Apple Music Classical Review: Part 1

Introduction

Apple’s foray into classical music is both exciting and perplexing. When Apple Music Classical launched, there were prominent ads for the new app in the existing Apple Music app and online. For a niche field that isn’t often in the mainstream, it was reaffirming to see a major company such as Apple celebrate and promote classical music. Still, for a company of Apple’s scale and ambition, launching an app dedicated to classical music is unlikely to satiate their appetite for growth.

As a classical musician and computer-enthusiast, it was also interesting to see my interests collide. Coverage of Apple Music Classical in the tech world has naturally lessened since its launch, but minor updates to the app make the front page of classical music news.

Classical Music aficionados when Apple Music Classical launched

I wasn’t blogging when the app launched, but I have had time to live with and use the app extensively. Now is as good a time as ever to review the app, perhaps making this an “Apple Music Classical - 24 Months Later” review in the parlance of YouTube. I’ll present my thoughts in two parts: an examination of classical music metadata and Apple Music Classical’s handling of it; and second, an exploration of the app’s discovery functionality, visual design, and areas for improvement.

Note

The word “classical” has multiple meanings in this context. In general, small-c “classical music” refers to notated music originating from, but not limited, to the Western European tradition. Uppercase “Classical” is also confusingly used to designate a time period of music history, from roughly 1750-1820 and features composers such as Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven.

For clarity, I refer to the apps as “Apple Music Classical,” or, simply the “Classical app.” The main version of the app and its streaming service is referred to as “Apple Music” or the “Music” app.

Classical Music Metadata

A common reaction I saw online to the release of Apple Music Classical was confusion that a genre of music needed it’s own app. Although listening to classical music through a conventional music app is perfectly adequate, using an app dedicated to classical music enables more efficient organization and easier discovery. For those less familiar with classical music, it is helpful to understand how it differs from other genres.

Recorded music of all genres is commonly organized by Artists, Albums, and Tracks. An artist creates albums, which consists of individual songs. While this system of metadata originated when albums were physical media, it’s also the underlying organization of a digital music library. While this categorization works well enough for many genres, it starts to break down for classical music.

Classical music is defined by the relationship between the composer, their musical works, and the performer. A composer’s work is a notated score—a set of instructions given to musicians. The music only comes alive when musicians interpret the composer’s score in a performance.

In many genres, the artist and their songs are closely connected. If an artist records another artist’s songs, it is known as a cover. You could say that classical musicians perform covers, but it’s more like theater. Actors and directors have brought their own interpretations to performances of Shakespeare for centuries. While much has changed in the presentation and style of individual productions, we still recognize it as Hamlet if it uses Shakespeare’s text.

Track Title

Mainstream music apps struggle with classical music because they don’t fully account for composers and their works. It’d be like trying to find a particular Shakespeare play by a list of productions organized by director. These difficulties are illustrated by Yo-Yo Ma’s recordings of Johann Sebastian Bach’s six cello suites. The artist, as in performer, is Yo-Yo Ma, but Bach’s name, the composer, doesn’t have a clear place to go. Instead, composer information is awkwardly tacked onto the beginning of track titles.

A typical classical track title looks something like this:

J.S. Bach: Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1007 – Prelude

This format is cumbersome for listeners. Classical compositions often consist of multiple movements, which are performed, and, like chapters of a book, experienced together. The number of movements, their duration, and the pause or lack thereof between movements varies from piece to piece.

Track titles with redundant composer and work information.

For a recording of a Bach suite, this means the majority of the track title is devoted the same information, the composer and work. The important information for a track, the movement title, gets tacked onto the end. Because movement titles get buried within lengthy track names, scanning an album to find a specific movement becomes frustrating. This is only compounded further for cyclical albums, such as all six cello suites, where you have thirty-six tracks with nearly identical track titles. Browsing an album for a particular movement means scanning through a lot of redundant text to find the piece you’re looking for.

Apple Music Classical fixes these annoyances. Works and composers are treated as “headings” within an album, with movements nested underneath. This reduces the amount of superfluous text users need to scan.

Interestingly, the regular Apple Music has actually supported this heading structure for multi-movement works for several years, but implementation has been inconsistent. Many classical albums still rely on the long track titles. Apple Music Classical has largely solved this issue, with works consistently employing the heading system.

Works Headings reduces redundant information in track listings.

Works

But the Classical app goes one step further. Works aren’t just organized neatly within albums—they become a powerful way to browse and compare recordings. If you tap on Bach’s First Cello Suite, for instance, you can instantly view all available recordings of that work, collected from different albums.

The Works Page allows you to see all recordings of a particular work.

Why would you want to see all recordings of the same work? Classical music sickos like me often listen to multiple recordings of the same composition comparatively. Part of the joy of classical music is encountering the same piece performed by different musicians and appreciating the subtle differences in their performances.

Differences in tempo have a major influence on our experience of a piece, but the shaping of phrases and balance of dynamics can also vary dramatically. Great performances often highlight a small detail in the music that was always there, but may have gone unnoticed by the listener.

Searching for works in a conventional music streaming app is not as robust as the Works page in Apple Music Classical. Because composer and work titles are inconsistently formatted, search results are messy.

The Works page also has sorting features that are incredibly useful. Recordings of a given work can be sorted by popularity, release date, and duration. If you want to explore how cellist’s performed the Bach suites nearly a hundred years ago, you can sort recordings by earliest release date.

Sort recordings by release date.

If you want to hear a more relaxed performance, you can sort by duration. There is finally a way to find the longest recording of John Cage’s 4’33”.

Sort recordings by duration.

Artists

Artist attributions are also handled more appropriately in Apple Music Classical. Artists and songwriters are commonly conflated in other genres, so composers are frequently listed as artists on recordings of their works. But if you take the strict view that an album’s artists are only the performing musicians, then listing the composer as an album artist causes confusion.

While contemporary composers who actively participate in recordings should be listed as artists, many classical composers are famously deceased. Including them as album artists complicates library organization.

Another unique aspect of classical musicians as recording artists are their frequent collaborations. In other genres, the name of an artist often conveys something about how that music was created; we distinguish between “The Beatles” and “Paul McCartney” for a reason.

Orchestras, conductors, and soloists, however, all perform in numerous combinations with each other without “forming a band.” Music apps often list these groups of artists as if they were a singular entity.

Musical collaborators listed as if they were a band.

Browsing your classical music library by artist means sorting through names such as “Antonio Meneses, Herbert von Karajan, & Berlin Philharmonic” and “Antonio Meneses & Menahem Pressler.” Long artist names such as these often only have a single album, making the artist view fairly useless.

Fortunately, Apple Music Classical correctly separates each artist. If a listener is interested in a particular orchestra, they can easily explore their recordings with numerous conductors. The app even distinguishes between instances where a musician appears as either an instrumentalist, conductor, or composer.

Each artist on an album listed separately with links to their artist’s page.

Conclusions

Apple Music Classical’s approach to metadata and organization embraces the composer-work-performer relationship that defines classical music. Browsing a composer’s works like an artist’s albums makes exploring their oeuvre fast and simple. Similarly, the Works view brings together recordings of the same piece and makes comparative listening effortless. With this powerful and flexible interface, Apple Music Classical is one of the best ways to explore and listen to classical music.

In the second part of this review, I’ll explore music discovery, visual design, and where Apple Music Classical could improve.