Our long national nightmare of not having an Apple Music app dedicated to classical music is almost over. A new app – called, unsurprisingly, Apple Music Classical – has finally appeared in the App Store. The app is currently only available for the iPhone and won’t officially arrive until March 28.
It’s been in the works for a while. Since Apple acquired classical music service Primephonic in August 2021, the company has made two promises. The first was that a “significantly improved classical music experience starting with Primephonic playlists and exclusive audio content” would be coming (which, to some extent, exists in Apple Music). And the second was that “a dedicated classical music app…combining the classic Primephonic user interface that fans have come to love with more added features” would be offered to Apple Music subscribers. At the time, Apple promised the app would arrive by the end of 2022, but the year ended with no sign of that offering.
Still, better late than never, and the app is now available on the App Store. Apple announced its arrival with a brief introductory video in Apple Music, calling the standalone app “a new dawn in classical music.”
Apple says the new classical music experience “makes it easy for beginners to learn the genre with hundreds of Essentials playlists, insightful composer biographies, in-depth guides to many key works, and intuitive navigation features. “. You can search by composer, work, conductor, or catalog number, and tracks are available in up to 192 kHz/24-bit Hi-Res Lossless and spatial audio.
Officially, Apple Music Classical is currently available for pre-order, a similar tactic it is rolling out for Apple Arcade games. The app shows the standard “Get” button that is shown for all free apps, but tapping it (and then entering a password or biometric authentication if your settings require it) doesn’t actually download the app . Instead, it will simply register you to download the app automatically when it launches. According to the App Store, this will happen on March 28, although we don’t rule out further delays.
The app is currently only available for iPhones running iOS 15.4 or later, although some features may require iOS 16.4, which is currently in testing. Presumably, a version for iPad, Mac and Android will be available soon.
It’s worth noting that when I searched the app store for “Apple Music Classical”, the exact name of the app, I had to scroll down an ad (unrelated), the original Apple Music app , Apple Music for Artists, an internal announcement for Apple One, TIDAL Music, an explainer on the App Store search and Mixcloud, before reaching the new application. It’s a wonder Seven unwanted locations before reaching exactly what I had been looking for. Maybe the app is not ranking well on its own search term because it is not yet available. Or maybe, as many of us have suspected for a while, searching the App Store is a mess.
Either way, the app is finally here and will soon be ready to blast soothing music to our ears.
