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should've kept the old thing running until you have a replacement. one of the worst example of corporate take-over. I cannot imagine that music app for classic music is that hard.
 
I know it's not as simple as slapping a new icon on the regular Apple Music app, but I've really got to wonder what the big challenge is here that's taking 2+ years to iron out.... esp when they have an existing starting point after acquiring an existing service.
Classical has a huge metadata problem, because it wasn't considered when the first MP3 apps ossified on the standard track/artist/album pattern, and everybody came up with their own hacks and workarounds. Apple is trying to undo about twenty years of classical metadata damage.
 
It's a a good thing, because classical music is a complete mess on Apple Music / iTunes. I'm not sure however about the necessity of having a separate app for it instead of just a dedicated tab with a different interface , but on the already existing app.
I don't really care if it's a tab in the same app or a whole 'nother app. What's very very clear is that their current app fails the classical audience completely.
 
I can't name a single person who listens to classical music.
I can.

I was in high school during the days of "Saturday Night Fever," crap disco music of the most idiotic inanity was incessantly pouring from every speaker everywhere, thump thump thump thump stayin' alive stayin' alive, three years running of every musician trying to sound like the BeeGees, and I finally hit my limit, and dialed my receiver to the other end of the dial.
 
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I am guessing the app itself is mostly done. But updating the meta data and improving the curation can take much longer.
Yep. The app's the easy part. The hard part is not feeding it twenty years' worth of dog droppings for metadata.
 
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I am guessing the app itself is mostly done. But updating the meta data and improving the curation can take much longer.

But didn’t they buy a company that had already done that? This seems a bit like Dark Sky all over again. They bought something that was already working, shut it down, and then take forever to reinvent the wheel anyway.

Or maybe Apple Music is more of a mess internally than we thought.
 
If you look at the main page of the Classical music category on Apple Music, you will see that since the acquisition, it is looking more and more like the Primephonic home page and that the playlists and “essentials“compilations have been greatly expanded as in the Primephonic experience. These playlists and “essentials“ compilations now carry the tag of Apple Music Classical whereas they used to be tagged as simply Apple Music.

I don’t think there will be a stand-alone Classical music app.

Apple Music Classical is still missing an improved search capability and digital booklets (aka liner notes) for Classical albums that were part of the Primephonic experience.

The real delay was probably in the debate between whether to actually release the app or to do it as part of the Apple Music app. I would love to see a complete overhaul of the Music app. I think with the improvements to the back end it seems they would have to make to properly support classical music anyway, that would probably be the way to go.
 
The real delay was probably in the debate between whether to actually release the app or to do it as part of the Apple Music app. I would love to see a complete overhaul of the Music app. I think with the improvements to the back end it seems they would have to make to properly support classical music anyway, that would probably be the way to go.
That's really the key. It's not classical versus the rest, it's deep-metadata-needed versus track/artist/album-is-enough. Jazz listeners are every bit as cranky about the need for deep metadata, because they need to know the difference between two different live performances by the exact same artists doing the exact same work with the exact same soloists and the exact same songwriters.
 
That's really the key. It's not classical versus the rest, it's deep-metadata-needed versus track/artist/album-is-enough. Jazz listeners are every bit as cranky about the need for deep metadata, because they need to know the difference between two different live performances by the exact same artists doing the exact same work with the exact same soloists and the exact same songwriters.

I hope they’re smart and just focus on improving the core product. I don’t want to see them start going the Google route of separate apps for everything that don’t talk to each other.

The more I think about it this is one of the core differences between them. Apple is supposed to be one cohesive unit. It’s un-Apple-like to have two things so similar be two different things when they could be one that does both well.
 
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I feel like this is iTunes LP and Ping all over again. I can't name a single person who listens to classical music. I feel like it's just not something a lot of people listen to anymore.
I can't name anybody who listens to classical music either. However, there was a movie called Amadeus made in the 80's (about Mozart) which is highly acclaimed even to this day. It won many awards. So, there are more than just a few people listening. Also you would get more appreciation out of "Rock Me, Amadeus" by Falco if you know who Mozart is.
 
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That's really the key. It's not classical versus the rest, it's deep-metadata-needed versus track/artist/album-is-enough. Jazz listeners are every bit as cranky about the need for deep metadata, because they need to know the difference between two different live performances by the exact same artists doing the exact same work with the exact same soloists and the exact same songwriters.
I would welcome the ability to add extensive metadata to every type of music. But, it seems like the ideal UI/UX for pop music and the ideal UI/UX for classical music would be very different and the simplest way to accomplish that would be separate apps. You could have one app that reads the metadata to determine whether to show the pop or classical (or jazz) interface, but then you'd be depending on the metadata to be complete and/or correct which it frequently is not.
 
If you look at the main page of the Classical music category on Apple Music, you will see that since the acquisition, it is looking more and more like the Primephonic home page and that the playlists and “essentials“compilations have been greatly expanded as in the Primephonic experience. These playlists and “essentials“ compilations now carry the tag of Apple Music Classical whereas they used to be tagged as simply Apple Music.

I don’t think there will be a stand-alone Classical music app.

Apple Music Classical is still missing an improved search capability and digital booklets (aka liner notes) for Classical albums that were part of the Primephonic experience.

Exactly this. They're now calling it "Apple Music Classical" inside of Apple Music.

Screenshot 2023-01-19 at 1.50.22 PM.png


I see the need for a completely different navigation and browsing experience for classical music from contemporary music with an emphasis on composers, and that seems to justify a separate app, but a simple toggle could accomplish the same thing while sharing all the underlying streaming and playback architecture. Perhaps there won't even be a toggle. Classical music listeners will just be shown different options based on their listening and search history.

I'm going to guess it's going to appear in the side bar where iTunes Store currently lives and is optional.

Screenshot 2023-01-19 at 2.02.13 PM.png


Overall, given the lack of evidence of another app separate from Apple Music, this may turn out to be a service inside of Apple Music that will simply be turned on at the server level. I'd bet the farm that it'll coincide with iOS 16.3 given the already appearing changes in Apple Music.
 
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I am one of about 3 people looking forward to this - would love a better UI. The UI in Apple Music is one of the worst experiences of any app that I use (but I still use it a bunch)
 
Classical has a huge metadata problem, because it wasn't considered when the first MP3 apps ossified on the standard track/artist/album pattern, and everybody came up with their own hacks and workarounds. Apple is trying to undo about twenty years of classical metadata damage.
That's spot on. You can add to it that subgenres of "Classical" are seldom elaborated. The current system works, though, if you are playing background music in waiting rooms...
Indian Classical music has yet again a different way of organizing music and recordings. Do we need a separate app that would not play an afternoon raga in the morning?
It would be good if an international body of standards would address all these issues together thoroughly, the way Unicode does.
 
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I know it's not as simple as slapping a new icon on the regular Apple Music app, but I've really got to wonder what the big challenge is here that's taking 2+ years to iron out.... esp when they have an existing starting point after acquiring an existing service.
It could be licensing or artist payments. Apple Music (like most streaming services) pays per song played. Primephonic paid by time played, which makes sense since a classical song is probably 10 times longer than a commercial pop song.
 
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