The New Apple Music Classical App

When I woke up this morning the new Apple Music Classical app was ready to go. First impressions are they did a good job of organizing and presenting the music

  • Search is geared for classical music. When you search for Bernstein, it recognizes he was both a conductor and composer and gives two results.
  • Searching for a specific piece is done very well. I searched for Trout and it gave two entries, one for the famous Quintet by Schubert, another for the song it was based on.
  • When you tap on a work, it has a nice presentation with a description of the piece, an editor’s choice recording and then a list of other popular recordings.
  • You can sort by different criteria. One of my favorite is Opus Number. It is even smart enough to sort by BWV for Bach, SZ for Bartok, etc
  • When I tapped on Bernstein the composer, it has a list of all his works. I discovered a couple of pieces I never heard before, such as the Olympic Hymn.
  • You can also sort by release date, I did this with La Traviata and found a recording by Caruso. So it’s not just the release date of this particular reissue Album (1990), but 1914, the date the original Caruso disc came out.

Finally someone has gone through the trouble of adding the metadata and organizing classical music to help listeners discover and go in depth on a favorite piece or composer. Bravo Apple!

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I downloaded it on my iPad. That was a shock. I just assumed….

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I’m loving the app. It has given me some really good suggestions.

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This is awesome; I’m looking forward to exploring the app and some great music!

I’m enjoying:

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I’ve been positively impressed. The new app has made discovery much much easier.

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I’m also very impressed. I only wish they came out with a Mac App as well. It’s somewhat of a nuisance to need to use my iPhone and then AirPlay it to my Mac. :frowning_face:

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Am I correct that there’s no Mac version?

Yes, but it’s a shared library apparently- so playlists and added to library should sync.

That’s correct; it’s currently iOS only.

It’s too bad there isn’t a programming framework that allows Apple developers to create for iOS and Mac OS at the same time … oh, wait

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Ha - exactly. That’s why I was surprised it’s iOS only.

I think it’s great that Apple is showing interest in apps like this and in lossless audio, but when are they going to enable automatic format switching (e.g., from 44.1 to 48) on the Mac? Or non-USB output to an external DAC? Seems like much of the target audience for an app like Apple Classical would want those things.

I still hope/wish they buy Roon or enable real Apple Music integration with Roon, but alas…

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I just listened to a podcast interviewing the conductor of this album last night!

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Very cool!

20 characters…

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Wow, thanks to this app I now know that the worlds of Apple and Stravinsky nerdery do intersect…

The app is great, and I’ve already discovered some new pieces and recordings.

However, I had expected there to be more of a link with my existing library. For example, if I go into a particular work, it doesn’t show the albums of that work in my library that I have already saved. If I “favourite” a particular recording it doesn’t add it to my library and my library albums don’t show as favourite recordings. A minor quibble, but that isn’t the behaviour I expected.

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I decided to listen to the piece of classical music that turned me into a classical music connoisseur:

This new app is so much better than what I was even imagining. I am curious why Apple made the design decision to have two music apps, rather than “merge” what was Primephonic into Apple Music. It seems like Apple Music could have been able to switch views between classical and non-classical music to give us what we now have in Apple Classical. But… this is not a critique or criticism, just an idle curiosity. I’m am thrilled to have Apple Classical.

Years of futzing around with classical music metadata in my iTunes library is now behind me. And I’m talking about a serious amount of futzing. I have an entire Apple Note folder devoted to documenting my system, and an OmniOutliner outline. More time to just enjoy this art. I may miss the futzing, though.

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It’s interesting. From Apple Classical, you can add “albums” to your library, but not individual works or movements. Any of the saved albums are saved in the “recordings” section.

Not sure how it links to the library we have already in Apple Music, though. I see my classical albums and playlists. But there is nothing in the artists view or the works view. Possibly this is an issue with syncing information across from my existing library. Or I haven’t figured out how to use it yet.

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I was surprised by that too, but… when I search for an album that I have in Apple Music, it’s often showing up as saved in the classical app as well, though it didn’t appear at first in my library.

I wonder if there are some database catchup issues going on here?

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Can the iPhone app run on the M1 Macs?

When I visited LA, the one celebrity house I visited was Stravinsky’s house. Unfortunately it is mostly blocked by these enormous hedges.

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I am no connoisseur, but I love to listen to high-quality music that lifts and nobles one’s soul. I can’t say that about much of music that is so popular. And no, I am not some old fuddy-duddy. :slightly_smiling_face:

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