8 ms·
Apple launches its new classical music streaming app for pre-order
- hulitu 4y ago> These can be streamed in high-quality audio of up to 192 kHz/24-bit Hi-Res Lossless up to. And down to ? 0 bps ?
- dawnerd 4y agoOlder recordings are simply not going to have higher quality available and it wouldn't really be beneficial to stream it at a higher rate just for the sake of hitting a marketing number.
- seanw444 4y agoMight be hard for them to stream if you don't have a network connection.
- AlanYx 4y agoLowest quality is probably the same as Apple Music's standard quality: 256kbps AAC (lower on Apple Watch).
- tomComb 4y agoYou seem to be getting downvoted, but generally I think consumers should be wary of this phrasing ('up to') and it should be called out. It is often a way for companies (or headlines) to seem to be claiming something without actually committing to anything.
- crazygringo 4y agoIn many cases I'd agree, but in this case I think it's perfectly fine (and there's no other way) since Apple is just a distributor for other people's recordings. I think it's pretty clear Apple is making "192 kHz/24-bit Hi-Res Lossless" distribution and listening available, but obviously it's up to labels and artists to supply actual recordings at that level. And many can't, simply because it wasn't mastered at that level, or wasn't even recorded at it.
- crazygringo 4y agoThis 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 favorite performance of..." and quickly find that there are 1 or 2 or 3 versions widely considered the best. I really want a crowdsourced version of this -- both the most-listened and highest-rated recordings of a given work by a given composer. Because it's a lot of research to do otherwise. And some people might think it can't matter that much, how different could they really be? But it's astonishing. The same work in the hands of one conductor+orchestra plods along dead and disjointed and you never want to hear it again, while another one soars full of life, the work makes sense and it becomes your favorite.
- ben7799 4y agoI'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 playback versus a human performance. When you search for a given piece of classical music you have to wade through all this low quality stuff. It would be great if Apple Music finds a way to combat that. I recently switched from Amazon to Apple, Apple generally seems to have better control of the catalog so maybe it's less of a problem there.
- behnamoh 4y agoGreat, because we need more specialized apps. I love classical music but I would rather use Spotify for that purpose because at this point I have realized the only thing important for Apple is money. I prefer not to further contribute to a trillion dollar company that has so much restrictions in their ecosystem.
- gwill 4y agospotify is ripping their app apart to try and make money off of podcasts, audio books and video. it's become an app that 'also plays music' at this point vs a music streaming app.
- ben7799 4y agoSure, spotify doesn't care that much about money. Must be why they are on the stingy side of compensating artists compared to Apple and just about every other streaming service.
- newsclues 4y agoNot everything has to be for or about YOU. Maybe this will be useful for others and you can continue to do without this.
- scarface74 4y agoWell you are right about one thing. Since Spotify hasn’t made a profit - ever - they definitely don’t seem to care about money.
- KingMob 4y agoNice, 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.
- w10-1 4y agoLet's hope it doesn't kill the only radio station with sense but without ads: KDFC
- KerrAvon 4y agoKDFC is a great -- maybe the best -- resource to just listen and not have to think about what you want to listen to. Apple Classical will the go-to for when you're looking for something in particular, even if it's something vague. If I'm in the mood for Bach, I'll go Apple Classical. If I'm doing dishes and just want to hear something, I'll put on KDFC. What would kill KDFC would be Apple putting up a really good streaming station for classical.
- AdmiralAsshat 4y agoWelp, I estimate this will kill my NPR Classical Radio app within a year or so.
- WillAdams 4y agoI'm still surprised that there isn't a requirement for streaming services to carry publicly beneficial content (and pay a license fee for such content to NPR/PBS).
- dhosek 4y agoThe Republicans in congress hate NPR/PBS and have done everything they can to cut off any source of funding to it. Newt Gingrich famously wanted to zero out public broadcasting funds in the 90s.
- Georgelemental 4y agoWhy should I be forced to subsidize regime propaganda, in order to be allowed to subscribe to a streaming service? (Used to listen to NPR regularly, but in the last few years my local station has become absolutely intolerable)
- WillAdams 4y agoWouldn't payment only be rendered for content viewed/listened to? You should contact your local station and let them know your views.
- visarga 4y agoYeah, nice, but I will still use YouTube and Reddit for classical music. I can get access to lesser known composers and artists on YouTube, and Reddit will surface better suggestions and commentary. Even the YT comments are good quality in classical music videos.
- waffletower 4y agoHopefully there will be a MacOS app as well.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- zokier 4y agoInteresting that it took ~18 months to Appleify Primephonic, I hope the extra time in the oven is reflected in polish of the app. The article mentions that Android app is also coming, any guesses for Windows (or Linux...) desktop clients?
- MichaelZuo 4y agoPretty odd exclusion list: "Available worldwide where Apple Music is offered, excluding China, Japan, Korea, Russia, Taiwan, Turkey, Afghanistan and Pakistan." Is it a rights issue?
- steponlego 4y agoI can’t wait until there’s a different app for every single musical genre, all of which are subscription services! YAY!
- Aaron2222 4y agoIn fairness, this one is included in the standard Apple Music subscription.
- flipthefrog 4y agoOne 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