William Gallagher
Apple has released an iPad-specific edition of Apple Music Classical, though for now it's still not on the Mac — and you still can't download music from it.
One surprise when Apple first released Apple Music Classical after an extended delay in March 2023, was that it was solely for the iPhone. There was also that the iOS app was surprisingly clunky, but then it came to Android at the end of May 2023, yet still wasn't on either the iPad or the Mac.
Strictly speaking, Apple Music Classical was available on the iPad, but only as an iPhone app. It was released in that form alongside the iOS app in March and, alongside that version, has received minor stability and performance updates every two months.
Now, however, Apple has launched Apple Music Classical 1.1 on the App Store. "Introducing Apple Music Classical designed specially for the iPad," says Apple's App Store listing. "Plus stability and performance improvements."
As before, music can be added to a playlist in Apple Music Classical, and then that playlist is available in the regular Apple Music app too.
This is still the only way to download a classical music playlist, or track, however.
Apple Music Classical is available as part of an Apple Music subscription. That starts at $10.99 per month, and is also available in the Apple One bundle, which recently increased its pricing.
Christine McKee
AppleInsider Staff
Chip Loder
Malcolm Owen
10 Comments
This is hopeful progress, but the killer app would still be a version for AppleTV. As I've commented about this before, it makes sense to start on a single device and work the kinks out before expanding to others. The classical music audience can be particular and prickly, and many of those enthusiast have, out of necessity, already created their own workaround filing systems for their digital music catalogs. The Apple Music Classical app had to pick a way to arrange their cataloging system, and it's most likely different in one way or another from almost all the user-created systems, which puts Apple in the awkward position of finally doing this great thing, while also at least mildly irritating all those folks who will have to adapt to Apple's way of arranging things. So it was definitely a good idea to take some time to work the kinks out on the iPhone app before expanding it.
That said, most classical music enthusiasts also probably prefer listening on that nice sound system in their den. Even with the addition of the iPad app, we're still looking at a workaround scenario of using a portable device to search and explore the classical app, and then either using airplay to send it to the big sound system, or saving items to playlists and libraries and pulling those up via the regular Apple Music app on an Apple TV that's connected to their sound system. I, for one, would really like to be able to dig around in the classical music app natively on my Apple TV. Access via workarounds is not the Apple Way. It's time for them to get to it.
It’s about time! I don’t know why Apple would think that the majority of people listen to classical through their phones, but I can assure them that it’s not true. I was very disappointed with the app therefor. My music server has always been a Macbook Pro. It’s currently the 13.3” Macbook Pro. It works very well, but classical is not a happy experience in Apple Music. The iPhone app was useless. I read about a month ago that Apple released a version for the iPad, but it was wrong. I’m going now to download it and I hope it works well on my Mac as many other apps do.
Well, I tried to download it and apparently Apple upgraded the iPhone version on my iPad to it already, so I just had to open it.