Apple Music Classical is out(apps.apple.com) |
Apple Music Classical is out(apps.apple.com) |
On the other hand, as someone not listening to a lot of classical music, it's an interesting problem for sure, but as I mostly drag the mp3 folder onto foobar2000... I don't think I get the "problem" part of the problem, maybe I would if I used the likes of spotify more :P
Cluttering up an app most people use to search for Ed Sheeran or w/e with data attributes like 'conductor', 'orchestra', 'composer', etc. — all of which are meaningless to 'most people' — makes the app less usable for most people (including myself, when I'm not listening to classical). The 0.5% of people who actually want these features can just download this app.
Calling it now this app will be quietly discontinued by 2025. Doesn’t justify the engineering overhead for a different meta data grouping/filtering. None of this sounds anywhere near as complicated as people are making it out to be.
One of the AppStore image shows the 'Wiki' part of the player: https://is4-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/PurpleSource126/v4/...
----The AppStore Description-----
Get the app designed specifically for classical music. Available to Apple Music subscribers at no additional cost. Instantly find any recording in the world’s largest classical music catalog with search built for the genre. Enjoy the highest audio quality available (up to 192 kHz/24-bit Hi-Res Lossless) and hear classical favorites like never before in spatial audio, all with zero ads.
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 Ultimate Classical Experience
• 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.
I am pretty excited for this though. I do like classical music but it can be a pain to figure out which recording of a song to listen to. Some interpretations really annoy me especially with respect to piano music. Orchestral music I don't know as much about and most of the recordings I've listened seem fine although I know some people have a lot of opinions on various recordings/interpretations.
I want to browse for music that I actually listen to! Why is there no option for me to remove categories that I will never listen to.
Maybe they were recommending this https://music.apple.com/us/album/instrumental-hits-remastere...
Apple Music's weekly customized playlist for me was consistently including 2-3 songs of modern country, which is the only genre I don't listen to. It was maddening, and I had to reset and clear my entire multi-year history to get it to stop.
Low investment and pre-existing user base to migrate seems like a pretty good deal.
[0] https://www.apple.com/ca/newsroom/2021/08/apple-acquires-cla...
Therefore I assume it launches at a specific time in each location?
Let's just wait for this old tired globe to spin a bit more, and it will available for us too.
Which is why I said it’s launched at a specific time per locale. Like 9pm on the 27th or something like that.
Same general point but worth mentioning that it was earlier than the 28th there
This reads to me that it does not allow local/offline libraries. Is that correct?
Something that works in the artist/album/track format has no need for it, and something that doesn't adhere to the composer/orchestra/recording/etc format of metadata and organization that classical uses, also doesn't fit very well.
Classical film scores are definitely good fits, because they have composers and there exists multiple recordings done by different orchestras and so on.
It may be that some categories of music that aren't traditional western classical will fit right in, and might be put here instead of in the regular Apple Music, who knows. But mainly, this is just a way of finally recognizing that Artist/Album/Track doesn't work and never worked for classical, so it's a way of correctly organizing/browsing/consuming classical music.
The question is not “how do we draw the line between classical music and non-classical music”, but how do we fix the problem of sorting / organizing music that has a known composer and multiple recordings by different musicians / orchestras.
Even though people play covers in popular music styles, people rarely care about organizing the music that way. I don’t think, “I want to hear Yesterday” and then look up a list of covers. But I do think, “I want to listen to Rite of Spring” and then look up a list of recordings.
Even though composers are a big deal in Jazz, I still usually care more about the performer. Most of the time, I’m not going to ask the computer for a list of Autumn Leaves recordings.
I do think it kinda makes sense, because classical music listening is more oriented around certain performances by specific musicians, rather than the piece itself, which normal music platforms aren't well suited for.
But that isn't quite unique to classical, which as you've pointed out is going to be a denotational quagmire and almost certain to piss people off. Hopefully they take the dumbly funny but also appropriate approach of just also putting jam bands, gospel and dj sets in there, which share this performance-orientation with classical music.
And some musicians do rerecord popular songs, which means you've got several different performances of the same thing. This isn't even that rare with live albums.
I mean sure for the most recent pop music it won't be a problem, but that's a very narrow window of time.
I've been growing and maintaining a collection of classical music for ten years now, which means I've been trying for ten years to solve this problem with tools designed for the same use case as Apple Music. If it were as easy as you claim, then by now I would have solved it at least well enough that taking a physical CD off a physical rack and putting it in a physical player never felt like the more convenient option.
If the app's discontinued in a couple of years, it won't be because it never made sense to build, especially given that I'm sure they're reusing most of both the frontend and backend for Apple Music as it exists today. It'll be because they're addressing one of the world's pickiest audiences, and not succeeding in getting enough right enough of the time - on that score I wish them the best of luck; on every other, I don't think I need to, not least because they might well succeed in selling me an Apple Music subscription with this.
I am just struggling to find a need to have a separate app, I guess UI/UX perhaps but I still echo the same fear as the parent commenter. I am sure Apple has the money to support it, and while I love classical music, I am not downloading another app just to consume it.
As I said before, I've spent a decade trying to solve this problem with the same kinds of approaches you're advocating here - that is, using tooling built for general music. That I haven't succeeded doesn't necessarily mean much, but how likely do you think it is that Apple's product and engineering teams didn't try the same before deciding they needed to ship a whole new app about it?
If that's true, why does every mainstream music app do such a terrible job with classical musical?
Possible because they think something like "none of this sounds anywhere near as complicated as people are making it out to be."
