Apple Music Classical aims to reach music lovers the streaming revolution left behind
Apple
The "digital portrait" of Ludwig van Beethoven that appears in the new Apple Classical streaming app.
For years, classical music fans have been left behind in the streaming revolution. Finding particular works and recordings has been hit or miss on the major platforms, which were basically built to search for an artist's name and a song title. Apple Music Classical, launched last month, is the latest streaming service to take a serious swing at the likes of Bach, Beethoven and Bartk.
For years, I've been complaining quite publicly about how streaming services have blundered when it comes to reaching audiences interested in classical music recordings. Why have they stumbled? For a couple of reasons. Firstly, the metadata for classical music including the name of a piece of music, the individual movements or sections of that piece, the composer, the various performers involved, and so forth is inherently more complicated than it is for pop music.
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Apple
A sample of the Apple Classical app experience.
Secondly, classical works often span several tracks, not self-contained within one "song." By contrast, most streaming sites assume you want to listen to one track and then move on to something new.
For today's listeners, a world of great music is, at least in theory, no more than a click away, as pianist and composer Ethan Iverson recently wrote. But recorded music functionally ceases to exist if you can't find it.
Historically, most popular streaming services have ignored those fundamental truths, either for lack of a market base (or so I've been told) or out of disinterest (same). In that breach, several classical specialty sites sprang up, with varying degrees of success. Before I joined NPR in 2011, I was the founding editor of one of those services, which tried and failed to reach classical music fans.
Two years ago, Apple bought just such a company, called Primephonic and built their new service on Primephonic's bones. Jonathan Gruber heads classical for Apple Music. He says, "Fundamentally, the thing about this app is that it's trying to do something that has not been done adequately before and do it really well, which is deliver an excellent customer experience, listening experience for classical music lovers. It's made for classical music lovers by classical music lovers." (It's also free but only if you already have a subscription to Apple Music.)
The last time I wrote at length about classical music metadata and streaming services was back in 2015 an eon ago, in technical terms. Some services have improved significantly, while others have not.
For one example: Say I want to find a great recording of Beethoven's grand and glorious Symphony No. 9. On any streaming platform, I get back hundreds and sometimes thousands of results. The first match I get on Spotify is conductor Herbert von Karajan's 1984 recording with the Berlin Philharmonic. (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.
I don't fare nearly so well on YouTube. 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. Instead, I get a recording of Chopin's Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2.
In my exploration of Apple Music Classical, the app usually gave me the results I sought on the first search attempt. For popular pieces of music, such as Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 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.
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Monday, April 24, 2023 at 9:00 am