Speaker 1: Oh, I'm excited. This is the kind of performance from Apple you don't see
Speaker 2: Every day. Sh
Speaker 1: Hey him. Thank you. This week we saw the debut of a new body of work from Apple orchestrated by engineers for over a year and a half. The Apple Music classical app,
Speaker 1: This is a separate app only on iOS, so don't need this anymore. It [00:00:30] works as a duet with the main music app. So yes, it means Apple users may find themselves switching between two different apps for streaming music. Sounds complicated, right? Well just like actual classical music, enjoying it doesn't have to be as intimidating as it may seem at first. And yet, streaming classical music in a logical way is a complicated problem to solve. Apple successfully created an app to present classical libraries intelligently and it gives users plenty of fresh programming to discover and browse. [00:01:00] And that alone is a feat considering this app is juggling 20,000 composers in over 115,000 works, apple says there are over 5 million classical tracks and where do you start when a single famous piece can have hundreds of recordings? There's just a crazy amount of data for music spanning hundreds of years in different styles. Not to mention people searching for something in different languages, but there is one more thing to consider here beyond just good organization. Did Apple make something enjoyable to come back to and to get people wanting to sign up for Apple [00:01:30] Music? If Apple misses some notes at launch, will future attempts to better music libraries be soured? We will go over the dynamic of what I like and what I don't like. Some things major, some minor. I'm Bridget Carey and this is one more thing and ode to Apple Music. Classical in four movements.
Speaker 1: Let's dive right in with examples of how the navigation is different enough to make classical music welcoming to everyone. Oh, you want some Beethoven? You want the piano concerto [00:02:00] Number five, while Apple's got 491 recordings, what do you do with that much information? It needs expert curation obviously. So Apple's got a team pointing you toward where to start. Popular works have an editor's choice of which performance it thinks is worthy of your ears along with other popular recordings to highlight. And quality is really important here. So it lets you find tracks with high res lossless audio. There were also tracks with Dolby Atmos spatial audio, so it makes you feel like [00:02:30] you're in a 360 degree sounds scape of instruments just hitting you from all directions if you have the speakers to enjoy that kind of thing. And other music streaming apps, if you had tried to search for something specific, it would be a struggle because information is often truncated and cut off and finding a certain performance through search can be tricky.
Speaker 1: This classical app has a lot more data points to search through, such as all the artists that were involved, the nicknames for the piece and when it was released, it clearly divides up a work [00:03:00] by its various movements. We're not just talking about lists of music, for example. Look at Fran's least apple's making this app look good with fresh art. Guiding you to popular works. Throw one in a little biography to teach you something. And if you like a style, you can see related composers. Now experts will find it easy to hunt for what they want quickly, but I'm not an expert. I just appreciate the art after taking years of piano lessons as a kid and that helps me make cringey music puns for you now. And that also [00:03:30] takes me to what I love the most about this app. As someone who didn't go to Juilliard but did go to the Juilliard gift shop to buy this baton on
Speaker 1: The Listen Now page has so many gems to enjoy without putting too much thought into it because someone else at Apple is putting thought into it for me. Aside from highlighting various albums, you expect that kind of thing, they're putting work into having different curated playlists. Some playlists are from Frees, artists like Yo-Yo Ma, [00:04:00] and some are recommendations made by mood. It'll keep changing up over time. Some playlists are even broken down just by instrument. So if you're in the mood for some flute jams, get down with Dee <laugh>. Apple knows it has to hook classical fans, so in a serving up a lot of exclusive performances and albums as well. But I get hooked on some of the programming that they made. There is this nine part series called The Story of Classical. It is a little bit of a podcast and a little bit [00:04:30] of a college crash course guiding you through the wide variety of classical music that's out there like a beginner's guide. I'm on the first episode and so far it's pretty good. But getting started on this app does take a little getting used to because you can sometimes find yourself straddling two music app worlds. And this takes us to the third movement, the dissonance.
Speaker 1: These two apple music apps have some crossover, but not every setting will match up. Exactly. Listening to an Apple or playlist [00:05:00] in one app does make it appear in the other app under recently played. And if you save it to your library in one, you should see it in the other app as well. So for example, I had film scores already in my main library and that showed up in my classical app. Now if you find something alike in classical, you should add it to your library or make yourself a playlist. But there is not yet a way to download a song in classical, but there is a workaround to make a playlist in classical switch on over to the main music app and in the main, that's [00:05:30] where you're gonna download the tracks so you can listen offline. So a few extra steps, but something that I'm thinking Apple could improve in a later release. Another way the classical app falls flat. Well, it's only iOS. I listen to most classical music while I'm working and it would be nice to have access to that through the Mac or if you're like me and enjoy yelling at your Siri speakers to play things for you. Well, no, Siri cannot pull up things from the classical app. Siri only connected to Apple music, at least for now. Uh, I like to see Apple stitch these worlds [00:06:00] together better with Siri.
Speaker 1: I like talking about this app because music is important. It connects us across time. It's human emotion across cultures. So it's kind of cool and it's fascinating to see Apple take on a daunting task of redesigning how we think about streaming music. All because pop music just isn't as complicated as classical works. Sometimes we think of classical as a bunch of old music written by guys and powdered wigs, but it's got more depth than that. [00:06:30] Making it better to surge and discover these tracks is gonna help us keep better records for old and modern work. These digital libraries are just getting huge and better organization and discovery tools. It's gonna help us not lose track of works from the past, including pieces from women composers who may not have had as much attention as men over the years. This app didn't just appear out of the blue dannu back in 2021, apple purchased the classical streaming app Prime phonic to spin out its own version.
Speaker 1: [00:07:00] Now Apple said it would be released in 2022, so it's just three months late. Apple moved at a slower tempo than expected. A bit aio you might say. Now, if you want all the details, you can check out my previous video detailing how it came to be and why streaming classical music has so many challenges. But if you've been poking around the classical app, I do wanna hear from you in the comments on what you think of the experience so far. For me, although I'm disappointed I can't use Siri with it, I say this launch is pretty cool so far. Break out the brass. It's time to celebrate, not [00:07:30] just for the music experts. This deserves some fanfare for the common man. It's been quite the week for Apple News. We got iOS 16.4, apple Pay later is now available. And we got a date for W W D C. Mark those calendars for June 5th. There's gonna be lots of Apple action to follow, so subscribe and I'll see you next week.
Speaker 3: The well deserved rapt applause for that finale.
