The New Apple Music Classical App

Yes it could be that - though my library choices show up in the older categories of “albums”, “playlists” and “tracks”, but not the new categories of “artists”, “works” etc. I wonder if that will come in a later version.

I’m more of a Bach man myself - and I’m currently planning a similar pilgrimage to the Thomaskirche in Leipzig.

4 Likes

My Macs are Intel, but my wife has an M1 iMac. The App doesn’t appear in the App Store on any machine, so I guess I should say no. (But have no idea how to put iPhone apps on her iMac.)

I was wondering if they would do anything with the radio side of things. I’m looking in the radio tab of Apple Music and nothing new. I thought when Apple Music 1 launched that they would add more stations over time, but it looks like that never happened.

I think they should add a classical station to promote their new app.

1 Like

There’s a show on saturdays that I noticed appeared at the time where the show from Elton John used to be. It’s called classical connections or something like that.

Apple does stream Public Radio’s KUSC from USC in Los Angeles; it’s almost entirely Classical music (using the broadest definition of Classical to encompass music from Gregorian chant to Rachmaninoff and later).

https://music.apple.com/us/station/classical-kusc/ra.1461191621

2 Likes

I think Alexis Ffrench’s show has been on there a while.

On Apple Music in the US only, presumably (although I can go directly to the KUSC website and stream from there). In the UK we have three national classical stations: BBC Radio 3 (also has some Jazz and experimental music), Classic FM (the ‘favourites’), and Scala Radio (a contemporary take on ‘classical’ music radio, mixed with some older, better known tracks). None of these seem to be available on Apple Music.

I’m really surprised they haven’t. It’s not like their existing stations don’t duplicate - at least in part - formats available elsewhere. It would be a good showcase for new releases and exclusives.Apple have been working on this for some time - I’d have thought they could have pulled something together.

I found this Apple Support page about Apple Classical useful.

2 Likes

I want the same app, but for heavy metal.
Search by studio, producer, solist, composer etc.
One can dream

4 Likes

I love it. I am a professional violist and will play Mahler 1 with the South Carolina Phil toward the end of April. I could not count how many recordings there are of the symphony AND I was able to find one specifically by Riccardo Muti. Searching for one by Chicago Symphony next.

6 Likes

They also stream WQXR, the classical station in NYC

But when they first launched Apple Music, they created a brand new radio station with celebrity DJs like Elton John, etc. Why not do they same for classical music now that they decided to create an app just for that?

2 Likes

I love Mahler, one the best concerts I ever attended was Bernstein conducting Mahler’s 2nd Symphony. Lucky for me, DG recorded the concert!

4 Likes

Indeed! Here is a link to the editors choice, and a lossless version.

2 Likes

Speaking of lossless audio, I’ve been reading that Airpods, even the Airpods Max which cost me a pretty penny, don’t support lossless. Will it still be better to listen in lossless audio using the Airpods Max headphones?

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212183

That is an interesting question because many people say it can’t make a difference, but many people experience a difference (me included).
Would love to have some super audio engineer weigh in on that together with some scientist specialized in brain/ear/neuronal audio processing, haha.

1 Like

What is discovery like in the new app?

I know very little about classical music, save for some music/artists I know I like. My experience of the pre-existing music apps is they tend to have poor classical recommendations, and often not much better than “100 Great Relaxing Classical Hits”.

I’d like to be led on a journey from where I am deeper into classical music. If not this app, is there anything else?

You could try this book.

6 Likes

What we experience (what we hear in this case) is largely constructed by the brain and we have no way of knowing each others’ experience: I can’t get into your head and take a listen. The physical stimulus (the sound waves) is only a part of the input: what we expect to hear is also a large part of the difference as is powerful “filtering” in which we pay attention to some things and ignore others and our expectations and filters are “trained” - whether formally or not - by our previous experiences.

If a set of headphones can’t process lossless audio, they are either receiving the lower quality file or reconstructing a lower quality file by throwing away lots of bits. It’s conceivable that you might hear a difference between the lower quality file and the headphones’ reconstructed version but it’s unlikely.Even if the sounds played into your ears are objectively identical, your brain’s reconstruction of them into what you hear might be different because you have different expectations and are applying different selective filters because you know the source material is different.

The only way to know “for sure” is to do a large number of “double blind” tests where you can’t know or get clues about which files are which quality. These invariably suggest that even experts can’t reliably tell the difference once quality is above a “floor standard” - there’s a lot of argument about what that “floor standard” should be, of course. Some music will be more affected by the compromises of lossy compression than others and the more compression, the more this will be true, but unless you are using well calibrated and set up equipment in an acoustically perfect environment and your hearing is excellent, other things might affect what you hear much more than whether it is lossless or not: above all, how the music has been performed, captured and mixed. Ancient recordings of Caruso singing or Rachmaninov playing can give me goosebumps despite the scratches and noise.

5 Likes

They have this 9 part series on classical music that will help you get started.

9 Likes

That is a relief!! :joy:

1 Like