
As of launch, Apple's curated playlists tilt much more toward Classical 101 than deep-dive delights, and there are no liner notes or libretti available.
#Apple music ambify android#
Moreover, if you use an Android phone, you're still out of luck - at least for now - and Apple Music Classical isn't available on a desktop. A service is only as good as its metadata. Moreover, it gives an incorrect release date for the album (1995 rather than the correct 1988). Instead, it lists the conductor (Edo de Waart), orchestra (Orchestra of St. For example, when I looked up the Nonesuch recording of John Adams' opera Nixon in China, starring James Maddalena as the former president, Apple Music Classical had no metadata on any of the singers. The much-vaunted metadata listing soloists and other performers are sometimes missing.

They're the ones who listen to the widest variety of genres, way above the average of your average listener of music."Īpple Music Classical is not perfect. They're actually the biggest music fans there are. "What we found," he says, "is that classical customers are not sitting in an elite corner somewhere. Jonathan Gruber, head of classical, Apple MusicĪccording to Gruber, Apple's research has found that far from being music snobs, classical fans actually listen to many more kinds of music than listeners to other music genres. They're the ones who listen to the widest variety of genres, way above the average of your average listener of music. 5 "Emperor" - for which there are 817 (!) recordings available - the app provides a brief text introduction to the work, a human curator-recommended "Editor's Choice" recording, several "popular recordings" of the piece, and then a list of some related works, including recordings of other Beethoven works for piano, as well as suggestions of other pieces by other composers (Mozart, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Saint-Saens) that might appeal as well.Ĭlassical customers are not sitting in an elite corner somewhere. For popular pieces of music, such as Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. In my exploration of Apple Music Classical, the app usually gave me the results I sought on the first search attempt. Instead, I get a recording of Chopin's Nocturne Op. After I search "Beethoven Symphony 9," the first hit I get is not a symphony, not a piece for orchestra, and not even music by Beethoven. (Not bad, considering that Karajan recorded the Ninth Symphony four times over his career.) If I were a newcomer to classical music, I wouldn't get much information about this recording, nor would I have much in the way of guided pathways to aid further exploration. The first match I get on Spotify is conductor Herbert von Karajan's 1984 recording with the Berlin Philharmonic. On any streaming platform, I get back hundreds - and sometimes thousands - of results.

Some services have improved significantly, while others have not.įor one example: Say I want to find a great recording of Beethoven's grand and glorious Symphony No.

The last time I wrote at length about classical music metadata and streaming services was back in 2015 - an eon ago, in technical terms. The Record Why Can't Streaming Services Get Classical Music Right?
