The long-talked about Apple Music Classical app has finally been given an official release date, and the new app promises to deliver the largest catalog of classical music in the world.
Apple Music Classical will launch on March 28, and surprisingly, it will be available to Apple Music subscribers on iOS and Android, with the latter apparently "coming soon." Naturally, iPhone owners will be able to listen to it first, as long as you're using iOS 15.4 or later.
Apple's new app, which you can "pre-order" now from the App Store (opens in a new tab), is separate from your existing Apple Music app, but still requires an Apple Music subscription. Once you've pre-ordered, Apple Music Classical will apparently download automatically at launch.
For fans of symphonic and orchestral music, it promises to be a real treat with more than five million tracks and, according to Apple, "thousands of exclusive albums." Even better, if you've got a solid set of speakers or a pair of the best headphones, Apple promises thousands of recordings in spatial audio and lossless 192kHz/24-bit Hi-Res sound quality.
Apple has also worked hard on the user interface, offering the ability to search for music by composer, work, director, or, for classical music supernerds, even by catalog number. This was all likely helped by Apple's acquisition of Primephonic, a classical music streaming service it bought in 2021.
All in all, Apple Music Classical is shaping up to be a huge added bonus for Apple Music subscribers and goes some way to deflating the hype Spotify has been building around its new homepage redesign.
Analysis: Why a separate Apple Music Classic app?
Apple already has the Apple Music app, which has a decent selection of classical music, so why did it release a separate app for classical music fans?
The key is in the careful organization of the new classic Apple app. Classical music is very different from other forms of music because each work has often been recorded by several different orchestras and, even more confusing, the works of many composers have been cataloged using different systems, including the numbering system of opus.
This system is far from perfect, as in classical times many publishers classified a group of works under a single number or, in the case of the French composer Massenet, used "Opus 12B" instead of "Opus 13" for superstitious reasons. . Many XNUMXth-century composers also completely ignored the system, while other composers (such as Mozart) use an entirely different system of cataloging.
Apple Music Classical's powerful search features, which let you search by composer, work, director, or catalog number, should make it easy to find the song you're looking for and help explain why Apple separated it from its main music app. .
While it's possible to listen to classical music on the best music streaming services (including Apple Music, with spatial sound, no less), the new Apple Music Classical app promises to take the experience to the next level. . We'll definitely tour on March 28, if we're feeling Rachmaninoff.