Korean musician launches classical music streaming app

By Park Jin-hai

Micky Jung, CEO of the start-up Artists’ Card, recently launched the classical music streaming application, “Classic Manager.”

After winning a government subsidy and establishing the education program, Youth Start-up Academy, his company, housed in the Pangyo IT Cluster, made an open-source, membership-free application, where anyone can view compiled data of 23,000 international classical and jazz musicians and live-stream 5,300 classical music albums and 91,000 repertories no longer protected by copyright.

The Saint Petersburg Conservatory-educated aspiring composer, who released a number of classical music albums, says his urge to make a difference in the closed world of classical music inspired him to create the application he calls a “channel.”

Classical music streaming application, “Classic Manager,” launched by Jung 

“The Classical industry is a conservative and closed culture, which made the music most difficult to access. Beethoven’s music should have been made easier to access than, for instance, K-pop boy band EXO’s, but in reality, it is not,” said the 34-year-old entrepreneur. “People who want to learn to play a Beethoven piece buy the score and a CD, but still they don’t know how to begin to learn the piece. The culture _ as if it is made difficult only to allow the few with refined tastes in music who can relish these pieces _ is mostly unchanged since its beginning and this is making the whole industry doomed.”

He says K-pop’s popularity, now stronger than J-pop, stems from its accessibility and the same should be done for classical music, which has timeless power to move people.