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Hands-On With Apple's New Classical Music App

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Apple today officially launched the much anticipated Apple Music Classical app on the iPhone, allowing Apple Music subscribers to download and access an app dedicated just to classical music. We went hands-on with the new app to give MacRumors readers a closer look.


Design wise, the app is similar to Apple Music, but it is entirely dedicated to classical titles. The Browse section, for example, is broken down into Composers, Genres, Periods, Conductors, Orchestras, Soloists, Choirs, and Ensembles, making it easier to discover the specific classical content that you're looking for.

A Listen Now section offers up New Releases, Spatial Audio content, and other recommendations in various genres, plus there is a dedicated Library for aggregating saved content. A search function makes it simple to find something specific.

All in all, the app will be familiar to Apple Music subscribers, and it is in fact very simple. Unfortunately, it is limited to the iPhone at the current time, with no Mac or iPad version available. It's also not available on CarPlay.

Have you tried Apple Music Classical? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

Article Link: Hands-On With Apple's New Classical Music App
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2023/03/28/apple-classical-music-hands-on/
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I like the way a playlist set up in the Apple 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. Overall I really like this initial Apple Classical offering. I had used Primephonic previously and I could tell that Apple incorporated lots of its function, huge catalog, and metadata. Insofar as classical music is concerned, I think this gives Apple a big heads up on Spotify.
 
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happydude said:
dedicating an entirely diff app to one genre of music is dumb.
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Organizing and searching classical music as if it's a top-forty LP is dumb.

I haven't had a chance to put it through its paces yet, but it did get me to subscribe to Apple Music again for the first time since I gave up on it for its classical ineptitude.

And yeah, the first piece I played was Bernstein's "Candide" overture.
 
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The app has a lot to improve, whose idea was to sync everything from/to my Apple Music? If I want to add classical composers to my Apple Music library as well, why would I download a separate music app?
 
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App itself is very clean and well made. I just wish this was also available in iPadOS so I can use USB-C to play true lossless. Lightning just doesn't cut it.
 
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I've tried it and it looks the same as the regular music app. There seems to be an issue with adding playlists, after adding one it does not get added to the library. I tried removing re-adding, and rebooting and then I noticed that the playlists were getting added to the regular music app and not to the classical music app. This must be a bug otherwise what is the point of having a separate app?

Is anyone else having this issue?
 
oofio2461 said:
does not have a shuffle mode, for a strange reason.
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Probably because it rarely (if ever) makes sense to listen to classical music in shuffle mode. I can't imagine listening to, say, Vivaldi's Four Seasons in completely random order. Or symphonies, concertos, sonatas, you name it - imagine listening to Eroica shuffled: first the funeral march, then the last movement, then the first, then the third. It would be quite awkward. :)
 
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stfat said:
I've tried it and it looks the same as the regular music app. There seems to be an issue with adding playlists, after adding one it does not get added to the library. I tried removing re-adding, and rebooting and then I noticed that the playlists were getting added to the regular music app and not to the classical music app. This must be a bug otherwise what is the point of having a separate app?

Is anyone else having this issue?
Click to expand...
It just magically started showing the added playlists, but they are still being added to the regular music app which is silly. Why have separate apps?
 
interesting how some of the composers do not have bios that we know a lot about. i assume this gets updated from time to time. Heinrich von Biber is not unknown in the baroque world.
 
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Wondering if they're going to hog it up by start promoting things like classical music one and interviews and things you can't get rid of or hide like in the regular music app:rolleyes:
 
I questioned the need for another app. After seeing how classical music differs from other genres because of the amount of information that is used to differentiate each unique piece, this is probably a better way to handle it than forcing it into the Apple Music app. If Apple were to force it into the Apple Music app, I doubt anybody would have been particularly happy.
 
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