Absolutely love the idea of this app as the classical music library has never really fit with the streaming service model, due to the endless numbers of ‘opuses’ and ‘works’. This is the first real attempt at trying to create an intuitive way to search for and listen to different recordings and compositions by a big player in the music industry, which is admirable but it doesn’t take long to quickly get lost in the endless menu dialogues, or where the app just freezes on you (I repeated the same action multiple times and every single time it crashed!). That being said, PLEASE don’t give up on this app! It is such a good idea and just needs a bit of rethink in how it can be a truly intuitive way to navigate a huge collection of classical music. I’ve always thought that orchestral music wasn’t suited for MP3s, lossy compression because of the amount of information being lost and it 100% benefits from the lossless format! So many good ideas - just needs a bit more polish for basic functionality.

I think it has long been recognised that many people who enjoy Classical Music also appreciate a good playback system to listen to their music. Given this it is very disappointing that there is not a version for Apple TV, which I have linked to my Multichannel Hifi system to listen to Atmos releases on Apple Music. Apple Music has no filter system to easily find Atmos releases so I have relied heavily on the curated Classical Spatial Audio playlists, now these have disappeared and I am totally reliant on 3rd party search databases, which are very good, to find new releases. I have no idea why Apple is fixed on making the user experience for Apple Music as unpleasant as possible, but there seems to be no appetite to listen and respond to what customers are looking for. I love Classical music, but this app is totally redundant for me as it fails to do what I want it to do, that is be available on my Apple TV device and allow me to filter my search for Dolby Atmos releases, but it seems that this is too much to ask of Apple, who seem content doing nothing and taking subscriptions for a user experience which is far from being as good as it could be.

I think this app is a really great idea for classical music lovers, and I’m looking forward to seeing how it develops as initial issues are ironed out. The search function is probably the best feature. It’s great to be able to search for a work and have a list of recordings ordered by popularity, and an editor’s choice at hand. I have found initially that it is much better for searching orchestral and chamber music than for choral music however. For example, some works are listed as being by “William Burd” (Byrd) and the search function doesn’t bring anything up if you put in “Dyson in D” for example, expecting the well known Canticles in D major (Magnificat & Nunc Dimitis). Perhaps this is more a niche of the British choral scene, but the former point about Byrd is an easy fix.In general though: a great idea, fairly well executed, and with potential to be fantastic.

Pretty good but the library function is amazingly bad. It only loads 20 library titles at a time which means endlessly scrolling through 20 titles then pausing while the next 20 load. Fine if you only have 19 titles saved to your library and they’re all Bach! I’ve saved a few hundred titles and scrolling through from Bach just as far as Mozart genuinely takes several minutes. If that wasn’t bad enough… If you have the nerve to select a title from the library, click into it to have a look, then go back…guess what?! Yep, it sends you all the way back to the top of your library!! There’s something uniquely infuriating about working your way through your own library to, say, Mahler then being fired all the way back up to Bach when you decide that actually you’d rather listen to Mahler 9 than to Mahler 4. The app isn’t all bad - there are in fact lots of things I prefer to every other classical streaming app - but the library function is so unbelievably bad it does need to be highlighted.