Like a number of other commentators, I'd never heard of this service despite being a fan of classical. If they can improve the state of classical on Apple Music -- playlists, metadata, discoverability, etc -- then I'm sure the founders are thrilled that they're going to have far more of an impact than they were having.
I remember when Apple bought SoundJam MP [1] and turned it into iTunes (and later renamed Music) so this is a familiar story. Apple has a chance at a fresh start with this one. I’m willing to give them a shot at it. If they mess it up I can always cancel the sub.
(Though I agree, it'd be kind of silly for them to not let the people they've acqui-hired keep on working on the "new" app in their domain.)
I predict most of the dev team will be looking for a new gig soon... shame as they were a great bunch!
Why would they do that? Apple Music and AppleTV are both available on Android.
Personally, I hope the Primephonic developers don't just develop a new classical app for Apple, I hope they work on the Music app, too.
And it always felt like straight up malware on Windows with all the QuickTime update prompts.
> It always felt like straight up malware on Windows with all the QuickTime update prompts.
I'm not positive QuickTime was the source of an awful lot of Windows iTunes' badness, but I have strong suspicions. :)
That said, I’m paying them for the giant catalog, good curation, and a dedicated streaming service just for the classical genre. Realistically I think these will stay with Apple’s acquisition. So in the long term I’ll probably be happy.
On the other hand, their decision to shut down the app before the alternative is launched is disappointing and unacceptable.
but both of them are head and shoulders above any apple made media player. beggars belief how the most rich company of the world can't put together even a mediocre music app on their own vertically controlled OS/hw product.
The biggest gripe that I've understood from other people is around classical metadata, which I agree iTunes and Apple Music have done a bad job with, just like most every other service that doesn't focus on classical. I'm not a big consumer of classical, so it doesn't bother me very much, but I can see how it would be a BIG deal for people who listen to exclusively or mostly classical recordings.
OTOH, I'm encouraged that there exist niche services that focus on the classical market. I hadn't heard of this one, but in one of my periodic attempts to Listen To More Classical I had a subscription to Idagio for a while, and found it generally pretty great.