Esteemed label to make its entire catalogue available to stream by early 2024
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Hyperion Records has announced plans to make all of its recordings available to stream by early next year. Until now, the acclaimed British label has shown a reluctance to join the streaming revolution, concentrating instead on CDs and downloads, but recently released an initial batch of 200 from its catalogue of over 2,000 recordings dating back to 1980 – among them, best-selling albums by pianists Stephen Hough and Angela Hewitt, the Takács Quartet and Westminster Abbey Choir. Further recordings will become available in regular batches over the next few months.
The move has been widely welcomed, given Hyperion’s high regard – not just for its artists but also for its recorded sound and an independent approach to repertoire that allows it to tread where other labels have feared to go – and, as managing director Simon Perry explains, was an inevitable one. ‘The world is moving very quickly towards a different way of accessing music,’ he says. ‘This seems to be the way forward, as it’s what people want. It also became clear to us that we needed to make sure that our artists had representation on streaming platforms, so we decided it was time to get involved.’
With so many titles available, picking 200 for the initial launch was quite a challenge, says Perry: ‘We wanted to show the depth of our catalogue as much as we could
