For years, I've benefitted from the reviews of new classical releases. As best as I can tell, there have not been any reviews of classical so far in 2026 (apart from a few cross-genre type albums).
Our team really only had one classical critic on staff (James Manheim) and he unfortunately passed away at the end of last year.
His position has not yet been filled.
Ah, that's sad news. I'm sorry for your loss.
(Michael can correct me, if I'm mistaken.) I assume that Allmusic has very few classical competitors that offer as many full biographies and reviews as Allmusic did. Classical fans are a very desirable demographic for advertisers, but those fans are also very likely to already be Allmusic subscribers. I believe that they're highly dedicated to their favorite genre, so they'd be willing to pay more than regular subscribers, in order to fund editor reviews of classical releases.
Xperi's other customers may not value classical releases, because traffic for those releases is low. So Xperi can't financially justify hiring a specialized classical editor, if advertising and subscriptions aren't significant revenues. In this case, Allmusic should explore possibilities to change your business model based on its own business interests.
