Apple has finally launched its classical music service with availability of the Apple Music Classical app.
The company had been beta testing the service in the iOS 16.4 beta, where it lived within the Apple Music app itself. Now a standalone Apple Music Classical app has appeared on the App Store.
It’s free to download, but you’ll need a £10.99/$10.99 per month Apple Music subscription to actually access the app. There’s no standalone Apple Music Classical tier, and you won’t get access to the new app with the £4.99/$4.99 a month Apple Music Voice Plan.
Apple bought the classical music streaming service Primephonic in 2021 for just this purpose, giving it the rights to add more than 5 million classical recordings to the Apple Music library. The app contains a custom search engine to help you find even the most obscure performance.
Apple Music Classical also offers 700 expert-constructed playlists, as well as composer biographies and deep dives into key classical works.
Naturally, Apple is shouting about the quality of these classical tracks, which go right up to 192 kHz/24-bit Hi-Res Lossless. Thousands of tracks that have been recorded with Dolby Atmos support will benefit from Apple’s Spatial Audio, too, which promises to put you right in the middle of the orchestra.
Of course, AirPlay support will be on hand to help you push these classical tracks to your chosen speaker set-up.
Check out our full ‘What is Apple Music’ explainer here.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
