I bit the bullet last year and deleted my library of ripped CDs. It’s so much less hassle. Still buying physical CDs and the occasional bit of vinyl for listening only at home.
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Hands-On With Apple's New Classical Music App
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Yup, so for now you have to start the app before you start driving. It shows up in “Now Playing” in the Music app in car play. Haven’t noticed the Shazam playlist in CarPlay but would be surprised if it’s not there.
I suspect Apple are working to fix CarPlay integration for the app.
Trying out the new app right now as I love listening to classical while working, however it has some major flaws.
You can, of course, AirPlay to a speaker, specifically a HomePod speaker, however you can't "control" what's playing on it.
For example, with Apple Music, I can "Control Other Speakers & TVs", and directly control what's played on them. This then allows me to leave the house or use my phone for other purposes. Maybe have a call, what a video, whatever...but with Apple Music Classical, only AirPlay is available (like Spotify), so the moment I do something else on my phone, the music stops, or for example, when I use my Apple TV where I have my HomePods paired, the music stops.
I hope they resolve this soon. Otherwise, it's rather nice!
You can, of course, AirPlay to a speaker, specifically a HomePod speaker, however you can't "control" what's playing on it.
For example, with Apple Music, I can "Control Other Speakers & TVs", and directly control what's played on them. This then allows me to leave the house or use my phone for other purposes. Maybe have a call, what a video, whatever...but with Apple Music Classical, only AirPlay is available (like Spotify), so the moment I do something else on my phone, the music stops, or for example, when I use my Apple TV where I have my HomePods paired, the music stops.
I hope they resolve this soon. Otherwise, it's rather nice!
I’m just going to clarify something here because this is not entirely accurate. I think the search function is fantastic and you’ve missed the best feature.
If you search for a work eg. Beethoven symphony 2, you will be given search results. Under the Work section, you need to choose the corresponding Work. Then you select See All at the bottom of the Popular Recordings list.
If pull down a little on the Popular Recordings list that comes up, you can search within the Beethoven symphony no. 2 Popular Recordings list. eg. you can search for Karajan or Berlin or 1982.
I can’t remember what it’s called, but this is one of those unintuitive UI errors. Where you have to pull down to reveal the search box. This is my dad’s favourite feature, but he wont be able to remember to pull down to find the search box. I think you might’ve missed it, too.
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So if I understand it correctly, there are no albums in AC that are not also in AM. So I should search and browse in AC (perhaps find new stuff through their curated lists) then save an album as a playlist, move to AM and move the playlist into one of my folders so I can find it again, and use AM to listen via my MacBook (or however you wanna listen).
Using AC solely as a browsing and search app. Why not.
Using AC solely as a browsing and search app. Why not.
I find the
It will play via CarPlay but you need to start the app from your phone. I suspect CarPlay support will come.
I am enjoying the new app very much. Found some new versions of Chopin‘s nocturnes I’d never heard before, which brightened up my morning commute immensely.
The search function is good, and returns comprehensive results.
And to echo previous posts, I’d love for Apple to bring it to TvOS so that I can stream to my HomePods when at home (instead of having to mess about streaming from my iPhone).
The search function is good, and returns comprehensive results.
And to echo previous posts, I’d love for Apple to bring it to TvOS so that I can stream to my HomePods when at home (instead of having to mess about streaming from my iPhone).
Little confused why they couldn’t get it going in CarPlay, iPad and Mac for launch. Is the code really that different than the existing Music app?
No downloading within the app for offline listening. Such an odd lack of function. Yes, I can add something to my Apple Music library, switch over to Apple Music and download it from there... but why not just let me DL it from inside the Classical app?
The way it organizes the music is killer, though I'd like to search within nodes. For instance, if I choose Claudio Abbado under Conductors, it would be nice to be able to then search on "Mahler" to show just his Mahler recordings. A quibble.
The way it organizes the music is killer, though I'd like to search within nodes. For instance, if I choose Claudio Abbado under Conductors, it would be nice to be able to then search on "Mahler" to show just his Mahler recordings. A quibble.
The UI differences could take a lot of work. Think how long it took to get a weather app for the iPad
You can install the iPhone app on the iPad, just like you can with any other iPhone app. I will just show up in an iPhone-shaped window.
Repeating here notes I made on another thread:
I'm quite disappointed with this first attempt. The very first selection I attempted to play was a dismal failure. This was the work "Da Pacem Domine", composed by Arvo Pärt and played by the Hilliard Ensemble, from the Album "Arvo Pärt: Lamentate" on ECM New Series 1930.
I searched for composers using "Part". Arvo Pärt was listed first (great). Selected him. Selected "See All 94 Works". Selected sort order as "Name of Work". Hmm, no "Da Pacem Domine". Okay, so I try using the "Search" function at the bottom of the screen. I search for "Part Da Pacem Domine". Not found; the only work found is "An den Wassern zu Babel sassen wir und weinten" by Arvo Pärt, which, as you might notice, doesn't even have "Da Pacem Domine" in the title.
Okay, I browse for the album. Back to Arvo Pärt, select "See All Albums" and it brings up a list of hundreds of albums within an infinite scrolling list. I select "Title" for sort order, then scroll and scroll and scroll. No entry for "Lamente", nor "Pärt: Lamentate" ; there is one "Arvo Pärt: Lamentate", but not the one from ECM. There is no alphabetic shortcut along the right-hand edge or anything to jump to album titles beginning with a certain letter. You have to do two fast scrolls, which then pauses for loading more, then repeat that 30, 40, 50 times or more.
So back to "See All 94 Works", sorted by Title. I look for another work from the same album I am trying to find, "Lamentate", which shows it available on 7 albums. I select that work. Under Popular Recordings, I see the one from the album I am looking for listed. I select that entry. Below the listing of the tracks for Lamentate, it shows "Featured On" and shows the album (that couldn't be found under albums, as described in the previous paragraph). I select the album, which, lo and behold, shows "Da Pacem Domine" as the first track, only it's listed as a movement name under the work name "An den Wassern zu Babel sassen wir und weinten", which isn't right at all.
The app badly needs filters and alphabetic shortcuts to navigate lists of hundreds of entries. It is so hard to find what you want. Then there are all all the metadata problems which will probably never get fixed, as there is no mechanism to report them.
I'm quite disappointed with this first attempt. The very first selection I attempted to play was a dismal failure. This was the work "Da Pacem Domine", composed by Arvo Pärt and played by the Hilliard Ensemble, from the Album "Arvo Pärt: Lamentate" on ECM New Series 1930.
I searched for composers using "Part". Arvo Pärt was listed first (great). Selected him. Selected "See All 94 Works". Selected sort order as "Name of Work". Hmm, no "Da Pacem Domine". Okay, so I try using the "Search" function at the bottom of the screen. I search for "Part Da Pacem Domine". Not found; the only work found is "An den Wassern zu Babel sassen wir und weinten" by Arvo Pärt, which, as you might notice, doesn't even have "Da Pacem Domine" in the title.
Okay, I browse for the album. Back to Arvo Pärt, select "See All Albums" and it brings up a list of hundreds of albums within an infinite scrolling list. I select "Title" for sort order, then scroll and scroll and scroll. No entry for "Lamente", nor "Pärt: Lamentate" ; there is one "Arvo Pärt: Lamentate", but not the one from ECM. There is no alphabetic shortcut along the right-hand edge or anything to jump to album titles beginning with a certain letter. You have to do two fast scrolls, which then pauses for loading more, then repeat that 30, 40, 50 times or more.
So back to "See All 94 Works", sorted by Title. I look for another work from the same album I am trying to find, "Lamentate", which shows it available on 7 albums. I select that work. Under Popular Recordings, I see the one from the album I am looking for listed. I select that entry. Below the listing of the tracks for Lamentate, it shows "Featured On" and shows the album (that couldn't be found under albums, as described in the previous paragraph). I select the album, which, lo and behold, shows "Da Pacem Domine" as the first track, only it's listed as a movement name under the work name "An den Wassern zu Babel sassen wir und weinten", which isn't right at all.
The app badly needs filters and alphabetic shortcuts to navigate lists of hundreds of entries. It is so hard to find what you want. Then there are all all the metadata problems which will probably never get fixed, as there is no mechanism to report them.
You can sort in a different order by using the little icon at the top-right of the screen. You get three—count 'em, three—different sort orders!
But, sadly, your desired sort order is not retained. Next time you go to the same screen, the sort order defaults back to Popularity (Hilarity).
That’s like asking why do we need Apple Pages when Apple Notes exists.
Sorry the below explained it better.
much more context and detail and much more appreciated
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I've got about 250GB of ALAC rips from my CDs, and for the heck of it I just looked up "I. Allegro." That is, "first movement, with the tempo allegro (kinda fast but not too fast)." It's such a standard convention in classical music that I pulled up literally sixty different works -- all the way back to Vivaldi, and all the way forward to Shostakovich, who died in 1975.
The main way to distinguish them *should* be by composer, but the free-text search in Apple Music ignores the composer tag, so that doesn't help.
There are other problems too, but they all come from the same fundamental problem: square peg, round hole.
Really, it's about trying to hack one system of information into a completely different system's search capabilities. I've *wanted* it to work for twenty years, but it's really like putting bicycle tires on a car and saying "tires are tires."
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Even better is post #88 in this same thread.
I can't work this out either. It's really strange. Marco Arment was recently saying that he doesn't really have to do anything much to have his Overcast app appear on all Apple's platforms.