Breaking: Apple launches dedicated classical streaming

Breaking: Apple launches dedicated classical streaming

News

norman lebrecht

March 09, 2023

The corporation has just announced Apple Music Classical, ‘a brand new standalone app designed specifically for classical music’.

This is just an announcment, no independent person has tested it yet. The launch is on March 28. It rRequires an Apple Music subscription.

Apple says:
Apple Music Classical offers:

– The world’s largest classical music catalogue with over 5 million tracks and works from new releases to celebrated masterpieces.

– Thousands of exclusive albums.

– The ability to search by composer, work, conductor, or even catalogue number, and find specific recordings instantly.

– The highest audio quality (up to 192 kHz/24 bit Hi-Res Lossless) with thousands of recordings in immersive spatial audio.

– Complete and accurate metadata to make sure you know exactly what work and which artist is playing.

– Thousands of editorial notes including composer biographies, descriptions of key works, and more.

You can watch a trailer here.

That’s all foks, for the moment.

Comments

  • PS says:

    How about I keep buying the music I like and ignoring recommendations from woke garbage companies.

  • A.L. says:

    Hard to know if or how this new service will move the needle. I think we all already have a wealth of (classical) music available at our fingertips from a number of services. Not to mention the countless CDs we have burned onto our digital libraries. But we shall see. By the by, nothing beats a long-playing analog record playing in open space without digital intervention.

  • J Barcelo says:

    And I just started using Spotify…which I am very, very happy with. Since I use it in the car and while biking or walking the dog, through a Monster Boomerang, the lossless formats Apple is offering is unimportant. But the ability to search by conductor or other important filters is something Spotify could really use.

  • Emanuele P says:

    so they will do what Qobuz does already since years ago…. with Apple prices?

    • BP says:

      Apple prices in this case will be cheaper than Qobuz prices…

      • Emanuele P says:

        low prices are more than welcome! I just have some bad feelings (as classical music is not so much made for the “mass” but mostly for an “elite” in the collective imaginary) but we’ll see

  • MARK P says:

    “ – Complete and accurate metadata to make sure you know exactly what work and which artist is playing.”
    I’ll believe it when I see it!
    Oh, and can they please stop calling movements “songs”?

    • Petros Linardos says:

      If they misuse the word “songs” they will not be providing complete and accurate information.

      • Bulgakov says:

        For a long time now, iTunes has allowed you to list the individual movements of a multi-movement work with work’s title displayed above them. Most classical music downloads purchased through the iTunes store already use this feature, so I expect it will be the same for the streaming service, too.

    • PaulD says:

      My nephew once referred to a movement of a symphony as a “song”. I understood why he said that, since that is what download services call them. He now works for a major record company; I hope he now knows the proper terminology.

      • Henry williams says:

        Not as bad as the person who asked for
        A cd of beethovens 5th with the composer
        Conducting

      • Barry says:

        Not unusual now. Words like “instrumental” and “orchestral” are not in the vocabulary of many younger people because they have no interest in, or understanding of, music not featuring a celebrity singer.

        Suggest that music might actually be descriptive or take you on a journey and you’ll get a blank look.

  • George says:

    Not one positive comment yet about this on this classical music lover’s site.

    I think it’s great. The more the better.

  • Freelance Muso says:

    It would be interesting to know how much revenue the artists will receive. More than Spotify’s pitiful rate one would hope…..

  • Howells of laughter says:

    A year or so ago Apple bought out Primephonic, which was a decent attempt at a classical streaming platform. Hopefully they will learn from the work the designers of that platform put in.

  • Gerry Feinsteen says:

    Apple has a considerable trove of user meta-data, and perhaps the silver lining here is that, knowing what it knows about usage, Apple decided a stand alone app for Classical was worth the investment. The indication is positive news for music.

  • Tamino says:

    Will it finally be the first and one streaming service that understands classical?

    -at least two level title hierarchy for a) work, and b) subcategory movement/scene/etc.

    -seamless and noise free playing over track borders without dropouts
    ???

    If not, then No, thank you.

  • Heril Steemøen says:

    Gladly received!

  • Ziomeo says:

    I listen to music on all different ways: vinyl, cd, liquid. For liquid I got Qobuz and Roon.
    I recommend you to check what Roon is. I rip my cd and my purchased liquid files on Roon (at the highest quality possible) and then I can listen at them on the go. Basically I am building my own steaming service and I can also stream all liquid music I want from Qobuz.

    If now Apple really does what it promises, I might be considering to switch from Qobuz to Apple Music but I just realized Apple Music is not available on Roon…
    Qobuz and Tidal share they metadata with Roon while Apple music does not. Maybe this is the right time?

    Ah, Roon has the abikity to manage classical music as we want, work as a major category and single movements as single track under the major work.

    I am not affiliated with Roon, I’m just a modest user and I spread the word to my classical music fellows. Enjoy

  • Barry says:

    I thought that classical music was supposed to “dead” or “irrelevant”?

    Never been a fan of Apple (proprietary everything) but happy to see how this pans out.

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