Apple Music Classical

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1. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

   Need tvOS and macOS versions. This is not useful to me as a phone app. Would be useful as a tvOS or macos app. I have tried the web app on macos saved as a desktop app, but the user interface interaction is poor compared with a real app. Please port to the other Apple platforms!

2. ★★★★★slow performance and long loading times

   Nothing Works and Super Slow. Don’t get me started on how awful playlists are here. I got so frustrated with Apple Classical that I fully just got rid of Apple Music altogether and opted to go to Spotify. They sold us on a product and delivered us a lemon.

3. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

   No Need For this App. Trying to relegate classical music to another app is an offense to culture.

4. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

   Only Western Classical?. There is a surprising lack of curation and content related to Indian and Carnatic classical music. Ali Akbar Khan is not on here? Really? Extra weird because many contemporary western composers have been deeply influenced by these musical forms. Apple is forgetting to include a whole realm of classical music in their metadata because of cultural bias.

5. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

   Another poor music app. I am listening to a Beethoven compilation that is listed as an album. I add the album to favorites and navigate to favorites and nothing is listed.

6. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

   Bruh. Can y’all update the app gang and add a recommended to playlist and add pins y’all trippin people really love classical let’s make it a better app. I’d give it no stars if I could gang.

7. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

   How is it better than Music?. I don’t understand how this is better than Music. Every time I launch, music has to load in this app where it’s “just there” in the Music app. It’s pretty glitchy too.

8. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

   Classical Musicians. It’s frustrating that, as classical musicians, Apple won’t accept standard distribution. We shouldn’t have to jump through a series of awkward hoops to release our music.

9. ★★★★★subscription and paid restrictions

   Bait & Switch. I asked Alexa (a device at my home) to play classical Flute music and it/she couldn’t do that until I asked for a certain flutist. I was requesting it to be played on Amazon Music. At that time ad appeared on my iPhone telling me that I could get Apple Classical music at no charge! I thought wow- that’s really cool! So I downloaded the app, only to be told it wouldn’t work until I subscribed to Apple Music. Aha; so there is a cost! That’s not right. I buy a few tracks here and there from the iTunes Store, but I don’t care to pay a monthly fee to Apple Music. With Alexa/Amazon. I can get 98% of all I want with the free service. It doesn’t do well with finding Classical Flute music unless you ask for a particular artist, but it performs great with all the concerti featuring other instruments I’ve asked of it. It is fine that Apple Music wants to charge for its service. We live in a system of Capitalism, after all, so if they can get users to pay, then that’s the business model they choose to sell. It must be working for them- if not they’d change it. However, if there was a disclaimer in the fine print, I missed it. I saw no asterisk of the actual charge, e.g. I feel certain I’m not the first person this has happened to. Apple: please change your ad to something less deceptive.

10. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    The Idea of this app is great, but not executed well.. I love the idea of having a music app specially for classical music, as I go back and forth between classical, and other music all the time. This issue with this app is it is clunky. The results you get when you search for specific pieces is a bit weird, as it will give you the entire symphony that piece is part of instead of just that piece. Also, if you are ever in the middle of a symphony, and you have to stop listening for a time, when you go back to it, the app takes you back to the beginning of the symphony, instead of where you left off. It’s a bit frustrating. The app idea is cool, but I’ll likely stick to the normal Apple Music app for classical music.

11. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Lacking for Opera fans.. In many ways this app is fantastic, until you try to search for a particular recording. There is no way to filter out Aria’s from compilation albums if you’re wanting only full recordings. Many less popular, but far from obscure works have very poor selection. For Example Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah, which I consider a seminal American 20th century piece has NO complete recording available. They do have Garfein’s Elmer Gantry speaking of obscure works, so kudos for that, but the collection needs expanding across the board.

12. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Virtually Useless. Every other piece mysteriously stops in the middle of a movement and jumps to the next movement without warning.

13. ★★★★★crashes, freezes and errors

    Broken?. Whenever I add albums or playlist in this app, the only show up in the regular music app, not in the classical app so my library just is empty when using this app. Is this a known bug because it feels pretty major

14. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Too many serious flaws. Audio quality preferences suddenly disappear and have to be reset often, when I add albums of late I don’t see them in my library, though I see them in the regular Apple Music app under recently added, and why can’t this app load albums quickly and let me scroll through them as effectively as I can do in the Apple Music app?

15. ★★★★★negative experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Pointlessly Pointed. For the love of Bach, just integrate this into the Apple Music app! It’s a waste of space out here on its own, and can’t get consistent love from the dev team so falls into disrepair occasionally.

16. ★★★★★mixed experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Cannot Shuffle Playlists. I would give this 5 stars if I could shuffle playlists within this app instead of having to do it within the regular Music app.

17. ★★★★★mixed experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Ok. It does its job well, but yet, Apple Music has the same songs and some of the intonations on how it’s set up makes it a bit confusing

18. ★★★★★slow performance and long loading times

    Great for discovery, needs performance help. Same problem for the last year. Great classical music app hampered by poor performance. Scroll any long playlist or long list of playlists and you will quickly see regular Apple Music is massively faster at this simple task. Why does Apple ignore this app that just needs a little love?

19. ★★★★★mixed experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    General comment. The time to play the album should be displayed at the top of the page in a prominent position as it was formerly. Also the song should be displayed at the top not below. It’s very poorly designed now The music selections are good Layout terrible!

20. ★★★★★mixed experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Welcome Addition Marred by Poor CarPlay Support. Classical music lovers have long suffered under music apps that just do not understand anything that’s not built around a standard created by the LP and 45 RPM single that still serves as a straight jacket to modern music today. The idea that a piece of music might last longer than a few minutes or that listeners might be interested in more than just the name of the singer or the band is something mainstream music apps can’t wrap their head around. While there are excellent services that specialize in classical music, Apple alone has taken it upon themselves to bridge the gap between the two. This makes Apple Music a fantastic value for those of us with one foot in both camps. I have two complaints, one technical and one philosophical. The technical one is the easier. Classical pieces can be long and I love listening to complete symphonies or operas in the car. But if one stops with any frequency, you’ll quickly find that this app loses its place almost all the time. Spend an hour getting into Le Nozze di Figaro while driving, stop for lunch, get back in your car and it’s forgotten where you left off and starts all over again. This is tolerable if you’re listening to three minute songs. It’s tolerable if you’re listening at home. It’s intolerable in the car. Please fix this, Apple! The philosophical question is much harder. How much cross-pollination is there between different music genres. If a friend wants to introduce me to something new on Apple Music, that’s straightforward and well known. If I want to introduce them to something, then it’s download the app, a big hurdle. Classical music already has a reputation of living off from the mainstream in its own walled garden. Someday, perhaps, someone will come up with an app that transcends the differences between the various genres, allowing everything to be enjoyed fully. This app is definitely a step in that direction, but only a step. Hopefully there’s further progress to come. Until that happy day, we’re less than five stars. But please, for Bach’s sake, fix the CarPlay!

21. ★★★★★mixed experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    No shuffle. Really?. The app doesn’t offer a shuffle option, so you’re forced to play playlist songs in the same exact order every time. Ridiculous!

22. ★★★★★mixed experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Too hard to add to playlists. I use Apple Music religiously and I love Classical music and yes this is easier to find it, adding to a created playlist is a pain in the donkey

23. ★★★★★mixed experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    No desktop app?. This is great on my iPhone, but why no desktop app or Apple TV app?

24. ★★★★★subscription and paid restrictions

    Almost there, but still waiting…. Update: 3.0, and still no native Apple TV version. It’s hard to imagine any good reason for this. Everything below still applies. Dropping to three stars because there’s still no Apple TV app. I’ll add stars back when one is released. (Point update: 2.1 Adds CarPlay, which is great. The rest below still applies, though….) Update: With the 2.0 release of the Classical Music app, it’s now way past time for the release of native versions for Apple TV and MacOS. I like the new booklets feature and really appreciate that this app exists at all, but it’s feeling more like I should deduct another star for the missing versions of this app. ——- First and foremost, an app that caters to classical music’s different organizational conventions is revelatory. Classical music recordings as a music store afterthought is an age-old problem, dating back to most bricks-and-mortar record stores that had a few bins off in the corner, organized by some kid who could care less about it. That carried forward into iTunes and then Apple Music. Something as simple as browsing by composer or instrument wasn’t possible. Enter this classical music app. Having things organized based on the greater complexity inherent in the genre is not only great for enthusiasts, but will help people new to classical music finally get past the “Best of Mozart” and “Soothing Classical Piano” compilations before they lose interest. Even better, having this feature available as an included part of an Apple Music subscription truly democratizes the genre. That organizational complexity means added variables, and so Apple’s decision to introduce the app only on a single device at first makes some sense. Work the kinks out on iPhone before adding more variables by modifying the UI for iPad, Mac, and Apple TV devices. After considerable time exclusive to iPhone, Apple has now added a native iPad version of the app. Now, a native AppleTV version of the app can’t come too soon. It should not be lost on Apple that the target audience for this app likely has a higher propensity to prefer listening through home sound systems with amplifiers tied to good speakers. For instance, I have an Apple TV box wired to my Atmos-capable audio system in the den. Presently, the iPhone/iPad Classical app is good for searching and finding things, but then I have to save it to my ‘library’ and then pull it back up in the regular music app to listen via the Apple TV. Of course, that’s a reasonably manageable workaround, but we buy into the Apple ecosystem for “it just works,” not for workarounds. Please finish the rollout of this app to run natively on all Apple devices!

25. ★★★★★mixed experience without a specific reason· unspecific

    Question. It’s a nice app, just wondering why I can’t find all work of a composer.

26. ★★★★★overall positive experience· unspecific

    Good but I want more. I would love if concert band/wind ensemble music category existed.

27. ★★★★★overall positive experience· unspecific

    Three song albums. You have to choose another album 10-15 after you start listening. Frustrating if you don’t notice and you have stepped away to do some work.

28. ★★★★★overall positive experience· unspecific

    Kind of clunky. There seems to be a lot of interesting music and information but navigating can be difficult. Especially if an album has multiple artists. Also the song Wrinkly 64 on the album Retro Gaming Piano Music should be titled Peach’s Castle. One space high five to whoever fixes it.

29. ★★★★★overall positive experience· unspecific

    Apple’s little sister. Could be better if Apple copied the same features and design as Apple Music app

30. ★★★★★overall positive experience· unspecific

    Remember Rhapsody?. I’m so glad this Apple app exists, but I need an algorithm to suggest what I will normally listen to based on time of day, and my previous interactions. And believe it or not, RealNetworks “Rhapsody” app for Windows did that wonderfully back in 2006! Keep the new releases visible, and the design of the app beautiful, but don’t make the experience too rigid. Thanks!