Apple takes a summer bite
NewsApple Music Classical extended its reach today to a pair of summer festivals, Aspen and Verbier.
It also hooked into concerts from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the Hong Kong Philharmonic.
None of these additions is quite at the level of Apple’s main classical partners the Berlin Philharmonic, Carnegie Hall, Chicago Symphony, the Royal Concertgebouw, Metropolitan Opera and more
Overall, I’ve been impressed with Apple Music. Huge amount of content, lots of discoveries, and usually not too hard to find catalogue recordings.
But the “exclusive” partnerships have been meh. It’s a lot of the usual suspects conducting and playing music they’ve already recorded several times over. There also hasn’t been any new content from some partners in quite a while. Chicago, for example, hasn’t released a recording since June 2023 (though their recording of contemporary American music was a change of pace then what major orchestras normally release).
Apple is a LSO partner! Don’t forget that Norman.
It’s a nice service, but I have two complaints…
1. They need to have a field for recording date or original release date. If I sort by latest release date, I don’t want some reissued Furtwängler or Toscanini recording at the top.
2. Please get the student ensembles out of the main results. Though I’m sure the students worked very hard, nobody looking for Symphonie Fantastique recordings wants to hear the Vandegrift High School Wind Ensemble or the Alpharetta High School Symphony Strings.
2a. Please get the junky mass market compilation albums out of the main results.
Are you using Apple Classical or Apple Music?
The former has much better curation and metadata