Apple builds a better way of listening to Mozart and Beethoven

Metadata is the key. It’s how Apple, the world’s most valuable company, built a better way of listening to Mozart and Beethoven with Apple Music Classical.

Ben Cohen for The Wall Street Journal:

Anyone who listens to Beethoven as much as Beyoncé knows it is basically impossible to find the perfect recording of your favorite violinist playing in the best concert hall with the ideal conductor.

Apple believes it has solved this problem.

The world’s richest company released a sleek new product this week that was years in the making and had to meet its exacting standards before it was ready to be used by millions of people. But it wasn’t a phone, a gadget or an AI chatbot. The latest innovation from Apple was a better way of listening to classical music…

[One] way of thinking about classical music’s biggest problem is distinguishing repertoire from recordings. A pop star like Taylor Swift is the recording artist for her repertoire. But one piece of Tchaikovsky’s repertoire has many recordings, as if every Taylor Swift single had thousands of covers. The streaming platforms are optimized for Taylor Swift and not Tchaikovsky…

Apple acquired Primephonic for an undisclosed price in 2021 and inherited that precious metadata. Now it is the engine behind Apple Music Classical, which comes included with an Apple Music subscription.

MacDailyNews Take: With Apple Music Classical, Apple Music subscribers can:

• Easily find any recording in the world’s largest classical music catalog — over 5 million tracks — with fully optimized search
• Enjoy the highest audio quality available and experience many classical favorites in a whole new way with immersive Spatial Audio
• Browse expertly curated playlists, insightful composer biographies, and descriptions of thousands of works, and so much more

Apple Music Classical’s editors have created over 700 playlists to guide listeners through 800 years of music, and this is just the beginning!

We want Apple Music Classical for macOS, iPadOS, tvOS, and watchOS, ASAP, Apple!

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