My wife composes choral music and "new music". (what many here would consider classical) and has been using Bandcamp since 2009 with pretty good success.
But even that gets tricky, as she is not the performer for any of the recordings.
It's a strange world though, when so many people focus on centuries-old music by dead German men, that's going to be harder to market. My first glance at Apple Classical a few weeks ago suggests that it's trying to cater to that crowd.
Bandcamp is better for living composers (and preforming musicians) than a lot of other traditional options. For example, if you have a successful performance is a piece, Parma Records will reach out to you and offer to do a "professional" recording. They'll ask for $20,000 and you'll get a box of CDs (not sure if they do that last part anymore but I would not be surprised). A surprising amount of musicians go this route, because they don't know any better.
I think I see what you mean in relation to what audiences Apple is presumably trying to cater to, though I have no market knowledge as to how “classical“ music audiences truly segment. Apple Classical becomes similar to Apple Music a way to (re-) discover both old catalog and new releases. Listening to Toscanini this morning, the performance and music sounds as fresh in 2022 as it always did.
I know an artist who has a bandcamp profile, but doesn't make a lot of money over it. It's mostly a business card for getting booked. But that might apply to Spotify for not very well known artists, too.
But even that gets tricky, as she is not the performer for any of the recordings.
It's a strange world though, when so many people focus on centuries-old music by dead German men, that's going to be harder to market. My first glance at Apple Classical a few weeks ago suggests that it's trying to cater to that crowd.
Bandcamp is better for living composers (and preforming musicians) than a lot of other traditional options. For example, if you have a successful performance is a piece, Parma Records will reach out to you and offer to do a "professional" recording. They'll ask for $20,000 and you'll get a box of CDs (not sure if they do that last part anymore but I would not be surprised). A surprising amount of musicians go this route, because they don't know any better.
Anyway, point is, Bandcamp is awesome.