Apple Music Gives Classical Lovers Their Own Stand-Alone Streaming App

Chris Willman
·1 min read

Classical music lovers will no longer have to proceed past touts for the latest pop hits on their way to streaming their genre of choice, at least not on Apple Music. The service announced Thursday that it has created a separate app, Apple Music Classical, that will kick off March 28, offering access to more than five million tracks in lossless audio.

A subscription to Apple Music will still be required for this new app, which will be available at the end of the month for iPhone models running iOS 15.4 or later. An Android version will be on the way at some point later. Existing Apple users will not pay anything additional for Apple Music Classical. The new service can be pre-ordered at Apple’s app store now and will automatically download upon the March 28 launch.

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Among the features Apple is introducing or touting for classical fans are “hundreds of curated playlists, thousands of exclusive albums, insightful composer biographies, deep-dive guides for many key works (and) intuitive browsing features.” With search functions far beyond what is available for pop recordings on the main service, Apple Music Classical will offer options to search by the work, conductor, composer or catalog number.

On top of the five million-plus recordings available in 192 kHz/24-bit Hi-Res Lossless, Apple Classical is offering thousands of recordings in spatial audio.

On the aesthetic side, Apple also noted in its announcement that it has commissioned original digital artwork for many of the world’s top composers, “blend(ing) historical research with color palettes and artistic references from the relevant classical period.”

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