Apple will launch a new application dedicated to classical music

Good news for classical music lovers. Apple is launching a new application for them on March 28, “Apple Music Classical”, dedicated to this musical genre. Available this Thursday for pre-order on the App Store, it will be included in the Apple Music subscription (10.99 euros per month in France), at no additional cost. It will not be possible to subscribe only to the classical music service. The application will be distributed all over the world, except in China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, countries which will follow soon.

With this launch, the apple firm wants to offer a solution to the problem of the complex referencing of classical music works on streaming platforms. On these, the pop, variety or rap songs are easily identifiable by the title and the name of the group.

Easy search

But in the field of classical music, works can be searched for by the name of the composer or the performer, by the date or place of the performance, the participation of such a musician, musician or conductor, the type of composition (sonatas, waltzes, impromptus, lieder, etc.), opus number, key, all according to a French-speaking (do, re, mi, etc.) or English-speaking (C, D, E…). A real metadata headache for general streaming platforms, where it can be difficult for users to find the title they are looking for.

Apple’s new app will make music lovers’ searches easier and promises to “find any recording quickly and easily,” according to a statement from the group. For this, the firm will be able to rely on the expertise of Primephonic, a classical music streaming service acquired in August 2021 and taken offline in the process, whose interface was appreciated by its subscribers. Perhaps the latter will make it possible to better remunerate the interpreters by highlighting them better, even if Apple has not yet given all the details on its new service.

“The largest catalog of classical music in the world”, according to Apple, will in any case include 5 million songs and thousands of exclusive albums. The application will also include biographies of composers and guides for certain works.

The firm says it works with renowned classical music artists and institutions to offer unreleased content and recordings. Finally, the service promises listeners “the best audio quality available” and thousands of recordings in the format of immersive “spatial audio” sound.