Apple Continuing Work on New Apple Music App for Classical Music

[gank41]

I’ve been using an app called Concertino for a while that shows a lot of the info Classical Music fans look for. Works great, and integrates into Apple Music.

‎Concertino

‎Finally, classical music and Apple Music working together! Transform Apple Music into a magical classical music jukebox - browse composers, genres and periods, search for recordings, create playlists of multi-movement works, start no-nonsense radio stations and much, much more, for free! -...

apps.apple.com

A better explanation from Concertino's site:

"...But, like most platforms, Apple Music was designed for popular music, based on singers, albums and, specially, tracks. Classical music demands a very different approach: it is based on composers, works, performers (a plenty of them) and movements. Concertino brings the complex structure of classical music to Apple Music. It combines composers and works info from the Open Opus library with automated analysis of the Apple Music metadata..."

The best thing about this app is that it's free and doesn't track you. I wish there was an app like this but for Jazz.

 

[svish]

Might be launched in early 2022

 

[macphoto861]

This is perfect. You can almost tell what kind of music APPLE likes by using the Music app.

Very well put – it's very much like, "we know you only like classical, but we really think Doja Cat, Kanye West, and The Weeknd are a lot better than that garbage you listen to, so we're going to keep shoving it in your face until you relent."

 

[Orange Bat]

This is great! I just switched from Amazon music to Apple and am seriously disappointed in Apple‘s offerings. It’s Really, really hard to find exactly the classical work I want to listen to with Apple. Amazon wasn’t great, but it was much better at showing me options. Searching in Apple is a nightmare. I think I’ll stick around with Apple for now, though, based purely on this news.

 

[justafew]

They need to blow up the Mac 'Music' app and start over - it's embarrassing. I switched to Spotify in January almost solely due to the garbage macOS Music app. The Spotify app isn't perfect, but it runs circles around Music.

I just don't understand how Apple dropped the ball so hard on this app. Just swarm a decent-sized team on it for a year and create a killer app. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The don't even need a "decent-sized team", they just need some decent developers that understand how people listen to Music and create a killer app where the features that exist actually work properly and fix the mess that's a UI.

 

[buckwheet]

This would be a welcome addition. I find it pretty frustrating how bad Music is for classical stuff—terrible info, very difficult to find specific performances, etc. Also, please, please, please just give us a complete history of our listening!!! Too often I'll listen to something new, forget the name, and essentially lose it forever. Sure, I guess I'm supposed to "like" it, or something, but that really shouldn't be necessary.
This goes for the Music app too, btw, not just the "classical" version... I want to go back and find things I listened to weeks or months ago. It's not a complicated feature.

 

[mannyvel]

Classical music is different because more often than not the specific performers or performance is more important than the piece itself. Jazz can be the same way, and is any sort of live music collection. It's actually more akin to a video library, where you need to search by all kinds of random criteria (location, participants, date, time, venue).

This becomes a metadata/UI problem, because popular music is generally organized by song/artist. And it's sort of a truism in UI that when you design for one thing you tend to not handle the "other" cases so well. The "other" cases, in this case, are well, a lot.

As an example, I have like 25 copies of Beethoven's 9th, organized by playlists - because it's almost impossible to find a specific performance via music/iTunes since some of them are the same conductor, same orchestra, different year. The track names are mostly the same as well.

That's actually quite a hard problem to solve, especially given that the metadata may be weird.

 

[tubular]

As an example, I have like 25 copies of Beethoven's 9th, organized by playlists

Well, now I don't feel bad for having four. (Although there's a fifth I haven't ripped yet -- the guy in my avatar at Brandenburg Gate after the fall of the Berlin Wall.)

 

[bitfactory]

Can you be more specific. I like the Spotify app ok but the music app is also fine. Not in love with either.

Sure - start of the macOS Music app and watch it spin for a good while like it's loading up little web pages. Super slow, super buggy (on Intel and M1). The iOS app is much better than the macOS app - but it just doesn't feel native at all.

 

[TheRealTVGuy]

I’ve noticed these volume issues too. Is it because an algorithm accounts for the loudest part of a track?

Depends. During part of my career I produced a weekly classical music program for the radio station where I was working. Even with the station’s active final processing, additional work was needed because the source material included sections that were incredibly low.

We didn’t have a board-op available to manually ride the levels when the show aired, so I spent quite a bit of time raising sections of each piece so they would play back properly.

Back then we were primarily using Sound Forge and Vegas Audio. The algorithm for the Normalize function basically found the loudest section of the audio and would raise it to 0 or -3dB. Today, Adobe Audition gives you additional options, including the ability to find and raise the average volume to whatever level you would like. There’s still an art to it though if you really want your audio to sound its best.

I have to imagine that Apple’s algorithm works in a similar fashion, however I don’t have any additional knowledge on their specific software.

That’s why it’s crucial to find the best source material possible. However, if RCA (or whoever) didn’t originally record the performance at the correct levels, there’s only so much the algorithms can do.

 

[TonyC28]

Depends. During part of my career I produced a weekly classical music program for the radio station where I was working. Even with the station’s active final processing, additional work was needed because the source material included sections that were incredibly low.

We didn’t have a board-op available to manually ride the levels when the show aired, so I spent quite a bit of time raising sections of each piece so they would play back properly.

Back then we were primarily using Sound Forge and Vegas Audio. The algorithm for the Normalize function basically found the loudest section of the audio and would raise it to 0 or -3dB. Today, Adobe Audition gives you additional options, including the ability to find and raise the average volume to whatever level you would like. There’s still an art to it though if you really want your audio to sound its best.

I have to imagine that Apple’s algorithm works in a similar fashion, however I don’t have any additional knowledge on their specific software.

That’s why it’s crucial to find the best source material possible. However, if RCA (or whoever) didn’t originally record the performance at the correct levels, there’s only so much the algorithms can do.

Thanks for that info!

 

[gank41]

Depends. During part of my career I produced a weekly classical music program for the radio station where I was working. Even with the station’s active final processing, additional work was needed because the source material included sections that were incredibly low.

We didn’t have a board-op available to manually ride the levels when the show aired, so I spent quite a bit of time raising sections of each piece so they would play back properly.

Back then we were primarily using Sound Forge and Vegas Audio. The algorithm for the Normalize function basically found the loudest section of the audio and would raise it to 0 or -3dB. Today, Adobe Audition gives you additional options, including the ability to find and raise the average volume to whatever level you would like. There’s still an art to it though if you really want your audio to sound its best.

I have to imagine that Apple’s algorithm works in a similar fashion, however I don’t have any additional knowledge on their specific software.

That’s why it’s crucial to find the best source material possible. However, if RCA (or whoever) didn’t originally record the performance at the correct levels, there’s only so much the algorithms can do.

I used to use SoundForge, too, specifically for the normalizing functionality. I kinda miss using that app on my Mac

 

[Artemis70]

Interesting, the one thing not listed in the job posting - "Deep knowledge of Classical Music." So many UI's for every music service I've ever used seem to be desgined by people who have no idea about, for instance, the difference between a symphony and a concerto...

I'm not sure why every developer on the team should have a deep knowledge of classical music. The design team should employ these people. The developers on the team should be really good at translating the design into code, but don't need to be experts on the creation of the design.
I have some bad experience with developers that consider themselves as having deep knowledge of what the customers want. It is my experience that this leads to bad changes to the design and bad software as a result of this.

 

[Artemis70]

Still using Spotify. Would be curious to try Apple if it offers an “Apple Connect” stream directly to the hifi like Spotify can. I listen quite a bit to classical music and a better GUI for the genre and apple lossless might push me over.

Apple's equivalent to Spotify Connect is AirPlay. I'm not sure if Spotify Connect is free to hardware vendors. AirPlay certainly is not and you need to select your hardware to support it. But it does exist.

 

[BigSmurf]

Airplay is NOT equivalent to Spotify connect.
Connect uses the phone as a remote, the music streams directly to the amplifier.
In Airplay the music always streams through the phone.
A connect style solution, Tidal also has one for example, makes it easier to stream lossless and higher music streams as a streaming amp can typically be hardwired.

 

[BigSmurf]

Apple's equivalent to Spotify Connect is AirPlay. I'm not sure if Spotify Connect is free to hardware vendors. AirPlay certainly is not and you need to select your hardware to support it. But it does exist.

Airplay is NOT equivalent to Spotify connect.
Connect uses the phone as a remote, the music streams directly to the amplifier.
In Airplay the music always streams through the phone.
A connect style solution, Tidal also has one for example, makes it easier to stream lossless and higher music streams as a streaming amp can typically be hardwired.

 

[zoomp]

Apple should just make an API available to other developers to work on. Very simple.

Like FCPX, it’s really limited but the healthy community of developers fill the particular needs of its user base.

 

[skitidetdu]

I hope the search function gets improved a lot and is smart enough to understand what I want to find if I spell Schoenberg or Schönberg. Schostakovich or Sjostakovitj...

 

[MBAir2010]

I was complaining to someone in 2019 who looked like they worked for in NYC
years ago how Mozart 36th was not defined on an Ipud as a Bose or Marshall
seems to me they did work for .

your welcome everyone!

 

[tubular]

I hope the search function gets improved a lot and is smart enough to understand what I want to find if I spell Schoenberg or Schönberg. Schostakovich or Sjostakovitj...

Pyotr Ilich Tchaikovsky? Sorry, we only have Pyotr *Ilyich* Tchaikovsky.