You might ask why do you need another app for a genre of music? Classical music has something that no other genre has to deal with when searching for music: you have composers and you have the artists that perform the music. And if I search up Led Zeppelin, I will pretty much just got all of the Led Zeppelin albums. But if I search up Beethoven, there are hundreds of different albums performed by hundreds of different performers. The Beatles perform let it be. But there are hundreds of performers playing Beethoven’s piano sonatas, hundreds of orchestras playing, Beethoven, symphonies, etc. on the original Apple Music app, searching for a composer was hard because it was very artist centric. It was hard to find albums by composers like Beethoven, because I would most like at albums by artists, and then the algorithm would feed me more albums by that artist. This new app is very composer centric. It’s also very genre centric because in classical music, you have baroque classical romantic, 20th century, etc. If you like classical music, this app is well worth it. There are only two things that I would change: one as I noticed when I go to delete albums off the original app. They also delete on the classical app. I would like to have the classical app, dedicated only to classical albums, and be able to delete them on my other app. And the last thing is some classical pieces are very long. Symphonies, operas, and other pieces could be up to an hour. Sometimes you don’t have time to sit through the whole thing. It would be awesome if there was a way to book mark your place, so you can go back later and pick up from where you left off. Other than that, I love the app, and I am having fun learning how to use it.

I am a huge fan of the genre classical music, as a music student this app is amazing for helping me find artists and pieces. However, for decades now classical art has ignored the contributions of many minority groups such as people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals. This apps suggestions for time periods stretching from the medieval era of western music to the 21st century feature an alarming amount of music from straight white males and disregard or flat out fail to feature works from artists of different backgrounds. As a musician studying these eras of music currently it’s our duty to consider these artists that contribute to the genre. Going forward I hope that the broad spectrum of “classical” music apple plans to feature a wider range of artists than our typical musicians from the western canon. Stylistically the app works well and features that classic apple design philosophy. However, you can definitely tell this app was designed by individuals who don’t have too much knowledge on classical music. Credit where credit is due, this app does a far better job of classifying music based on their titles and publications but fails in other regards. At this time it feels a little cliché with its design as THE classical music app. While this app is still in its infancy I hope that moving forward Apple will be more motivated by classical listeners, artists and experts rather than a stereotypical understanding of the incredibly broad genre that is classical music.

This is SO much better for classical music fans than the regular Apple Music app. Thank you very much for doing this. Love that there are curated playlists, recommended new albums with some editorial info about them (would love even more of that). Playlists and “track by track” feature are a pleasure (adds a lot to hear Yo Yo Ma explain something about what he’s playing and also share his playlist with you). Over time I hope you add much more of that. A couple suggestions: an iPad version would be great; also it can be a bit overwhelming when looking for a particular work to scroll through all the performance options. In addition to sorting by release date or popularity, how about an option to put artists that I’ve already starred as favorites first since those are who I am most likely to pick. Also, would love to shuffle my classical library or playlist by work rather than track or album (i.e., all movements of a piece in order without listening to the whole album, then move to the next). Overall, a great addition I have hope for for a long time. Thank you.

I was very excited about the Apple Music Classical app since 99% of my music library is classical and the usual issues of searching and categorizing classical music have always been an annoyance on the Apple Music app. The app does a good job of improving browsing and discovery for classical music: music is accurately categorized by composer, orchestra, genre, type of work, etc, without lumping soloists, composers and orchestras under an ambiguous label like “Artist.” It looks great, too, with well known composers getting beautiful portraits. Unfortunately, while the app is great for exploring and finding new music, it falls flat if you have an existing Apple Music library, because none of the features above account for music in your existing library. As far as I can tell, the app has no way to search within your Apple Music library, which actually makes it worse that the “regular” Apple Music app for that purpose. The app does have a section for “Favorite Recordings,” however, your existing library is not automatically added to it. Because of these limitations, I have continued to use the old Apple Music app instead of Apple Music Classical. Most of the time, I am listening to something in my existing library of favorite recordings which I’ve collected over years. This app does not improve that experience, and in fact is worse than the older Music app for browsing existing music. This is disappointing because the old app still suffers from poor categorization and unreliable search for classical music, and it would have been great to take advantage of the improved features that the specialized app provides.