Apple Music Classical pulls any works of music and the playlists you have from your main Apple Music account. Great! I thought. How convenient! Except one didn’t seem to fit in what I wanted to curate as my classical music collection. So I deleted it. Bad move. When I went back to the main Apple Music app where this list was generated by me, it no longer was there. Because deleting it in the Classical music app deleted it in Apple Music. Even though in the Classical Music app there was only one piece of music that migrated. No matter, my entire list- the one I listen to the most- DOZENS and dozens of songs were gone. Should I remember it? I’m sure some will come back to me and I can slowly rebuilt. But not really.
If you google this problem, deleted playlists, you will find other frustrated people. It’s the stupidest, most unnecessary and probably easily fixable problem that apple just doesn’t care to address. That is the mark of terrible customer service. I really feel like canceling my subscription. I am that upset about this.
Most specific compositions are mislabeled. Terrible filter options in the music library. No shuffle play on tracks in your library. Glitchy to the point where it will play the wrong track when you click on it. Use over time causes your music to be unplayable until you restart the app. Can’t choose specific songs to download. The search is not super user-friendly as it is hard to find certain compositions by certain composers with certain performers. All in all, the app is in its newest state and I’m sure many of these issues will be fixed soon. One positive, however, is the pure amount of music that is offered. I have yet to try any curated playlists or use any of the advanced features but the app looks beautiful and seems high quality. That being said, I give it two stars cause I know it could be and will be better in the future.
Update: it’s been a while since this app was made and it’s an absolute joke. There’s more classical albums on “Apple Music” than in this app and EVERYTHING is mislabeled it’s insane. Please don’t waste your time and just use Apple Music instead to generate your classical music catalog
This is a fantastic way to discover and learn about classical music. The way things are organized seems to make sense and slices the data in a way that works really well for the unique needs of the sprawling classical music catalog. Other music apps are geared towards a single recording of a piece, whereas in classical music, the piece has often been recorded hundreds of times by different musicians. Being able to browse by work is very valuable indeed.
One relatively minor annoyance: the “now playing” widget at the bottom of the app seems to lose what is currently playing quite often after the app is put in the background or my device locked. I haven’t figured out steps to reproduce it yet, but it’s inconvenient when you’ve browsed away from what’s playing and then that loses track of it as well.
Overall, this is the best way I’ve found to consume classical music.
The idea of a dedicated classical music streaming app is intriguing. Engaging with classical is a very different process than engaging with pop music, so some optimized functionality could go a long way. And by and large, this app is pretty successful. Being able to search for composers, players, and pieces makes finding recordings a lot easier. The app syncing with my regular music app helps a lot too. But there’s some problems. I won’t talk about the shuffle issue as everyone else already has. Instead I’ll talk about the jankiness of the sync function. For whatever reason, not all of my classical recordings from the main music app transfer over. When I try to add the recordings to the classical app, they don’t show up in my classical library. Similarly, certain recording I add to my main library don’t sync with my classical library but others do. I find this very frustrating, as it makes it more convenient to just use the main app to listen to classical.
It says a lot about how good this app is that my criticisms of it are basically just wanting more and easier access to it.
For example, I love this app on my iPhone, but I also listen to music on my other Apple devices, and it’s a bit disappointing that those systems don’t have this app. It would also be great if there were more fluidity between this app and the regular music app. For example, if I hit play on my AirPods, after a period of inactivity, it will play the last thing I was listening to on the regular music app instead of the last thing I was listening to on classical.
I would also love it if Apple expanded on the “Story of Classical” pieces to build out its own broader classical podcast. I really love the way Guy Jones tells the interesting stories of classical and how it got from one place to another. It has vastly increased my understanding of and appreciation for this music.
In a lot of ways, classical lost out on the last few generations of music because only modern recording and consumer headphone technology can really capture what is so amazing about it. All the nuance and dynamics of classical only work when you can cancel out the noise and hear every little frequency. I’m so glad to be able to hear this music as it was intended just about anywhere, so please finish the job, Apple, and let’s make this the music of the people again.
Developer Response
We are happy to share that Apple Music Classical now also offers a dedicated app for iPad.This is SO much better for classical music fans than the regular Apple Music app. Thank you very much for doing this. Love that there are curated playlists, recommended new albums with some editorial info about them (would love even more of that). Playlists and “track by track” feature are a pleasure (adds a lot to hear Yo Yo Ma explain something about what he’s playing and also share his playlist with you). Over time I hope you add much more of that. A couple suggestions: an iPad version would be great; also it can be a bit overwhelming when looking for a particular work to scroll through all the performance options. In addition to sorting by release date or popularity, how about an option to put artists that I’ve already starred as favorites first since those are who I am most likely to pick. Also, would love to shuffle my classical library or playlist by work rather than track or album (i.e., all movements of a piece in order without listening to the whole album, then move to the next). Overall, a great addition I have hope for for a long time. Thank you.
Developer Response
We are happy to share that Apple Music Classical now also offers a dedicated app for iPad.This app’s interface is very pleasing. The ability to search for pieces under a composer yields more results than if I were to be looking under a general search in regular Apple Music, which I really appreciate. I like how playlists organize pieces under composer name. The music suggestions they give may be basic, but that is mostly irrelevant. This app is much better for finding classical pieces than regular Apple Music. However, that only extends to finding. When I try to listen to the music that I put in playlists, this is where I get most of my problems. Organizing and editing playlists makes the app crash. Pressing play on a piece will actually cause the app to play a completely different piece further up in the playlist. The pieces only play in the order you set them to in the playlist. There is no shuffle option. There is also no app in Apple Car Play to control the playing of music while driving. All these aspects force me to use regular Apple Music when actually listening to music. However, I would like to use this app more often. If the glitching when pressing play was fixed, and the addition of a shuffle button was added, I would be much more happy. It would also be neat if an Apple Music Classical app were added to Apple Car Play.
Good in concept, except, there are some concerns, in an ever expanding online social aspect: 1) the lack of forum, post, or chat capability, and 2) not having some linkage to places such as The Met or other venues to provide updates of Classical Concerts that will be soon / in the coming months. I gauge Classical Music (really extends to all forms) as something social going, in the end. Separating into this set and “stand alone” app could in fact become a trend, with more offshoots (yes, this is more than theory, given automatons) of separate *geared mainly for such music lovers / concert goers* apps will develop. Congrats for creating such an app, even though is preliminary. Classical Music can really only really be enjoyed, continued, and have dialogue when having that in person concert going occurring, and then, since the original Dot Com times with MySpace and Facebook did happen and so on, the sense of online community for electronic communication bridging. And while I am doing what best possible to avoid some dubious concerns on why and how this app came to be, I think that this being offered does allow for some enhancements in the long run for ALL that are musically talented, hope for their sounds &or voices to be heard, whether all together and varied &Or each on their own, and on, and on, and on.
I’ve been listening to soundtracks by Nicholas Britell on the regular music app. I would classify most (if not all) of his work as contemporary classical. Yet when I switched to the Apple Music Classical app, I noticed a concerning similarity to which of Nicholas Britell’s very classical-sounding soundtracks did not appear on the classical app. They were the soundtracks for works with predominantly Black (African-American) casts, and dealing with Black themes Namely “Moonlight”, “If Beale Street Could Talk”, and “The Underground Railroad” . I want to assume that poorly programmed algorithms edited out these albums. Regardless of how this came to be, this should be looked into because obviously some human biases were programmed into the selection process.
I would posit that Britell’s soundtracks for “Succession” are far less “classical” than the soundtracks that I mentioned above; however, they appear on the Classical app.
While all of his soundtracks do not appear on the Classical App, it is very suspicious all three of his work for films and series focused on Black/African American experiences have been omitted. With the exception of “The Free State of Jones” which deals with the topic of slavery in America, however, Matthew McConaughey, a White man, is the only face on the album art.
Good UI/UX design should liberate a user to experience new things they couldn’t otherwise with more ease. So often this new interface achieves this, and that is vital because there is little to this app that differentiates it from the regular music app besides a few comments, curated playlists, and UI/UX. UI/UX is unusually relevant for this app. There are so many ways it enables new experiences, but there are two seemingly deliberate design choices that contradict this:
-The ability to add a song to a queue (“play next”) manually
-The ability to shuffle
I think bluntness is appropriate here. These are in my opinion cowardly design choices. They can only derive from a fear that the interface won’t adequately enable the desired experiences. I disagree, and to any extent that that’s arguably true, it can be solved through small design changes that further encourage people to use the app in the more helpful ways that have been curated.
You did great with this app. If you don’t want shuffle, I understand that’s more debatable in context of what this app is for, but don’t let fear hold you back from implementing “play next” in this app. It’s a bold design you should be confident enough in for “play next” to not undermine the UI/UX. Don’t get in your own way from a place of fear. Be bold in showing more people the beauty of classical music through this artful UI/UX design.
EMarieNYC
Freeman481
voidrender
TimmyVonTrimble
NiceGiygas
SumnerEudora
+*~Madrid~*+
Kervalor
Precious Traveler
Christopher Mclovin