As with all artistic categories, it is very much a case of 'I know it when I hear it'. You can say the same about any genre of music. 'What exactly is rock & roll' is a question that is unconsciously asked and answered every time the people at Apple Music update a 'rock & roll' playlist. And like most such things, 90% of people will agree on 90% of the things that get included in it, but the 10% will vary wildly and will ultimately be up to the individual curators who end up in charge of such things. In the end, it is fundamentally unimportant that the curation is 100% accurate according to everyone who has a boring opinion about the subject (eg me).
Certainly not just music by orchestras; that has never been the definition of classical music ('Am I a joke to you?' - H.E. Steinway). Musicals are played by orchestras, but most people (we get back to the 10% issue) would agree musicals aren't classical music. (Let's not worry about the question, 'what exactly is a musical, what exactly is an opera?') The "pop music covers" question answers itself: it's pop music. (but "what exactly is pop music"?) (Unless, of course, it's an *arrangement* of a pop song in a 'classical style' [whatever that means] - I'd say 90% of people familiar with it would have no complaint about Shostakovich's arrangement of 'Tea for Two' / 'Taiti Trot' being included in a 'classical music' list.)
The more contentious gray zone is film scores and ... ugh ... video game music. I shudder, but then I remember that a lot of 'classical music' is dreck (I'm looking at you, Andre R), and the ratio of dreck to gems is *only* about five hundred times worse in the video game world.
If they do not plan on including new music the person behind this should be fired and never be permitted to work anywhere near a creative field again.
See above.
Jazz, no. Jazz needs its own app - as much as classical nerds whinge about metadata, jazzheads have it much worse. Oh, the artist is 'Thelonious Monk Quartet'? Which one would that be? This record is by 'Miles Davis', you say? So, is Miles playing the bass, and the drums, and the piano? 'Oh my god, they're playing 'Autumn Leaves', my favourite song written by John Coltrane I assume!'
"World music" and folk music: This is an interesting one, because it's definitely in the '10%' category (and can we acknowledge how f***ed it is that we've collectively decided to divide the musical universe into the categories 'classical', 'jazz', 'rock', 'pop', 'R&B', 'rap', 'country' (with all of the constellations of sub-genres that fall into those categories!) and then 'everything from every culture that has existed on the planet except europe and north america (but also including european folk traditions and indigenous Americans)'), but we're now getting close to the uncomfortable subject of why it is extraordinarily problematic to elevate 'classical music' (in the European tradition) as something special and unique. And it is ridiculous that people still do this given how rich, say, *every single musical tradition on the planet* is. But elitists gonna elitist (cf: 80% of the posts in this thread), so let's move on from this uncomfortable topic and pretend it isn't an issue, because Apple has made the decision to make classical music its own special app.
(Of course, if Apple *does* include a huge selection of world music in this app, that would be amazing and i take it all back.)
No. The Beatles wrote music in an entirely different vernacular to any kind of contemporary classical music of the 1960s. Their musical language was based on the blues. It doesn't matter that they cribbed from Stockhausen once. (In case it isn't clear from my diatribe above, this should in no way be taken as a dismissal of the Beatles as somehow being inferior to classical music.)
I don't expect classical music to be excised from the main Music app. I'm hoping the new app presents the same music in a better way.
This problem pre-dates streaming and goes back to the digital download era. On the other hand, the Internet exists and contains a lot more information than a CD insert.
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