Apple Music Classical, a standalone app that specializes in the genre, will be available on March 28. The company had originally planned to release a classical-focused app by the end of last year after acquiring music service Prime phonic in 2021.
Rather than being bundled into iOS, it will be available as a stand-alone download from the App Store. A standard Apple Music subscription includes access to the app.
“With fully optimized search, Apple Music Classical makes it quick and easy to find any recording in the world’s largest classical music catalogue, and listeners can enjoy the highest audio quality available and experience many classical favorites in a whole new way,” Apple wrote in a press release.
Classical music has frequently been cited as one of the use cases for spatial audio, which adds a sense of presence to recordings. “hundreds of curated playlists, thousands of exclusive albums, insightful composer biographies, deep-dive guides for many key works, intuitive browsing features, and many more” will be available through the app.
Apple Music Classical will stream at up to 192 kHz/24 hi-res lossless and will include “thousands” of spatial audio recordings, according to Apple. It will, like Prime phonic, offer comprehensive and accurate classical metadata – a challenge for services that cram all music genres into one destination – and you will be able to search “by composer, work, conductor, or even catalogue number and find specific recordings instantly. “Apple Music Classical will initially be available only on iOS, but an Android version is “coming soon,” according to Apple’s press release. The regular Apple Music service is already cross-platform, so it stands to reason that Classical will follow suit.
It will be available “globally, where Apple Music is available” and will support iOS 15.4 and newer. According to the company, China, Korea, Japan, and Taiwan will follow later.
