Apple classical music streaming service launch appears imminent

[Shawn Knight]

Bottom line: Apple last summer purchased streaming service Primephonic to improve the classical music experience for Apple Music subscribers. We still don't know for sure if the service will be a standalone app or reside within the existing Apple Music app, but evidence seems to suggest the former.

The company stopped accepting new subscribers and took the service offline on September 7. Existing Primephonic members were given a free six month subscription to Apple Music to hold them over while developers prepped a dedicated classical music app to launch this year.

Code recently found in the Apple Music beta app for Android suggests a launch could be imminent, and that the new app might be called Apple Classical.

Interpreting Apple’s message word for word, the company said it plans to launch a “dedicated classical music app next year combining Primephonic’s classical user interface that fans have grown to love with more added features.”

Why is Apple keeping classical music in a separate, standalone app? Why not just roll it into the existing Apple Music app, or at least make Apple Classical a subsection under the Apple Music umbrella? One would think that any tech or special features acquired as part of the Primephonic deal could be equally beneficial to Apple Music, and vice versa.

Furthermore, combining the two would only boost Apple Music’s subscriber numbers and put it in a more favorable position to compete against rivals like Spotify.

If the September shutdown date and six month free subscription to Apple Music is any indicator, the new classical service could debut sometime early next month or sooner.

Image credit: Pixabay, Brett Jordan

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https://www.techspot.com/news/93351-apple-classical-music-streaming-service-launch-appears-imminent.html

 

[psycros]

Their not combining the two apps because that would mean they'd either need to modify the "Apple experience" to accommodate Primephonic's UI features or alter Primephonic and risk driving subscribers away. Now, if I'm honest, I'd take Apple's mobile UX over anyone else's 99% of the time even though I'll probably never own an Apple device, so this might be for the best. The question then becomes all about the features that are currently exclusive to each app and how to best make them available to fans of both. If Primephonic's special features are heavily dependent upon its UI then they might not all be ported to Apple Music, but there's no real reason the reverse couldn't be done. The real eybrow-raiser here is the implication that Apple is now open to allowing some of their apps to have distinctive visual identities, and that's a whole new attitude AFAIK.

 

[poltevo]

Classical music has its on UI requirements which would clutter up other music. For instance, the same piece of music often has lots of variations, different performers, different instruments etc… So if wouldn’t surprise me to keep the service in a different app.

 

[moon982]

I never liked the new music app.

The old iTunes app was way better. I'm glad that Apple are giving everyone option that like the old app better than the new music app.

I just hope it is not so buggy like iTunes later on.

 

[mbrowne5061]

Classical music has its on UI requirements which would clutter up other music. For instance, the same piece of music often has lots of variations, different performers, different instruments etc… So if wouldn’t surprise me to keep the service in a different app.

Exactly. I bet they aren't going to really touch the UX, "Apple-fy" the UI a bit, and then make it so that an Apple Music sub gets you both the regular Apple Music service and the Classical music service