Why can’t Apple add those metadata fields to properly represent so-called classical music titles in the existing Apple Music app? Wouldn’t that solve the problem for the most part?
We’ve already hashed this out on a separate thread/topic, maybe three weeks ago to my recollection.
That's only one part of the problem: being able to find an exact match of what you're searching for. It's a bit tricky since many of the performers have names with accented letters, works are in various European languages, etc. but OK, I agree with you. But that doesn't work currently. You can find more popular composers, works and conductors but often the metadata is missing and the only way to find it is to somehow know the name of the CD that contains what you're looking for and that's because tracks are entered in the database with missing metadata, there are often tracks that are named like "IV", e.g. the fourth movement of a symphony without that track actually having a composer/work assigned to it...
But more importantly, services like IDAGIO and Primephonic are about browsing the catalog. Many classical fans would like to see all the performances of a particular work, so they would start with the composer, then find the work within the list, then narrow it down by e.g. a conductor or soloists (any they often record one and same work with different orchestras, even on different occasions). This is why apps like Primephonic existed. Because Apple Music catalog is arguably one of the best and I've found more classical recordings in it than IDAGIO. But you must know what you're searching for and be persistent and lucky.
Not sure if many of you realize one very distinctive and apparent thing about classical music: yes, there's a CD (AKA album, recording) with classical music but often it contains multiple works by various composers. In the old-fashioned way you would be interested in a particular work and would find 10 different CD-s of different performers with a mix of many other works and composers and you would then listen in a targeted way only to that particular work, e.g. a symphony. What Primephonic and IDAGIO really excelled at is to offer you the possibility to treat these not as CD-s but as separate entities, each having the full set of metadata, so you can compare different performances of the same work easily without having to think of "CD-s", or see all the latest recordings of a pianist, or all the records of a conductor with a certain orchestra.
Honestly, I'm not sure why Apple bought Primephonic. It seemed they wanted to use the search engine and the thorough metadata about each recording in their catalog. But no, they just killed it and left people without much choice. Well, there's IDAGIO but Apple promised the Primephonic experience only to abandon it, as it seems.
If I may suggest something to Apple. Right, you decided not to create a separate app or improve Apple Music. Why not just start paying a small fee to IDAGIO, so that people can use their search engine freely (as I currently do) but forward to the corresponding Apple Music recording instead. As I said, that's what I do, I use IDAGIO browse/search, then I check what the CD/album is that contains the corresponding item and try to find it back on Apple Music more easily by using correct spelling of artists, CD name, etc. But, Apple, please, don't kill IDAGIO too...
