Apple’s new app for classical music, Apple Music Classical, is available for download to everyone. The app is free for everyone, but you need an Apple Music subscription. Notably, it is not available in countries like China, Japan, Korea, Russia, Taiwan and Turkey.
The company said that there are more than 5 million tracks available on the app right now. While a ton of compositions are focused on western classical music, I was able to find some Hindustani classical and Carnatic titles.
The new service is based on Primephonic, an Amsterdam-based company Apple acquired in 2021. It also features exclusive albums, composer bios, and editorial deep dives on certain key works.
The app focuses more on the discovery by composers rather than interprets. Apple Music Classical allows you to browse through tracks using filters like composers, periods, genres, conductors, orchestras, ensembles, and choirs under the “Catalog” tab; different instruments through “Instruments” tab; and curated playlists under the “Playlists” tab.
You can add a track to the library or your own playlist, but sadly, you can’t download any tracks. However, you can add them to your library and download them via Apple Music. A bit of a tedious process. Apple has also made an interesting choice of not making shuffle available on the Classical app.
All compositions are available in quality up to 192kHz/24-bit Hi-Res Lossless. Also, a lot of tracks are available in immersive spatial audio with Dolby Atmos support if you have speakers or headphones that support this technology. At the moment, only AirPods Pro (1st or 2nd generation), AirPods Max, AirPods 3rd gen, or Beats Fit Pro supports spatial audio.
Currently, the app is only available on iPhones, so you can’t access the app on Mac or iPad. You have to be running iOS 15.4 or newer to use that app.
On Monday, Apple also released the iOS 16.4 update with features like new emojis, notifications for web apps, and voice isolation for better call quality.
Source @TechCrunch
