank, WDAV had to beat out several popular stations playing today’s biggest hits.

So how did this happen?

Music historian Ted Gioia has a theory.

A good portion of WDAV’s listeners are Generation X females ranging from 35 to 44 years old. A separate and sizable 38 percent of the station’s audience are classified as “young children.” The sharp rise in listeners began over the 2021 holiday season and never dropped after the festivities concluded.

“It’s not hard to put the pieces together. Over the holiday school break, mothers were playing classical music for their children, and they developed a taste for it themselves. Even when the children went back to school, the radio dial didn’t move.”

The average WDAV rotation includes traditional classical compositions such as Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 and Haydn’s Piano Sonata No. 47. With pieces such as these, Dominguez and his humble classical music station made U.S. radio history.

The Charlotte Observer wrote, “WDAV made radio history by topping the Charlotte market and becoming the first ever classical music radio station to be No. 1 in any market in the country.”

Studies over the past two years show that Dominguez’s surprise success with his classical music radio station indicates a larger cultural shift.

The Genre’s Rising Popularity

"An Evening at the Royal Theatre," between 1887 and 1888, by Paul Gustav Fischer. Oil on canvas. MSRau1912/CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED

Since 2022, interest in the classical music genre among music consumers has steadily increased. In years prior, interest stayed at about 1 percent of the population, according to Nielsen Music Reports. However, in 2022, the traditional genre experienced a significant jump.

A survey conducted by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry reports that classical music rose to the sixth spot on a “Most Popular Music Genres” chart; in 2021, classical music didn’t even make it to the top 10.

The study tracked music consumers’ listening habits on a global scale. Similarly, surveys conducted in 2022 by market research and data analytics company YouGov found that 25 percent of Americans and 23 percent of UK residents listed classical music as one of their favorite genres.

A 2023 study by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO) shows that interest continues to rise. Of the 2,000 participants surveyed, 84 percent said they would like to experience an orchestral concert in person. This number is a five-year high for the organization; 79 percent showed interest in attending a concert in 2018.

Listeners new to the classical music genre in the RPO study outnumbered those familiar with it—54 percent to 37 percent—suggesting that the audience for the genre is broadening rather than plateauing.

The Youth’s Piqued Interest

"The Music Lesson," 1877, by Frederic Leighton. Oil on canvas. Guildhall Art Gallery & London's Roman Amphitheatre, London. Public Domain

While older audiences have generally been associated with the classical music genre, research suggests that younger generations are more likely to listen to classical music than their parents. An RPO study from December 2022 found that 65 percent of 2,000 survey participants who listened to classical music “on a regular basis” were younger than 35.

The way younger generations consume music could account for the increase in listeners. The majority of young people sampled listen to classical music via streaming services. Because of this, music becomes a part of their everyday activities. A quarter of younger survey participants said they stream classical music while cooking dinner. This was among listeners’ favored activities to pair with classical music; some others were exercising, falling asleep, reading, and hosting dinner parties.

When Music Business Worldwide covered a study conducted by Swedish soundtrack provider Epidemic Sound, results revealed that classical music had soared by 90 percent globally on YouTube. This made classical music the “fastest-growing genre used by content creators in 2022.”

The big jump was due to content providers using classical music for the videos they created for their viewers. According to Epidemic Sound, this surge in classical music use in videos sparked a 64 percent increase year-over-year in classical music downloads via their own “Epidemics” streaming catalog. The classical music titles the company owns were played “more than 200 million times” on various streaming platforms.

"In the Front Row at the Opera," circa 1880, by William Holyoake. Oil on canvas. Glasgow Museums Resource Centre. Public Domain

As younger generations embrace traditional music, interest in classical music performances has grown as well. The Violin Channel made note of their yearly increase in the attendance of orchestral concerts. According to RPO’s 2023 study, attendance for orchestral concerts featuring film music climbed to 30 percent. The organization also experienced a “sharp rise” in kid-friendly concert attendance, jumping to 26 percent from 19 percent.

While interest in live performances focused on modern content (such as classically based film soundtracks) grew, attendance of traditional classical music concerts “held firm for the third consecutive year” at 24 percent, according to RPO. Longtime classical music fans were more likely to prefer traditional classical concerts at 52 percent, as opposed to younger fans. However, listeners who were learning how to play an instrument took a special interest in traditional classical music, with 27 percent reporting to the RPO study they would choose a concert featuring a “traditional repertoire.”

Vinyl Makes a Comeback

A young woman listens to records, circa 1920–25. Library of Congress. Public Domain

As more traditional styles of music experience a resurgence, listeners are opting for more traditional ways of consuming music as well.

In March 2024, news broke that the UK government’s Office for National Statistics had added vinyl records to its basket of trackable goods for purposes of calculating the rate of inflation. Vinyl sales rose for 16 years in a row. In 2023, vinyl record sales posted particularly strong numbers, with an “11.7 [percent] year-over-year rise to 5.9 million units.”

The Office for National Statistics said in a statement that the resurgence in popularity prompted the governmental office to begin tracking its economic activity again.

Likewise, vinyl sales in the United States have experienced an uptick in recent years. While the pandemic caused sales to skyrocket by 108 percent, because the population spent an inordinate amount of time at home, sales have continued to trend positively. Luminate, a music and entertainment data organization, reported that “2022 marked the 17th consecutive year that sales of vinyl records rose.” During the first half of 2023, U.S. sales of vinyl were up by 21.7 percent compared with the same period in the previous year.

With traditional music modalities on the rise, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra’s managing director, James Williams, said he sees a bright future ahead for genres such as classical music. Williams said he believes that the mission of an orchestra should be to “nurture a journey of discovery.”

When the RPO’s study yielded such positive results for the classical genre, Williams encouragingly said: “The experience of engaging with orchestral music reaches far beyond the concert hall and into every part of people’s lives—from cooking to commuting, the workplace and the gym ... more people are spending time listening, reading about, watching, and performing music this year than ever before. ... The more people that experience orchestral music—whether at home, at work, or on the move—the more we will grow the demand from new audiences to experience outstanding live performances.”

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