Apple will launch a new app exclusively for classical music later this month

Classical music app will be included with an Apple One or Apple Music sub.

See full article...

 

[barrattm]

Don't even get me started on voice command smart speakers with classical music
"okay Google, play Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto Number 2"

"sure, playing Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto Number 2 on spotify"
Then proceeds to play a solo pianist playing a dumbed down version of a very small section of the piece.

"Play Beethoven symphony number 9"
"Sure, playing ode to joy" -plays the 3 minute choral section

Seriously Google/Spotify, I've played Mahler 2 a thousand times, if I ask for Mahler 2, play the version I literally always play, not just the first 3 minutes of the first movement before the track ends, then switch to some random classical music playlist.....

Didn't this kind of thing start happening when Google Music became YouTube music? Requests, playlists, simply became search terms producing terrible results.

Never touched it myself; mostly physical media here, or DRM-free MP3's. Buying MP3's from Amazon is as "digital music service" as I'm prepared to get.

 

[Lwio]

I hope they release a proper iPad app soon as I use my iPad almost exclusively.

 

[Numfuddle]

Another important feature is readable album tracks. In the majority of albums, it’s impossible to differentiate individual movements. Here’s what tracks look like in Gould’s A State of Wonder in Prime Music on my phone:
View attachment 52851

To continue—since Ars is throttling my post:

Classical music enthusiasts have felt like second-class citizens when it comes to major streaming services like Amazon and Apple. Both platforms offer a glut of unoriginal albums such as "Relaxing…" or "100 Most…" recordings, yet they lack recent and significant recordings from major labels outside the US. This problem is a continuation of our experiences with recording labels. Listeners in North America (I cannot speak for other regions) are unable to access many influential recordings that were never released in the US. As a result, obtaining them often requires importing them at an exorbitant markup (high shipping costs and, at times, unavoidable VAT) from overseas websites, which are often in non-English languages.

Recently, I spent a month attempting to locate a particular recording of Beethoven's piano sonatas by Emil Gilels, but I eventually gave up because it was no longer in circulation and I didn’t want to pay hundreds for a used copy.

God this is probably my biggest gripe with mobile apps. Almost every app thaat handles audio or video does this with titles and it's such an obvious thing that it makes me really angry that no one gives a damn about it.

Titles can actually be longer than the width of the screen! Who would have thought?

 

[Hydrargyrum]

It is. Apple stated that.

Surely Apple would stream ALAC, at least to iOS devices.

Although, since FLAC and ALAC are both lossless, and both support excessive bit depths and sample rates, I’m not sure why anyone would care in the slightest exactly which one is being used as long as your hardware can decode it efficiently.

 

[Baumi]

This is a feature request that crosses genres and that I have been wanting for a long time. Being able to "link" multiple songs so that they are always played in sequence would be wonderful. If I'm shuffling my collection and Pink Floyd's Brain Damage comes up, it really disrupts my enjoyment of the music when it doesn't flow into Eclipse. 2 songs, sure, but meant to be played together. The same goes for any song with an instrumental intro - In The Beginning is the intro to Shout at the Devil, or Passage of Hope to Seas of Madness. We Will Rock You should flow into We Are the Champions (I know, that's radio conditioning and not by design, but it's what my ears expect now). I Remember Now/Anarchy-X/Revolution Calling are 3 tracks but one song. And who would listen to Sun King or Polythene Pam without listening to the whole Abbey Road medley? Certainly not I.

I’m 99% sure that, back in the early days of MP3s, there used to be a popular player that allowed users to specify something like “always group this with the next track”. It might even have been a prior version of iTunes.

Pity that it seems to have been given the boot in the transition to streaming.

 

[Dr Spiff]

Having used Apple Music for a number of years now, I’m continually frustrated by the poor search functionality, also for modern music. If that was improved, perhaps some of the motivation for having separate apps would go away? (The separate artist payment models could likely be implemented behind the scenes, so on the surface this doesn’t seem to be sufficient reason for adding an additional app. Reality might be more complex, of course).

 

[Deleted member 309965]

what I would like, in the most simple possible form.

when I shuffle a playlist: play classical pieces that have multiple movements as one continuous, shuffled piece, and not play the 4th movement of X, followed by the 2nd of Y, followed by the 3rd of Z, and then the first of X.

If you don't know what I'm talking about: this music app may not be for you.

(note: I have never successfully had Apple music properly handle shuffling of a multi-album playlist which contained multi-movement music)

Precisely this.
It's exactly why I wrote my own Bash-based randomizing FLAC music player, which I made work on macOS last year. 90-tracks of an oratorio are played as one continuous 'thing'; four movements of a symphony likewise. And the randomisation is at the 'work' or composition level, not the movement (or 'track').

It's a nice example of why "classical music" is a distnct genre with its own unique requirements that 'standard' music players (Foobar2000, Clementine, Amarok, etc) just don't tend to 'get' very well.

 

[benwiggy]

My understanding is that classical music is a genre, not defined by age. Just as one knows rock or pop when they hear it, so too with classical. There is, thus, new classical music, and new movements in classical as a genre, all in the past few years and decades.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_music
Edit: Ninja'd

In musicology, it's usually now referred to as "Western Art Music", which then leaves the term "Classical" free for the late 18th/early 19th-century style either side of Baroque and Romantic; and also acknowledges that other cultures have 'classical' music.
If you told Pierre Boulez or Harrison Birtwhistle that they were writing Classical music, they would have had a fit!

But currently, getting Siri to understand that I want the Klemperer recording of Beethoven 7 is pretty much impossible.

 

[KlausMikaelsson]

This should really strike a chord with classical music fans, but it's not really my forte.

There, you have my upvote for these puns!

 

[alexnode]

I am not an Apple user, apart from an i-pad pro for procreate, but that sounds like a nice idea. Orchestras are struggling but so many people stream classical during work hours.
If I have a demanding project I can't stream songs with lyrics, so I've created nice classical and jazz playlists. Bach cellos, Debussy, and Tarrega for Jazz Bill Evans, Brad Meldhau and Keith Jarret.

 

[moosemaimer]

If you listen to "classical music" radio stations, like BBC Radio 3 or ABC Classic, you'll find many new composers being showcased, with quite a bit of new music mixed with the old. So the answer from a radio programming standpoint is "not old at all". The term is a vague and muddy one, with any "technically correct" meanings diverging from its actual use.

Things get even muddier if, say, you consider "Symphony No. 1 (Low)" Philip Glass. It's a symphony that is at home in a "classical" programming schedule, but which is based on a rock album.

I was a bit surprised driving to work early one morning when the local classical station (WCRB) played a track from an Assassin's Creed game.

 

[allears]

I was a happy Primephonic subscriber who was upset when Apple bought them out. I've since moved to Idagio, which is almost as good as Primephonic.

I don't know why it took Apple so long to incorporate Primephonic into Apple Music. In any case, I don't want it on my phone -- I want it on my Windows media computer attached to my high quality living room stereo. When (if) that happens, I may check it out -- but I'm pretty happy with Idagio.

 

[Nifty'sPapa]

Huh. I was not anticipating that, but fully support the idea. Classical has long been the square peg of formats and authorship trying to fit into the round hole of popular music. <I'm-ok-with-this.gif>

Classical is where all the problems with streaming media manifest. Suddenly the quality of the stream matters. The music sounds differently in the Walt Disney Concert Hall compared to the Boston Symphony's hall (Beantown wins hands down, even if their building is less beautiful outside).

I hope all the work in better quality streams, naming conventions, handling of multi-piece movements, etc discussed above is addressed.

I really hope this is the vanity project of a lifetime Apple employee who isn't about to retire.

 

[melgross]

Surely Apple would stream ALAC, at least iOS devices.

Although, since FLAC and ALAC are both lossless, and both support excessive bit depths and sample rates, I’m not sure why anyone would care in the slightest exactly which one is being used as long as your hardware can decode it efficiently.

The question wasn’t whether they would stream it as ALAC or FLAC, but whether it would be in higher res. Both ALAC and FLAC support high rez.

 

[Wheels Of Confusion]

Beethoven's more Romantic than Classical, though. And when will we get the Baroque app?

iTunes was the most baroque app I've ever seen.

 

[warfare-guilder]

Going to hazard a guess that the app doesn't have Griot or Carnatic classical music.

The app is restricted to Western classical music, specifically music focused around a small set of 18th century German composers. There are many other kinds of classical music in the world and reserving the term "classical music" for Western classical music is western chauvinism of the highest order.

Also, saying that it will "give your smartphone some culture" is ridiculous and feeds into the myth that Western classical music somehow represents a superior culture. Modern electronic and experimental music is deeper, richer, less white and less male than 18th century Western classical music.

 

[gnasher729]

The ID3 tag is useless if it’s empty, or if it spelled some Eastern European composer’s name differently than how I searched for it.

Slightly intelligent searching should really be no problem. That’s what we have computers for.

 

[peul]

Primephonic was a fantastic app and service, it was so much better than anything else for enjoying classical music. I miss it still, it worked really well because it presented classical works in the way that classical music is commonly organised, so composers, opus numbers and added the performers to that: the orchestra, director, soloists. Discovering new works and new recordings was Primephonic's strength. They produced some nice podcasts about classical music too.

Apple took their sweet time creating this after they acquired Primephonic. With the new Music app looking worse compared to itunes, I thought Apple had simply killed Primephonic and that that would be it.

 

[Old_Fogie_Late_Bloomer]

Going to hazard a guess that the app doesn't have Griot or Carnatic classical music.

The app is restricted to Western classical music, specifically music focused around a small set of 18th century German composers. There are many other kinds of classical music in the world and reserving the term "classical music" for Western classical music is western chauvinism of the highest order.

Also, saying that it will "give your smartphone some culture" is ridiculous and feeds into the myth that Western classical music somehow represents a superior culture. Modern electronic and experimental music is deeper, richer, less white and less male than 18th century Western classical music.

Hahahahahahahahaha! Hoo. Oh, man. Tell me you don't know fuckall about classical music without coming out and telling me you don't know fuckall about classical music.

 

[InIgnem]

There are 90-second pop songs? <old man rant about the kids these days>

Well, I mean, they are about 90 seconds whenever you factor in the repeated lyrics. Some of them would be as short as 30 seconds if you took out the redundancy.

 

[Cloudgazer]

Well, I mean, they are about 90 seconds whenever you factor in the repeated lyrics. Some of them would be as short as 30 seconds if you took out the redundancy.

Repetition? Redundancy?

Erik Satie says ... hold my absinthe

 

[Mousica]

what I would like, in the most simple possible form.

when I shuffle a playlist: play classical pieces that have multiple movements as one continuous, shuffled piece, and not play the 4th movement of X, followed by the 2nd of Y, followed by the 3rd of Z, and then the first of X.

If you don't know what I'm talking about: this music app may not be for you.

(note: I have never successfully had Apple music properly handle shuffling of a multi-album playlist which contained multi-movement music)

Music players that can do this exist, but are rare... actually the only one I know of currently is Musicolet (but it's Android-only). It will let you do 'advanced shuffle' modes like 'shuffle all albums (while keeping the albums in the correct order)' or 'shuffle all music by a certain artist', and other variations on that.

 

[warfare-guilder]

Hahahahahahahahaha! Hoo. Oh, man. Tell me you don't know fuckall about classical music without coming out and telling me you don't know fuckall about classical music.

Do you mean Western classical music?

 

[fellow_traveler]

Well, I mean, they are about 90 seconds whenever you factor in the repeated lyrics. Some of them would be as short as 30 seconds if you took out the redundancy.

A "song" is a "form" that follows certain rules - verse (A), chorus (B), tertiary subject (C), typically A, A, B, A, B, C, A, B. The redundancy is part of the formula which makes it a "song".

 

[MiltonThales]

I signed up for it. I’m hoping that the iPhone app is just the start. I signed up from my iPad. Since most iPhone apps work on iPads, and many iPad apps work on Macs, I’m hoping that this is the same. I use my 13.3” Macbook Pro as my music server, so not to have it there wouldn’t be useful. Truthfully, I rarely listen to music anywhere other than on my system in the living room.

The App store on my iPad shows the [unreleased] app as “Works on this iPad”. I couldn’t find the app on my iPhone until I clicked preorder on my iPad, but once I did, I found it in the iPhone App Store with a check mark.

 

[Old_Fogie_Late_Bloomer]

Do you mean Western classical music?

I most certainly do not. You can place the word "classical" at the beginning of phrases referencing south Indian or west African music, but it doesn't make those things comparable to the classical music tradition in a meaningful way. Sorry, but this is a subject I am very qualified to talk about. I've studied both traditional "world" music and, as you say, "Western" classical music and they are, simply put, not on the same level in any meaningful way.

I'm sure you read some smartass take on the Internet, or studied for a semester under some music "appreciation" teacher who cared more about tearing down the subject than teaching it, and now you think you know what you're talking about. You don't.

 

[Chuckstar]

Going to hazard a guess that the app doesn't have Griot or Carnatic classical music.

The app is restricted to Western classical music, specifically music focused around a small set of 18th century German composers. There are many other kinds of classical music in the world and reserving the term "classical music" for Western classical music is western chauvinism of the highest order.

Also, saying that it will "give your smartphone some culture" is ridiculous and feeds into the myth that Western classical music somehow represents a superior culture. Modern electronic and experimental music is deeper, richer, less white and less male than 18th century Western classical music.

All the other “classical musics” have merely cultural-appropriated the term.

(Ducks and runs…)

 

[warfare-guilder]

I most certainly do not. You can place the word "classical" at the beginning of phrases referencing south Indian or west African music, but it doesn't make those things comparable to the classical music tradition in a meaningful way. Sorry, but this is a subject I am very qualified to talk about. I've studied both traditional "world" music and, as you say, "Western" classical music and they are, simply put, not on the same level in any meaningful way.

I'm sure you read some smartass take on the Internet, or studied for a semester under some music "appreciation" teacher who cared more about tearing down the subject than teaching it, and now you think you know what you're talking about. You don't.

What does "not on the same level in any meaningful way" mean?

 

[valkyriebiker]

+1
I remember looking for a solution to this problem back in the MP3 era with a linux music player (Amarok) and finding no solution.

I solved that problem when ripping my classical CDs by grouping all the movements of a given piece into a single file. A bit of a manual process but still simple and reasonably quick to do.

 

[zogus]

This announcement of the Classical app is remarkable in that it is the first good news I have heard about iTunes’s usability since—er, the first time I started using iTunes, back in 2004. Took you long enough, Apple.

 

[zogus]

I solved that problem when ripping my classical CDs by grouping all the movements of a given piece into a single file. A bit of a manual process but still simple and reasonably quick to do.

That’s one way to do it, but the downside is that, sometimes, I really do want to hear just the second movement.…

 

[Cloudgazer]

That’s one way to do it, but the downside is that, sometimes, I really do want to hear just the second movement.…

Also, guilty secret - I have a smart playlist that consists entirely of slow movements which I used extensively when I lived in an incredibly noisy apartment and had to sleep wearing headphones listening to something that wouldn't disturb my sleep as much as the music coming through the walls, the clog dancers who lived upstairs the insanely loud hum of the power substation or just the merry drunks fucking 8 feet below my bedroom window.

 

[foobarian]

Hopefully this becomes a trend. I am tired of every app trying to hide its features in the name of simplicity (or removing them entirely). I want options, not a sleek ui.

 

[Dennis De Mars]

When I heard that Apple had acquired this app, I was looking forward to this service; I only realized when I read this article that it would be iPhone only. It never occurred to me that they would do this. It seems so weird.

I only listen to classical music on my Mac (where I spend a lot of the day with a Klipsch computer speaker system so the fidelity isn't too bad) or on my main stereo system in the living room (where I can stream through Apple TV).

I never listen to classical music on my iPhone. I listen to the iPhone on short walks or walking the dog, and it is usually podcasts or audiobooks.

Now, I guess a lot of people listen to music on their iPhone a lot so I am probably in the minority but anyway the last sentence in the article gives me hope that the app will someday appear on a device that I actually use to listen to classical music. (I don't see listening to an entire Mozart symphony on a walk, although the dog would probably enjoy that.)

 

[Algrim]

<snip>
I only listen to classical music on my Mac (where I spend a lot of the day with a Klipsch computer speaker system so the fidelity isn't too bad) or on my main stereo system in the living room (where I can stream through Apple TV).
<snip>

I was under the impression that you can use iPhone/iPad apps on the Mac now? I’d double check this myself except that the only Macs I have access to are work machines and the App Store is disabled on them.

 

[balthazarr]

I was under the impression that you can use iPhone/iPad apps on the Mac now? I’d double check this myself except that the only Macs I have access to are work machines and the App Store is disabled on them.

You can on the Apple Silicon Macs, but not every app is available - the developer needs to enable that option.

I imagine Apple will release a native Mac app at some point?

 

[Dennis De Mars]

I was under the impression that you can use iPhone/iPad apps on the Mac now? I’d double check this myself except that the only Macs I have access to are work machines and the App Store is disabled on them.

You can on the Apple Silicon Macs, but not every app is available - the developer needs to enable that option.

I imagine Apple will release a native Mac app at some point?

I completely forgot about that. I do have an Apple Silicon Mac but up until now I haven't had a reason to try to run iPhone apps, but I will check it out when this app becomes available at the end of the month.

 

[dixonfdm]

I signed up for it. I’m hoping that the iPhone app is just the start. I signed up from my iPad. Since most iPhone apps work on iPads, and many iPad apps work on Macs, I’m hoping that this is the same. I use my 13.3” Macbook Pro as my music server, so not to have it there wouldn’t be useful. Truthfully, I rarely listen to music anywhere other than on my system in the living room.

When I accessed the App Store on my iPad, it said that the Apple Music Classical app will play on my iPad, so I'm hopeful. What I'd really like is to have it on Apple TV.