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Apple launches its new classical music streaming app for pre-order

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Re: Apple launches its new classical music streaming app for pre-order

#61

Post by 1123581321 »

crazygringo wrote: post #3

This is fantastic, classical music absolutely needs a dedicated interface since the organization by composer and multi-movement works is so different from popular music. But I wonder if it will help with finding which version of a work to listen to. A given symphony or piano prelude might have 100 or more recordings. If you go to classical music forum postings, you can usually find a thread asking "what's your favori…

If it's like PrimePhonic, the classical streaming service Apple bought and converted into this, it has educational content that guides you towards some of the best recordings. The main interface is more about discovering and searching for certain recordings yourself, though.

Re: Apple launches its new classical music streaming app for pre-order

#63

Post by maxique »

dhosek wrote: post #47
KingMob wrote: post #16

Nice, but it would be great if Apple fixed the UI and bugs in Apple Music first. I can't hide the non-streaming parts I'll never use, but sometimes search keeps directing me to it. And that's when searching itself isn't wildly broken. A quarter of the time, the search bar loses focus after each character, requiring me to click back in or reboot the app.

Me, I’d prefer to hide the streaming parts that I don’t use.

You can turn off Apple Music in Settings, which essentially makes it just the old-style Music app.

Re: Apple launches its new classical music streaming app for pre-order

#64

Post by flipthefrog »

One very good streaming service for classical music is idagio.com

I can only hope that they won't offer auto generated playlists the way Spotify does. No matter what you listen to - Stravinsky, Stockhausen, 12 tone music, baroque, opera - it immediately starts playing the same 3 or 4 pieces by Vivaldi, Satie, Chopin right after the album is finished

There was a period where classical music on Spotify was really good. The search results were clearly curated by someone - search for Bach, and artists like Gould and Gardiner would come first; Abbado and Bernstein for Mahler, and so on. Now it's much more random - search for Beethoven and you get a lot of "Beethoven for Relaxation" and a lot of recordings that would be no one's first choice - while something as essential as Karajan's recording of the 9 symphonies is pushed waaaay down in the results

Re: Apple launches its new classical music streaming app for pre-order

#65

Post by kashunstva »

crazygringo wrote: post #3

This is fantastic, classical music absolutely needs a dedicated interface since the organization by composer and multi-movement works is so different from popular music. But I wonder if it will help with finding which version of a work to listen to. A given symphony or piano prelude might have 100 or more recordings. If you go to classical music forum postings, you can usually find a thread asking "what's your favori…

I like the idea of some sort of curation process but I’m much less interested in an algorithmic ranking and much more interested in _why_ a particular recording is favoured so that I can see whether it lines up with what I understand about the work.

The example I raise is the hundreds of recordings of the Bach Sonatas and Partitas for unaccompanied violin. An algorithmic ranking would likely put Hilary Hahn’s recordings near the top. But I find her approach very “direct”, metrical, and “in the string.” Christian Tetzlaff has a more “Baroque” reading. As a listener, I would want to know that. But this is probably too much to ask. I was happy enough when Apple started recognizing multi-movement works. Now if they stop calling everything a “song” I’ll be ecstatic.

Re: Apple launches its new classical music streaming app for pre-order

#66

Post by m000 »

fckgw wrote: post #25
ben7799 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed there's a problem on streaming services where low quality artists basically spam the service with extremely low quality recordings of classical pieces. They often sound like they just got a midi file of the score and played it back through a piece of software. The scores for most classical music are public domain so there is nothing "wrong" about this but no one really wants to listen to low quality MIDI…

Apple Music actually has a lot of human editors and curators controlling playlists and spotlighting featured music. I'm sure their classical service will be similar.

That is true, but given that classical music probably has a much smaller audience to offset the cost of curation by humans, I wonder how the service will be profitable for Apple.

My guess (which could be wildly off base) is that classical music is probably producing material in a much slower pace than pop music, so if the current catalog is curated once, updates will be incremental. So, given enough time, the service will eventually be profitable. And Apple can take on the task because they have deep enough pockets to not worry about recouping the cost of initial curation ASAP.

Re: Apple launches its new classical music streaming app for pre-order

#67

Post by poulsbohemian »

mwest217 wrote: post #41
vestrigi wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have an accessible example for two different recordings of a composition that each shine in their own light?

My favorite example of this is the Glenn Gould recordings of Bach's Goldberg Variations. He has 2 famous recordings - one recorded in 1955, another in 1981. They are very different in tone.

And then try Schiff or Dinnerstein to hear the same music in yet another way…

Re: Apple launches its new classical music streaming app for pre-order

#69

Post by dhosek »

maxique wrote: post #63
dhosek wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me, I’d prefer to hide the streaming parts that I don’t use.

You can turn off Apple Music in Settings, which essentially makes it just the old-style Music app.

But the key real estate at the bottom of the screen is not used well under that circumstance—I’d really like to have more useful options there than Library - Radio - Search

Re: Apple launches its new classical music streaming app for pre-order

#70

Post by KingMob »

KingMob wrote: post #16

Nice, but it would be great if Apple fixed the UI and bugs in Apple Music first. I can't hide the non-streaming parts I'll never use, but sometimes search keeps directing me to it. And that's when searching itself isn't wildly broken. A quarter of the time, the search bar loses focus after each character, requiring me to click back in or reboot the app.

Just got a new bug today: the "Quit Music" option is disabled. I can no longer even quit the damn app!
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