Apple has launched Apple Music Classical, a new standalone app for classical music lovers. The app provides access to a vast collection of classical music tracks, with features such as hi-res lossless audio and spatial audio support. With over 5 million tracks from 20,000 composers, users can explore a vast catalog of classical masterpieces.
What is Apple Music Classical?
Apple Music Classical is a standalone app that supports the complex data structure of classical music. It offers an immersive listening experience with Hi-Res Lossless Audio and Spatial Audio support. The app features curated playlists showcasing different artistic periods such as Baroque or modern.
Features of Apple Music Classical
The application provides access to more than 5 million tracks with 192 kHz, 24bit Hi-Res lossless audio as well as Apple’s Spatial Audio feature. Users need an active Apple Music subscription to use the app. However, there are no additional costs associated with using Apple Music Classical.
The catalog features complete and accurate metadata and thousands of composer biographies and descriptions of key works. The user interface of the application has been laid out into four sections including Browse, which showcases a curated selection based on artistic periods such as Baroque or modern.
How to Use Apple Music Classical
Apple Music subscribers can download and use the new app at no additional cost. The app is available worldwide, where Apple Music is offered, except for China, Japan, Korea, Russia, Taiwan, and Turkey. The app requires an active Apple Music subscription but is not available with the Apple Music Voice Plan.
To use Apple Music Classical efficiently, the search function can look up by composer, instrument, artist nicknames, and more. Each composition displays multiple recording options from different orchestras with some songs featuring dozens or even hundreds of separate recordings.
Apple Music Classical vs. Other Streaming Services
Apple Music Classical has launched after Apple’s acquisition of Netherlands-based classical music streaming service Primephonic in August 2021. The app competes with other high-res classical music streaming services such as STAGE+, a service launched by Deutsche Grammophon in November 2022.
While comparing Apple Music Classical to Idagio, we can see that Apple Music Classical offers a lot more features and an immense catalog, but Idagio offers more comprehensive search results, including a list of recordings and ensembles. Apple Music Classical also doesn’t provide liner notes or libretti for new recordings, which are available in PDF format on Idagio.
Listening Experience
Apple Music Classical provides an immersive listening experience with Hi-Res Lossless Audio and Spatial Audio support. Users can track their Classical albums, playlists, and tracks in the regular Apple Music app but not the new playlist features showing recordings, works or composers.
Users cannot shuffle music in the Apple Music Classical app but can shuffle music in the regular Apple Music app. Apple Music Classical does not allow users to download any music from the app. Instead, users have to go to the regular Apple Music app to download tracks from their Classical playlists.
Conclusion
The launch of Apple Music Classical shows how the consumption of classical music continues to grow in popularity, evidenced by its use by content creators on YouTube in 2022. With exclusive artwork commissioned from artists and playlist covers, the application is a perfect platform for classical music lovers worldwide.
Although there are some limitations such as unable to play back hi-res audio on current devices and limited period instrument performances, Apple Music Classical is a great addition to the streaming world for classical music lovers.
Image Source: Wikimedia Commons
