Apple Announces Apple Music Classical, Now Available on the App Store

[jhwalker]

Too expensive for an individual subscription unless you're SERIOUSLY into classical (and honestly, I don't know a single person who'd fall into that category).

Whereas MOST of the people I know are into classical 🤷‍♂️

Great that it's part of the Apple One bundle but that's a comedy show in itself that's hard to justify —

• Cloud storage: comically small amounts. I honestly don't know how Apple views this internally. It must be some kind of cognitive dissonance.

2TB is a "comically small amount"?

• Apple TV with some great shows but not many (I like around 50% of Apple's TV shows – the rest I don't care for). Once you've watched the ones you like, well, you don't open the app until something else arrives. That can be weeks or even months. On Amazon or Netflix there's enough old content to keep me interested for months.

Agree with you there - I haven't yet found an Apple TV show I like.

• Apple Music pushes contemporary pop hard, and if you're over 40 it gets very tiresome. There is honestly space for a music app that takes an "oldies" or "gold" approach like some radio stations.

What do you mean it "pushes" ... anything? I rely on a music service to stream music *I* like - I literally never even look at "recommendations" on ANY service.

• Apple Arcade – some good games but again, once you'd played those you're interested in, you're not using it until the next interesting release is rationed out. Certainly no triple A titles, though, and nothing to get involved in. Just casual gaming.

Not into gaming at all, so no value-add there.

• Apple News – actually quite good! But here in the UK it leans right wing a little in highlighted stories, perhaps because we have such a right-wing press. I'm on a free trial of this and use it often, but I wouldn't consider paying for it.

I only use it for access to the sources that are normally subscription only.

• Apple Fitness – good for you if you're into exercising. Mostly young 'uns I think.Again, once you're past 40 exercising regularly is a minority interest outside of general exercise like walking (and I KNOW people will reply below saying they're 60 and do circuit training – good for you. But you're an outlier.)

I'm 60, and I use Apple Fitness every day. I'm not an outlier among my friends who are similar ages.

 

[timmodugdale]

Does anyone know whether it will work on CarPlay? I didn't see it listed as an app to add to my CarPlay screen. That would be the most likely time I would use it — while I'm driving to work.

Update: I see that others confirmed the lack of support for CarPlay.

 

[timmodugdale]

And no CarPlay app. It will play through CarPlay, but you need to use your phone to select the works.

Thanks for confirming that. Future release, perhaps.

 

[augustrushrox]

Is it iOS only?

Also wish they would make a similar app for jazz, or, really eventually just have a much more powerful Apple Music app that combines this new Classical app.

 

[PBMB]

I think this is a very good idea, classical music really deserves its own special app. You cant just cram 300 years of history under one category in spotify..

Depending on what you count in, it could be less, or much more than 300 years. "Classical" normally means the period between 1750 and 1820, that is between the end of the Baroque and the start of the Romantic periods. But today the term often comprises the three of them (hence the, more or less, 300 years).

I wonder if they would include Renaissance and modern compositions in the "classical" category; example 1 and example 2 respectively. Do they both count as classical? They are separated in time by at least 500 years. There are several examples of this kind.

 

[Mr Magoo]

Nice finally. Been waiting to try this. And nice bonus for apple one subscribers . Was about to cancel but this might change my mind.

 

[VulchR]

I think this is a very good idea, classical music really deserves its own special app. You cant just cram 300 years of history under one category in spotify..

I like a variety of musical styles and traditions, so I am not sure splitting them up into atomised apps makes much sense. I suppose I would expect EQ settings optimised for classical music in the app, but other than that I don't really see the advantage over a comprehensive service.

 

[dhiebert]

I'm quite disappointed with this first attempt. The very first selection I attempted to play was a dismal failure. This was the work "Da Pacem Domine", composed by Arvo Pärt and played by the Hilliard Ensemble, from the Album "Arvo Pärt: Lamentate" on ECM New Series 1930.

I searched for composers using "Part". Arvo Pärt was listed first (great). Selected him. Selected "See All 94 Works". Selected sort order as "Name of Work". Hmm, no "Da Pacem Domine". Okay, so I try using the "Search" function at the bottom of the screen. I search for "Part Da Pacem Domine". Not found; the only work found is "An den Wassern zu Babel sassen wir und weinten" by Arvo Pärt, which, as you might notice, doesn't even have "Da Pacem Domine" in the title.

Okay, I browse for the album. Back to Arvo Pärt, select "See All Albums" and it brings up a list of hundreds of albums within an infinite scrolling list. I select "Title" for sort order, then scroll and scroll and scroll. No entry for "Lamente", nor "Pärt: Lamentate" ; there is one "Arvo Pärt: Lamentate", but not the one from ECM. There is no alphabetic shortcut along the right-hand edge or anything to jump to album titles beginning with a certain letter. You have to do two fast scrolls, which then pauses for loading more, then repeat that 30, 40, 50 times or more.

So back to "See All 94 Works", sorted by Title. I look for another work from the same album I am trying to find, "Lamentate", which shows it available on 7 albums. I select that work. Under Popular Recordings, I see the one from the album I am looking for listed. I select that entry. Below the listing of the tracks for Lamentate, it shows "Featured On" and shows the album (that couldn't be found under albums, as described in the previous paragraph). I select the album, which, lo and behold, shows "Da Pacem Domine" as the first track, only it's listed as a movement name under the work name "An den Wassern zu Babel sassen wir und weinten", which isn't right at all.

The app badly needs filters and alphabetic shortcuts to navigate lists of hundreds of entries. Then there are all all the metadata problems which will probably never get fixed, as there is no mechanism to report them.

 

[bcortens]

Subjective - I have 3 people using 115GB of 2TB so its way more than we need

Subjective - Just because you don't like it doesn't mean everyone doesn't like it

Subjective - You don't need to only follow their recommendations. Try finding music on your own and be surprised

Subjective - Just because you have ADD doesn't mean everyone does.

Subjective - Here in the USA it leans left wing but its not really about the news as much as it is about access to all the magazine subscriptions

Subjective - I'm over 40 and have found Fitness+ to be a great service that I only started to use because it was included in my subscription and have been finding it a great option to shake up dull treadmill workouts.

I am just going to add my own support for Apple's services.

Storage
I have 2TB as well and 2 people on it using about 500 GB.

I do think they should add another tier on top (10TB or something) but otherwise the iCloud tiers seem reasonable to me. I think they need to really make it easier to understand and market the usefulness of cloud photo storage.

TV
Don't use it - no opinion.

Music
Apple Music - the app kind of sucks but the ability to add as much music as you want to your library is excellent. If I cared about the service I might have more of an opinion but mostly I use it for the cloud library and the ability to add new music by artists I like to my library.

Arcade
Great for pocket games and even some longer form games - don't have enough time to play them really so I barely finish any of them. However the ones I have bothered with are great and it is well worth its very low price.

News
Don't use it - no opinion - prefer other news sources.

Fitness
Don't use it - no opinion - might use it in the future.

 

[AppleUser2]

This app feels way faster than Apple Music. When navigating through it's snappier - hope AM learns some lessons from it.

 

[Abazigal]

Cloud storage: comically small amounts. I honestly don't know how Apple views this internally. It must be some kind of cognitive dissonance.

It's the opposite for me - I wish dropbox would have allowed me to subscribe to a lower tier (eg: ~100gb) at a lower price, since I don't come anywhere close to maxing out the 1 tb of space they give me. With iCloud, 50gb is more than enough to sync my photos and backup my devices (have used up ~33gb so far), and $1 a month is pretty cheap compared to the $100+ a year that Dropbox charges.

 

[SalisburySam]

Now looking for the upcoming release of Apple Harmonica Hits, and the much-anticipated 2024 drop of Apple Accordion+. So many new and exciting subscriptions to drain my shrinking dollars.

 

[Mark.g4]

I used this app in the morning and I can say that I am satisfied, I like how it is structured and how easy to search and how the metadata are set.
However, there are some shortcomings, such as the lack of airplay 2 and the absence of apps for ipad and Mac which I hope will arrive soon.
Excellent integration with headphones, you can share the song with other people who have airpods, but this was already possible with the old music app.
I hope for an imminent improvement.

 

[chouseworth]

I like the way a playlist set up in the Classical app carries back over to Apple Music. This is a good enough workaround for the initial issue of support for Mac, Apple TV, etc. I like the initial Classical service offering.

 

[citysnaps]

Yea it’s pretty lazy on Apple’s part. Why not make it a universal app upon release? I use my iPad Pro with Apple Music all the time…not ONLY my phone. Granted, Classical works on iPad its just ugly as hell

Lazy? Whoa. Relax. It's a first release. Be constructive and provide feedback to Apple, assuming you really care. It's pretty easy.

 

[Docsta80]

Lazy? Whoa. Relax. It's a first release. Be constructive and provide feedback to Apple, assuming you really care. It's pretty easy.

yep lazy I said it.

 

[citysnaps]

No CarPlay integration for this new app? I don’t understand why this is missing.

I'm sticking my neck out here and just spitballing...maybe CarPlay integration isn't ready yet?

 

[CopyChief]

An interesting first release, with a few rough spots. I'm digging the categorization. It's much easier to find suggested music, especially for listening at work. That said, there are still some metadata hiccups, especially with my existing library. Apparently anything with the word "classical" in the metadata comes over, so some of my pop music and holiday music playlists are showing up in Apple Classical, even if they're clearly not. (I'm trying to figure out why Carly Simon's "Nobody Does it Better" from my Way-Back-When playlist is showing up in Apple Classical.)

 

[ahostmadsen]

No CarPlay integration for this new app? I don’t understand why this is missing.

I really only listen to music in the car, so this makes it pretty much useless to me (I guess many listen to music in the car).

 

[jclardy]

No CarPlay integration for this new app? I don’t understand why this is missing.

No CarPlay, no iPad, no Apple Watch, no Mac. Apple truly leading the charge in terms of first party development.

 

[legacyb4]

There are many, many classical music apps and services.

True, but if you subscribe to Apple Music already, it's a freebie

 

[legacyb4]

Can't believe it only supports AirPlay and no direct playback on the HomePods. What an oversight.

Just noticed this too! And no downloads (unless you add it to your Library then play it from Music); would assume this is something that comes in an update at some later point but seems like a massive oversight all that functionality has already been created in Music...

 

[BobSc]

Woke up super early to jam some Mozart 🎶. Unstoppable!

View attachment 2180042

You're "jamming" to Mozart? Do you understand the meaning of jamming? it's really not something that is done with classical music. Are you playing an instrument while you "jam"? Are you pretending to be a conductor? I'm having lots of trouble understanding your post's intentions. It's almost like cheerleading without anyone there to cheer. Classical music isn't the joke you seem to portray it as. Time to add to the ignore file. And are your posted pictures really necessary?

 

[Vous]

Opened it and the very first thing that that played after a random succession of button clicks (to test the app) was 'Haydn on Synthesizers project'. That is not classical.

It is! Haydn’s music is quintessentially classical and a pure reinstrumentation doesn’t change that. Much classical music has also been composed directly for synthesizers.

 

[RollTide1017]

Some of you have noted that the Classical Music app doesn't have a CarPlay app. But if you want to listen to music you've saved your Classical Music app library in the car, just open the Music app in CarPlay and go to your library and you'll find the albums or tracks from your Classical Music app right there (mixed in with all the music in your Apple Music app library).

So I have to plan out what I want to listen too before I leave, that's not a very good work around. Not having CarPlay support is such an odd decision. I want to use this new app in the car without having to grab my phone. I want to just use it's playlist, suggestion and curation to discover more classical music. I was so excited for this app but disappointed with the lack of CarPlay. Having to go back to the main Music app defeats its entire purpose of showing and viewing the metadata in a more classical music centric way. Huge oversight by Apple IMO.