Thanks! I’ll definitively try this out. My harnoncourt Beethoven 1-9 album would look great using this feature!
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Apple Music Launches New Classical Music Section Curated by Deutsche Grammophon, Including Full-Length Operas
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"Lucy! In the sky! With diamonds!"
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Ditto Kathleen Battle!
Ah, Kathleen Battle.....another opera singer with an absolutely amazing and powerful voice!
Wouldn't call it powerful really. More of a bright soubrette. Zerlina was made for her.
If you can ever see or hear the von Karajan's Vienna New Year's Concert 1987, her rendition of Frühlingsstimmen is a miracle.
Tragically she pretty much self destructed her career with her demanding behaviour.
True story (apparently):
In the back of her limo being driven somewhere… calls her agent to call the limo company so they can tell the chauffeur to slow down a bit.
Oh what the heck. Here's the YouTube link. Enjoy!
So I signed up for Apple Music and tried to set it up on my MacBook Pro. First problem: "For You." It gave me a bunch of genres. I selected Classical. It then presented me with a number of artists, symphony orchestras, and composers, and asked me to select three. So I did. "And that's as far as I got. "An error has occurred." No way around that error, whatever it was. (For the record, my Apple software is always the most current generally available version.)
Rebooted the Mac. No more "For You" error, because there were no more attempts to filter. "For you" was a bunch of disparate stuff, most of which I have no interest in.
I'd like to play it through my Sonos, which was problem #2 - that only works when running the IOS Sonos app. So I set that up, though I'd really much rather run it through my MacBook.
Then I went searching for Deutsche Grammophon. Problem #3. After some searching on the Internet, I found that it was under "DG Playlists." There are apparently two such playlists. "The DG Playlist" and "DG 120." Apparently no one thought that a user might actually type out the full name of a curator.
I found no full-length operas or full-length anything else. Just the sort of warhorse stuff that the local classical radio station plays. And I have to select it from this sort of description: "Symphony No.5 in C Sharp Min...". It isn't the full symphony, I've no idea whose 5th symphony it is, or what movement. But I can tell that Leonard Bernstein directed it. This is simply unacceptable.
I've now had Apple Music for less than an hour, during which time I have found a terribly frustrating user interface and nothing of what was promised. If this is Apple Music, you can keep it.
Please let me know if I've done something wrong, because otherwise I'm cancelling this piece of dreck.
Rebooted the Mac. No more "For You" error, because there were no more attempts to filter. "For you" was a bunch of disparate stuff, most of which I have no interest in.
I'd like to play it through my Sonos, which was problem #2 - that only works when running the IOS Sonos app. So I set that up, though I'd really much rather run it through my MacBook.
Then I went searching for Deutsche Grammophon. Problem #3. After some searching on the Internet, I found that it was under "DG Playlists." There are apparently two such playlists. "The DG Playlist" and "DG 120." Apparently no one thought that a user might actually type out the full name of a curator.
I found no full-length operas or full-length anything else. Just the sort of warhorse stuff that the local classical radio station plays. And I have to select it from this sort of description: "Symphony No.5 in C Sharp Min...". It isn't the full symphony, I've no idea whose 5th symphony it is, or what movement. But I can tell that Leonard Bernstein directed it. This is simply unacceptable.
I've now had Apple Music for less than an hour, during which time I have found a terribly frustrating user interface and nothing of what was promised. If this is Apple Music, you can keep it.
Please let me know if I've done something wrong, because otherwise I'm cancelling this piece of dreck.
Couple of thoughts:
To get to the full length opera videos:
On your MacBook in itunes, if you go to Browse > Genre > Classical, if you scroll horizontally through the main carousel, you’ll come to the big yellow Deutsche Grammophon box with the ‘Your home for the best of the iconic Yellow Label’ caption. Click on this. As well as being able to access some (not even close to all) of the DG playlists, if you keep scrolling down you’ll get to the Video Albums which have the currently available DG operas.
To get to all of DGs playlists:
Scroll to and click Featured Curator: Deutsche Grammophon.
The Sonos app on your MacBook won’t allow you to search for Deutsche Grammophon directly. However if you add an album or playlists to your iCloud Music Library either in mac iTunes or iOS Music, you can then access it from Apple Music > My Music > Recently added in the mac Sonos app.
When listening to Apple Music music via iTunes or iOS Music, make heavy use of the Like/Dislike options under the ... button at the end of the track name. AMs initial assumption seems to be that everyone like current chart pop, rap and urban music. It will need top ‘learn’ your taste in order for the For You tab to start filling up with music you’re likely to like and have less of the stuff the ‘taste makers’ think everyone ought to like.
You can re-run the ‘Genres and artists I like’ exercise again on iOS by going to For You > click on your profile picture > scroll to the bottom of the page >. View Account > Find More Artists and Curators.
When playing a track, especially from a playlists, and you like it, click the artist/performer name in red - you get the option of going either to the artists in question, the album the track is from or the playlists the track is being played from. I’ve wound up adding so many albums of works to my library this way, both new and familiar.
Finally, try following DG on Apple Music; this will ensure that DG’s regular posts and suggestions pop up on your For You page (helpfully drowning out the stuff you don’t want to listen to). Search for Deutsche Grammophon in All Apple Music> Click on @dgclassics then click the Follow button.
It is difficult to defend AMs interface either on mac or iOS. However one you get enough works liked/disliked and albums/playlists/artists added to your Library, it becomes tolerable especially when you’re lost in the music that become progressively easier to find in your own library.
I appreciate how much effort you put into helping me here.
Sonos will show any information Apple sends it. Sadly, Apple Music doesn't give Sonos the capability of including like / dislike, composer, or "Song Info" (which contains critical information). So it's going to take a fair amount of effort to engage both interfaces and mark which things I like or dislike. I'm concerned that clicking "Love" on a classical warhorse will just get me more classical warhorses. I'd love to hear some stuff I don't already know by heart.
But I'm grateful for your instructions, and will continue to fiddle around.
Safe to say Spotifys integration with Sonos is considerably better than Apple Music’s, not least that you can use Spotifys apps/UI to control Sonos playback directly.
Fair points on the classical warhorses; it happens in the classic rock sphere too - liking well known Led Zeppelin tracks tends to to get you more Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd for Pink Floyd etc.
However you can like an entire album, or a curated playlist too. From this there is scope for Apple Music to provide more interesting recommendations. In the classical sphere, liking an album might well get you recommendations by the same composer, the same period, the same/related conductors/performers etc. This and following curators such as DG starts yielding better results over time.
My own ‘work flow’ over the past week or so, if you will, involved listening to DGs playlists in the car via CarPlay and at work on headphones using the Music app in iOS. Anything grabs my attention, it gets added to my library. I’ll also add the album sometimes. Everything I’ve added myself then winds up in recently added, whether individual tracks, albums or playlists. And with Recently Added being accessible from Sonos, I can do my serious listening at home via Sonos or Apple TV linked to my HiFi.
Curated playlists are generally a good place to start listening and liking/disliking in order to get away from the usual hoary chestnuts and into unfamiliar works & performers.
Apple Music’s entire UI makes sense from the point of view of people casually listening to current popular music, whose basic unit of currency is the single/individual track belonging to a single artist. These get added to playlists, shared with friends & followers and liked. For classical, this individual track-centric approach doesn’t make sense; works are usually longer than a single track, can be grouped by composer, conductor, orchestra/performing entity, soloist and may have the same work represented on many different albums. Apple Music’s UI doesn’t represent/manage all of this too well, and as you note, much of the UI is only available on Apple’s own devices.
All this said, when you get to hear something unfamiliar that really clicks and engages with you, it really is worth the time. I still feel as though I’m paying my subscription fee to have unfettered after hours access to the biggest flagship CD store. The problem becomes the tyranny of choice - the curated playlists then become the equivalent of a trusted DJ, which jumping off points for further explorations. DGs entry in to all of this has been fantastic, both with the breadth of their catalogue and how seriously they’ve taken their curation role on AM.
Just thought I'd give you a progress report. I've officially joined the Family Plan. It took some searching, but I kept finding neat things. One item I've always wanted to add to my collection was the entire Ring Cycle. I bought Das Rheingold on CD a long time ago, but never bought the other three due to the cost. I was delighted to find the whole thing on Apple Music. "It's about a boy who marries his aunt," I told my wife, quoting Anna Russell. Then, on a whim, I searched for Anna Russell, and found three of her albums.
You put your finger on it. It's access to the biggest flagship CD store. HMV and Tower Records combined! (And as someone who's shopped both HMV in London and Tower Records in Boston, I can safely attest it's bigger than both.)
I can wish for a better interface, but I've got time for serendipity.
Thank you again for your helpful advice!
Glad to hear its all worked out so well. I did wonder how you'd got on, especially with the less than perfect interface for the service. Muscle your way past its niggles though and....
It might be a case of stating the blindingly obvious, but the more you use AM, the better value it becomes. I could give up Netflix and other video streaming services, but my AM and Audible subscriptions are an absolute steal for the listening and reading pleasure I get from them each month.
I'm still skeptical, because I tend to micromanage what I'm listening to in a way that Siri doesn't seem to be able to handle. What's the quality of the curated lists when it come to classical? I got tired of Spotify playing Pachelbel's Canon in D and the first movement of "Eine kleine Nachtmusik" literally two or three times an hour.
LOL. Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik….. the typical Mozart track played to attract classical-illiterates to the genre.
It's like a bunch of hardcore sushi/sashimi experts attempting to seduce a sushi virgin into trying and liking sushi…. by getting them hooked on California rolls. Hahahaha!