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Apple Music Classical has impacted my listening habits more than any other app, song, playlist, or streaming service this year—and aside from a few hiccups that hold it back, it’s nearly perfect.
But first, a little background. Here’s a little-known fact about the music I listen to – a lot of it comes from the soundtrack, and it all stems from a love of the music from the Back to the Future trilogy.
Marty McFly’s adventures amazed 7-year-old me back in the ’90s. I was lucky enough to go to Universal Studios in Florida and the scenery there was dazzling to me. journey back to the future. More often than not, when your trip ends at a theme park, you’ll find yourself in the gift shop.But to me, it’s not just any Gift Shop – filled with all my dream Back to the Future merchandise.
That was before multiple brands of “goods” could be purchased online for free. Here I saw the toy version of the DeLorean time machine and the new VHS version of the trilogy – and I was in awe. However, what caught my eye the most was the soundtrack. After purchasing, I listened continuously to the three discs of each movie on my CD player. Since then, I have purchased other movie soundtracks, such as Star Wars and James Bond, and eventually, game soundtracks, such as Tomb Raider 2.
Fast forward to 2023 and I have a huge soundtrack playlist in my Spotify library featuring Tekken 2, License to Kill, the Obi-Wan Kenobi TV show, Tomb Raider 4 》 and other tracks.
But now, thanks to Apple Music Classical, my approach to managing soundtracks has evolved to listening to movie tracks from dedicated devices. app rather than specialized playlist on Spotify. However, there are currently some fundamental flaws that prevent me from using it as a full-fledged alternative.
classic apple
For those who are unaware, Apple Classic Launched in March 2023 as a way to strictly listen to classical music. This way, you can listen to music by Mozart and John Williams without your playlist being interrupted by random Snoop Dogg tracks, while getting all the complex metadata associated with the composer, musician, and recording. Metadata is not easily accessible on other streaming apps.
As a subscriber to the core Apple Music service, I have immediate access to the app, and I’m eager to try it out and see how it suits my musical tastes. I wanted to see if Classical could help me discover a group of composers, much like Apple Music did for me discover new artists in genres I’d never heard of before.
Admittedly, over the course of a few months I did discover some great albums, e.g. Bizet Carmen. But my curiosity and taste soon led me to browse film score composers.
Eventually, I added composers as favorites so I could easily and quickly access the works of John Williams and Bill Conti. It’s also fun to add albums and songs to different playlists, so I can put different types of movies into different sections, depending on what I want to listen to during the day.
If you’re also a fan of acoustic music, this might be the perfect choice for you, too. However, some confusing limitations prevent me from switching to classical music specifically for my soundtrack listening sessions.
Is this app still stuck in 1998?
While Apple Classical does many things well, such as the user interface and spatial audio tracks, there are some fatal flaws that prevent me from wholeheartedly recommending it.
First, you can’t download the tracks. Of course, you can add to your media library or classical playlist, but if you don’t have any internet, you’ll be taken to the screen pictured above.It’s incredibly frustrating, especially when You can do this in Apple Music using the same tracks and playlists you added in Classical Music.
However, that’s not the only flaw.you can’t shuffle any Music in the app. So if you’re like me and decide to create a bunch of playlists, you have to be careful about the order in which the tracks are placed. It’s either in one order or no order at all. This is a confusing choice to me, and if Apple did this on purpose for some reason, it feels like this was just a basic request to finally add this feature. The app launched completely without it, which feels amazing.
Finally, Apple Classical is only available on iPhone, iPad, and some Android devices. It’s not even available as a web app, let alone a Mac app, like Apple Music and Spotify. If you click a link from Apple Classical in your web browser, you will be prompted to open the app. For someone who works on a Mac every day, I currently have no choice but to keep my iPhone nearby and an active Internet connection in order to use the Apple Classical.
Essentially, all of these reasons are why I still use Spotify to create my soundtracks. I can listen to the tracks offline on my Mac or through a web browser on Swedish streaming services without any issues. It’s a shame, because the basics of what Apple Classical offers are great. However, since it doesn’t get the basics right, I have no choice but to keep Apple Classical behind the orchestra for now and wait for Apple to decide to use the app offline and be able to shuffle tracks. Sacrosanct.
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