Apple Music Classical is out | Hacker News Reader

Apple Music Classical is out

apps.apple.com

47 pointsund3fined57 comments

I understand how a different type of search is beneficial for classical music, but why isn't this just a feature of Apple Music?

There was a nice explanation here: https://twitter.com/jessiechar/status/1634361684960870400

That's indeed a very nice explanation but I think it's wrong to completely discard pop music with its covers. You can have the the problem, but usually only on a title level, not on an album level - so the metadata thing can be true as well.

On the other hand, as someone not listening to a lot of classical music, it's an interesting problem for sure, but as I mostly drag the mp3 folder onto foobar2000... I don't think I get the "problem" part of the problem, maybe I would if I used the likes of spotify more :P

I think (based on zero insider knowledge) that's a UI decision.

Cluttering up an app most people use to search for Ed Sheeran or w/e with data attributes like 'conductor', 'orchestra', 'composer', etc. — all of which are meaningless to 'most people' — makes the app less usable for most people (including myself, when I'm not listening to classical). The 0.5% of people who actually want these features can just download this app.

Still doesn’t seem like something that needs to exist. They literally could just have a classical section with these features in the base Music.app.

Calling it now this app will be quietly discontinued by 2025. Doesn’t justify the engineering overhead for a different meta data grouping/filtering. None of this sounds anywhere near as complicated as people are making it out to be.

It's not just metadata. Search is very different as well, because you're looking for different things in different ways. Display is different too, for the same reason. So is the entire concept of what constitutes a work, which breaks shuffle, just for a start.

I've been growing and maintaining a collection of classical music for ten years now, which means I've been trying for ten years to solve this problem with tools designed for the same use case as Apple Music. If it were as easy as you claim, then by now I would have solved it at least well enough that taking a physical CD off a physical rack and putting it in a physical player never felt like the more convenient option.

If the app's discontinued in a couple of years, it won't be because it never made sense to build, especially given that I'm sure they're reusing most of both the frontend and backend for Apple Music as it exists today. It'll be because they're addressing one of the world's pickiest audiences, and not succeeding in getting enough right enough of the time - on that score I wish them the best of luck; on every other, I don't think I need to, not least because they might well succeed in selling me an Apple Music subscription with this.

Sure but could you not just write a different search controller to handle the needs of a more specific search? I have written many search controllers with, Meilisearch for example, that could handle myriad constraints and parameters. What makes this so hard that you need to abstract it out to a completely new app?

I am just struggling to find a need to have a separate app, I guess UI/UX perhaps but I still echo the same fear as the parent commenter. I am sure Apple has the money to support it, and while I love classical music, I am not downloading another app just to consume it.

Sure. A different search controller, which needs a different query view to handle the different fields it filters on, which needs a different result view to surface the different parts of metadata that only apply to this use case...you end up adding significant feature work to the app so that it can use the new search logic you "just" added to the backend, and you have still only solved one narrow aspect of this surprisingly different use case.

As I said before, I've spent a decade trying to solve this problem with the same kinds of approaches you're advocating here - that is, using tooling built for general music. That I haven't succeeded doesn't necessarily mean much, but how likely do you think it is that Apple's product and engineering teams didn't try the same before deciding they needed to ship a whole new app about it?

> None of this sounds anywhere near as complicated as people are making it out to be

If that's true, why does every mainstream music app do such a terrible job with classical musical?

That doesn’t mean it needs to be an entirely separate executable. You can just have a different filter view and search control.

It's a rebranded version of an app Apple acquired. Presumably they thought that was a more elegant solution than shoehorning classical into an interface designed for pop music.

Going out on a limb here, but I think you probably don't spend a lot of time listening to classical music. The reaction of nearly everyone who does is cautious optimism, because we know this is a very hard problem that companies and products consistently get wrong.

Possible because they think something like "none of this sounds anywhere near as complicated as people are making it out to be."

Gleaning from app description [1] it is perhaps because it is just not a music player, but (roughly put) a combination of Wikipedia and classical music repository/player.

One of the AppStore image shows the 'Wiki' part of the player: https://is4-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/PurpleSource126/v4/...

----The AppStore Description-----

Get the app designed specifically for classical music. Available to Apple Music subscribers at no additional cost. Instantly find any recording in the world’s largest classical music catalog with search built for the genre. Enjoy the highest audio quality available (up to 192 kHz/24-bit Hi-Res Lossless) and hear classical favorites like never before in spatial audio, all with zero ads.

Apple Music Classical also makes it easy for beginners to get acquainted with the genre thanks to hundreds of Essentials playlists, insightful composer biographies, deep-dive guides for many key works, and intuitive browsing features.

The Ultimate Classical Experience

• Get unlimited access to the world’s largest classical music catalog (over 5 million tracks) with everything from new releases to celebrated masterpieces, plus thousands of exclusive albums.

• Search by composer, work, conductor, or even catalog number, and find specific recordings instantly.

• Listen in the highest audio quality (up to 192 kHz/24 bit Hi-Res Lossless) and enjoy thousands of recordings in immersive spatial audio with Dolby Atmos.

• Benefit from complete and accurate metadata to make sure you know exactly what and who you are playing.

• Learn while you listen, with thousands of composer biographies, descriptions of key works, and more.

• Listen using AirPlay on compatible wireless devices.

I read about the composer info, but I figured that part would not be any better than just using wikipedia or a more in-depth source. Seems like an afterthought to justify having another app.

It will be interesting to see how they define "classical" — Does it include only Western art music? Does it include only music from the Baroque and after? What about Perotin? Does it include classical musical traditions from non-western musics? Does it include folk musics? How about modern movements like 'musique concrète' or avant-garde jazz? How about instrumental film scores? Anime film scores?

The need for this is because of metadata, not genre really.

Something that works in the artist/album/track format has no need for it, and something that doesn't adhere to the composer/orchestra/recording/etc format of metadata and organization that classical uses, also doesn't fit very well.

Classical film scores are definitely good fits, because they have composers and there exists multiple recordings done by different orchestras and so on.

It may be that some categories of music that aren't traditional western classical will fit right in, and might be put here instead of in the regular Apple Music, who knows. But mainly, this is just a way of finally recognizing that Artist/Album/Track doesn't work and never worked for classical, so it's a way of correctly organizing/browsing/consuming classical music.

This is exactly it—it’s the metadata problem.

The question is not “how do we draw the line between classical music and non-classical music”, but how do we fix the problem of sorting / organizing music that has a known composer and multiple recordings by different musicians / orchestras.

Even though people play covers in popular music styles, people rarely care about organizing the music that way. I don’t think, “I want to hear Yesterday” and then look up a list of covers. But I do think, “I want to listen to Rite of Spring” and then look up a list of recordings.

Even though composers are a big deal in Jazz, I still usually care more about the performer. Most of the time, I’m not going to ask the computer for a list of Autumn Leaves recordings.

Seems to me that the metadata problem inevitably becomes prominent over time. Good luck trying to find all music composed or performed by George Harrison for instance.

And some musicians do rerecord popular songs, which means you've got several different performances of the same thing. This isn't even that rare with live albums.

I mean sure for the most recent pop music it won't be a problem, but that's a very narrow window of time.

Lol yeah exactly.

I do think it kinda makes sense, because classical music listening is more oriented around certain performances by specific musicians, rather than the piece itself, which normal music platforms aren't well suited for.

But that isn't quite unique to classical, which as you've pointed out is going to be a denotational quagmire and almost certain to piss people off. Hopefully they take the dumbly funny but also appropriate approach of just also putting jam bands, gospel and dj sets in there, which share this performance-orientation with classical music.

To add to this good point — jazz is another genre where the performer is hugely important.

Yeah for sure. I didn't mention it because there's a lot of overlap between jazz and classical listeners so probably some awareness of that already. And both groups tend to think highly of their own tastes in my experience; I wanted to draw attention to this being a broadly shared characteristic of many types of music completely orthogonal to how "sophisticated" it is.

An interesting question for sure. I think film scores tend to have one canonical recording, which sets them apart from other 'classical' music in which the interpretating performer is of high importance. But it's always going to be a blurry line, and arbitrary choices will need to be made.

I think that reasonable approach would be to include all music that has been published as sheet music first and foremost and where there is no one canonical recording that renders all other recordings to be mere tributes.

Only in a few countries where it's now the 28th. EU and US have a while longer to wait.

Seeing the same. Not yet available in the US

This page seems to indicate that it is not in fact out.

I am pretty excited for this though. I do like classical music but it can be a pain to figure out which recording of a song to listen to. Some interpretations really annoy me especially with respect to piano music. Orchestral music I don't know as much about and most of the recordings I've listened seem fine although I know some people have a lot of opinions on various recordings/interpretations.

That was one of my favorite things about Primephonic, they had human-recommended recordings of most pieces in common repertoire.

My goto way of finding stuff is to ask a friend for a YouTube video and then use youtube-dl to yoink the audio. :)

On one hand, I’m stoked because I only listen to instrumentals, so this seems great for me. On the other… Why not just fix the UI of Apple Music? It drives me bonkers that when I go to the browse section, it is 99% crap that I would NEVER listen to. Everything I listen to is instrumentals and sleep music. Ambient noise, etc. Why are you recommending The Beach Boys to me??? No, I do not want to listen to Cardi B. When the have I ever listened to country music? Never! Why is country one of the top categories under browse?

I want to browse for music that I actually listen to! Why is there no option for me to remove categories that I will never listen to.

>Why are you recommending The Beach Boys to me???

Maybe they were recommending this https://music.apple.com/us/album/instrumental-hits-remastere...

"I am hostile to the very idea of my taste changing" is hopefully a minority stance and one I'm glad they don't encourage.

I don't detect hostility in the desire to keep search and discovery features separate. Have you ever repeated a Google search with quotes to exclude their adorable notion of synonyms, especially for tech terms?

I have very expansive taste in music, and enjoy Cardi B as well as Stravinsky (though not usually back-to-back). In a given week I might listen to rock, hip-hop, blues, classical, folk, world music, more hip-hop, and even Cantonese pop songs (when my partner is in the car), but I still get the frustration!

Apple Music's weekly customized playlist for me was consistently including 2-3 songs of modern country, which is the only genre I don't listen to. It was maddening, and I had to reset and clear my entire multi-year history to get it to stop.

If this stance keeps people away from Cardi B, I would surely hope it becomes more popular.

Cardi B is legitimately one of the most skilled rappers of her era lol I think you're letting something prejudice you against her music maybe.

Yeah. I studied classical guitar for years; this is probably the source of my prejudice, along with the fact that I was raised in a home where people read.

Speaking for myself, I have my ways of discovering new music, and none of them is about recommendations in my music app; when I use Deezer: I expect the music I deliberately choose to have there to be playing; anything else is a distraction.

Is this US-only? Still not available in Canada from what I can see, still showing 'Coming Soon' with an expected release of tomorrow, March 28.

It's also showing 3/28 for the US.

Not available in the US.

Was there really that much demand for this kind of app? I'm still going to check it out. Hopefully it's snappier than regular AM and they can use this app as a "testing ground" for changes to the other app.

I believe they bought an app that was already providing a similar service, [0] so they didn’t need to purchase and organise the library themselves. I’d imagine this was pretty cheap and fast to build, compared to other apple projects!

Low investment and pre-existing user base to migrate seems like a pretty good deal.

[0] https://www.apple.com/ca/newsroom/2021/08/apple-acquires-cla...

For people confused why they don’t see it, on Reddit, the only people seeing it are in places like Singapore and Malaysia.

Therefore I assume it launches at a specific time in each location?

it is scheduled for March 28th globally, not specifically US march 28th. As those countries are already on March 28th, or very close to it, they got it before.

Let's just wait for this old tired globe to spin a bit more, and it will available for us too.

To be more specific, it wasn’t the 28th yet in those locations when I commented.

Which is why I said it’s launched at a specific time per locale. Like 9pm on the 27th or something like that.

Same general point but worth mentioning that it was earlier than the 28th there

> Requires an Apple Music subscription (Individual, Student, Family, or Apple One). Not available with the Apple Music Voice Plan.

This reads to me that it does not allow local/offline libraries. Is that correct?

In my experience with the non-classical app, Apple Music has good but not perfect support for a local/offline library. I'm not sure, but you can probably do local playback of offline music even without a subscription. If you do have a subscription, it will actually let you upload your local library so that it can be streamed to any device (e.g. upload on PC, stream on iPhone). The two imperfections are that it's limited to AAC quality even if you upload a lossless file, and that it will sometimes "match" your local file to something in the Apple Music Library, and it's not an actual perfect match.

All I want to know is if this app has cross fade. It’s been on android forever but not the iOS Apple Music and it makes no sense.

This is super interesting to me because I've never understood the appeal of crossfade; I've always assumed it was just a holderover from music being played on the radio, and that the radio did it just to be able to squeeze in more ads. What's the appeal of crossfade for a listener?

For me specifically it’s the ability to seamlessly loop a track especially those with silence in the intro/outro. More specifically I’d love to see it implemented so I can play rain/waves sounds without a noticeable start/stop to the track.

Still not available here (US).

Future is already here and all that jazz…

Still not available here (UK) yet... says tomorrow

Not available in NL yet either (coming tomorrow).

Hmm, I use Dutch AppStore and it says that it is available on the March 28th.

Strange since they acquired a Dutch startup Primephonic for this

Not yet for me.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com