Apple may be close to releasing a classical music streaming app, after lines of code in the Apple Music for Android beta revealed a potential name: Apple Classical.
The lines of code were discovered by 9to5Mac, who say they reveal the ability to open a supported track directly in the optimized service that will be tailored specifically for classical music, unlike Apple Music, which covers a wide range of genres.
As 9to5Mac says, the code hints at possible future features, but that "Google may never provide these features, and our interpretation of what they are may be flawed."
As such, a beta version of an app isn't always a guarantee that it will be released, but we already knew that Apple was planning to release a standalone classical music app. In 2021, the tech giant bought classical music streaming app Primephonic and said it plans to offer Apple Music subscribers Primephonic playlists and exclusive audio content.
According to a press release from the tech giant, classical music fans with Apple Music will get "the best features of Primephonic," including the ability to search by composer and repertoire, and more detailed classical music metadata.
We may not have to wait long to find out if these lines of code actually correspond to Apple's classical music app. Apple's next event is rumored to be on March 8, when it will unveil the iPhone SE 3, iPad Air 5 and maybe even a new Mac. Apple has yet to confirm this rumor, but Bloomberg quoted "people with knowledge of the matter" in his report on the event.
It's also possible we'll see the AirPods Pro 2 at Apple's next event, though that's less likely as all the rumors we've heard point to a late 2022 release date for Apple's next noise-canceling headphones. company.
Analysis: Why does Apple need a classical music app?
There's already a lot of classical music available to stream on Apple Music, so you might be wondering why the company would bother creating an entire standalone service for one music genre.
Finding classical music on a streaming service is a bit more complicated than other music genres. Works can be recorded by hundreds of different orchestras or musicians, making it difficult to find the exact recording you want, and while Apple Classical makes it easy to search by composer, repertoire, and other metadata, the user experience will be greatly improved.
There's also the fact that older classic works are classified differently than other genres. The repertoires of many composers are cataloged through the opus numbering system, which helps identify individual compositions; however, this system is far from universal, and many composers only use it for some of their works. Some, such as Massenet, used "Opus 12B" instead of "Opus 13" due to superstitions surrounding the number 13, while many XNUMXth-century composers ignored the system entirely.
Then you have individual songwriters who were so prolific that they were given their own cataloging system. Mozart's compositions are classified according to the Köchel catalogue, with each work having its own K number.
The lack of a universal way to search for classical music presents a problem for streaming services that want to make music discovery as easy as possible for their users, and the long titles resulting from using the Opus system don't exactly lend themselves to mobile devices. Diffusion. For example, this is what you'll see if you want to play an album of Mozart's Haffner and Jupiter symphonies:
That's a lot of numbers to navigate, and it could be incredibly off-putting for a classical music newbie diving into the genre for the first time.
That's not to say that the entire classical music browsing experience on Apple Music is bad. In contrast, the classic section of the app is well organized, with playlists from different eras, artists, and instruments, with Spatial Audio listening options for a super immersive experience.
However, Apple can do better, and your purchase of Primephonic will help its streaming music service appeal to a wider audience. So far, Apple has revamped its radio services with Apple One, appeased audiophiles with support for lossless audio, launched a cheaper voice-only service for Siri users, and offered an alternative service for those looking to ditch Spotify.
Apple Classical is just the next step in Apple Music's quest for sonic dominance, and if it's comprehensive enough to make such a large and complicated genre accessible, it could overshadow Spotify and become the best streaming music service on the planet. .