Apple Music Classical

I was very excited to see that Apple was putting out a music app devoted to classical music. I immediately clicked on the pre-order button. I am disappointed with Apple. This app is an iPhone only app. It never occurred to me that it would not be designed for the iPad. I never checked on that. I love my iPads. Yes I have more than one. Different ages and different sizes. This morning I was on my iPad when the notification came through that the new app was available. I opened it up and I thought something was wrong. Why did it look so small? (Like an iPhone only app.) I hit the the arrows to enlarge the image. At least there is that. Why wouldn’t Apple make the app for the iPad. There is already the Music app for the iPad. There are many wonderful features of the new Classical Music app. I love that the title of the music (or movement) is displayed in a readable format. This would be better on the iPad. I love the information button that gives complete information about the work, catalog number, artists (yes, plural!) label, and release date. This would be better on the iPad. I haven’t finished exploring the app. I look forward to doing just that. However, I am forced to ask why it is not an iPad app as well. iPad is a well loved and used Apple creation. Music is their baby. This is all their property and work. Why is Apple neglecting the iPad here? I love Apple because they take the time to do things right. I hope that is what is happening here. They put the iPhone version first and the iPad will follow. For now this is a 2-star app. It could be 5-stars. Bring it to the iPad.

You might ask why do you need another app for a genre of music? Classical music has something that no other genre has to deal with when searching for music: you have composers and you have the artists that perform the music. And if I search up Led Zeppelin, I will pretty much just got all of the Led Zeppelin albums. But if I search up Beethoven, there are hundreds of different albums performed by hundreds of different performers. The Beatles perform let it be. But there are hundreds of performers playing Beethoven’s piano sonatas, hundreds of orchestras playing, Beethoven, symphonies, etc. on the original Apple Music app, searching for a composer was hard because it was very artist centric. It was hard to find albums by composers like Beethoven, because I would most like at albums by artists, and then the algorithm would feed me more albums by that artist. This new app is very composer centric. It’s also very genre centric because in classical music, you have baroque classical romantic, 20th century, etc. If you like classical music, this app is well worth it. There are only two things that I would change: one as I noticed when I go to delete albums off the original app. They also delete on the classical app. I would like to have the classical app, dedicated only to classical albums, and be able to delete them on my other app. And the last thing is some classical pieces are very long. Symphonies, operas, and other pieces could be up to an hour. Sometimes you don’t have time to sit through the whole thing. It would be awesome if there was a way to book mark your place, so you can go back later and pick up from where you left off. Other than that, I love the app, and I am having fun learning how to use it.

I am a huge fan of the genre classical music, as a music student this app is amazing for helping me find artists and pieces. However, for decades now classical art has ignored the contributions of many minority groups such as people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals. This apps suggestions for time periods stretching from the medieval era of western music to the 21st century feature an alarming amount of music from straight white males and disregard or flat out fail to feature works from artists of different backgrounds. As a musician studying these eras of music currently it’s our duty to consider these artists that contribute to the genre. Going forward I hope that the broad spectrum of “classical” music apple plans to feature a wider range of artists than our typical musicians from the western canon. Stylistically the app works well and features that classic apple design philosophy. However, you can definitely tell this app was designed by individuals who don’t have too much knowledge on classical music. Credit where credit is due, this app does a far better job of classifying music based on their titles and publications but fails in other regards. At this time it feels a little cliché with its design as THE classical music app. While this app is still in its infancy I hope that moving forward Apple will be more motivated by classical listeners, artists and experts rather than a stereotypical understanding of the incredibly broad genre that is classical music.