Apple Music goes "Classical"
Apple Music goes "Classical"
Apple is launching a new app, exclusive for Apple Music users, that gives you access to over 5 million classical songs.
Apple has announced a new version of Apple Music that’ll focus on one specific sector of the musical world: classical. The app, called Apple Music Classical, will officially launch on March 28th after being leaked numerous times over the past year.
Apple Music Classical will offer the “world’s largest classical music catalog” at no additional cost to existing Apple Music subscribers. Over 5 million individual tracks will be offered at launch, some exclusive to Apple Music Classical and some more widely available. Each track will be available in 192 kHz/24-bit Hi-Res Lossless format, as well as spatial audio for a more immersive experience.
The app will also make it easy for those not familiar with classical music to receive an education on various pieces, composers, and more. “Apple Music Classical also makes it easy for beginners to get acquainted with the genre thanks to hundreds of Essentials playlists, insightful composer biographies, deep-dive guides for many key works, and intuitive browsing features,” the company said in its release notes.
At launch, Apple Music Classical will only be available on the iPhone, but as reported by TechCrunch, Apple has plans to bring it to Android. It’s just unclear when that might happen.
Here are all of the features Apple lists on the official App Store listing.
Get unlimited access to the world’s largest classical music catalog (over 5 million tracks) with everything from new releases to celebrated masterpieces, plus thousands of exclusive albums.
Search by composer, work, conductor, or even catalog number, and find specific recordings instantly.
Listen in the highest audio quality (up to 192 kHz/24 bit Hi-Res Lossless) and enjoy thousands of recordings in immersive spatial audio with Dolby Atmos.
Benefit from complete and accurate metadata to make sure you know exactly what and who you are playing.
Learn while you listen, with thousands of composer biographies, descriptions of key works, and more.
Listen using AirPlay on compatible wireless devices.
Apple Music Classical ties in technology from music service Primephonic, which Apple acquired back in 2021. When the acquisition was completed, Apple was supposed to release some version of Apple Music that offered classical music, but ultimately failed to. I’m assuming the delay was to build the seemingly robust experience that Apple Music Classical will offer, with biographies on composers and their works, accurate meta data, and spatial audio mixes for each piece.
The new app will help Apple Music remain very competitive in the music streaming market. Currently, there’s no one focusing on offering a dedicated classical music experience, at least on a large scale. IDAGIO is probably the closest thing to Apple Music Classical with a library of over two million tracks, exclusive classical concerts, curated playlists, and more. The difference is that IDAGIO is completely free, whereas Apple Music Classical requires a subscription to Apple Music to work. It’ll be interesting to see whether Apple Music Classical can top it and give fans of this type of music a reason to subscribe.
Meanwhile, the rest of the industry varies in all sorts of other directions. Spotify, its biggest rival, is more focused on music discovery than supporting things like lossless audio and classical music. Others like Amazon Music and Tidal continue to offer unique edges like lossless audio, playlists, and lower-cost tiers, but can’t quite gain the marketshare as Spotify or Apple Music.