If you like classical music, you’ll surely remember Apple’s acquisition of Primephonic last summer. It was excellent news for Apple Music users, as this meant that the catalog of classics on the service was going to increase substantially, but it was also good news for users of the Primephonic service, since those from Cupertino stated that Apple Music Classical, a specific app to give access to the entire classical music catalog of the service, would soon arrive.
To be more exact, and as we told you at that time, the initial plans were to start bringing Primephonic content to Apple Music, both the albums and the well-known playlists of the now-defunct service. But additionally, they also stated that a new app would be published throughout 2022, Apple Music Classical, which would provide access exclusively to Apple Music’s classical music catalog (both that of Primephonic and that already available previously on the service), which also It would reproduce the functions that the Primephonic app had.
Although classical music is, in general, a niche market (broad, but niche), many of its consumers are particularly demanding, something that Primephonic was well aware of, which, over the years, was able to perfectly satisfy this high level. of demand, which is why it had a great prestige among these users. Thus, everything indicated that Apple was fully aware of this circumstance and that, therefore, they considered acting accordingly, providing an exclusive experience.
However, 2022 is about to end and there seems to be no sign that Apple Music Classical is going to materialize in these two weeks. And it is that Apple has just released iOS 16.2 that has no sign of this new app, and the beta of iOS 16.3 that is already being released to developers does not seem to include it either. This is not a definitive sign, of course, but unless Apple has reserved a surprise as a Christmas present, it seems that it will be necessary to wait until 2023… at least.
And why do I say that at least? Because as rightly stated today in The Verge, there are three most feasible possibilities with respect to Apple Music Classical:
It is possible that, as they have done with Freeform, Apple Music Classical will not be integrated into a new version of the operating system (although it does require it), and instead be published as a “standalone” app and downloadable from the App Store. This actually makes a lot of sense, since it is surely not a service demanded by the majority of iOS users and, therefore, including it by default seems somewhat unnecessary. And this is what I meant when Apple could reserve a Christmas surprise for us, since there is still room for its publication during these holidays.
Another possibility is that the release of this app has been postponed, either because it is not a priority for the company’s development teams or because, despite wanting to meet the deadline, a problem may have occurred during its development. If this is the case, I am more inclined towards the first of both possibilities, since during this 2022 Apple has indeed introduced multiple improvements to Apple Music, such as the broadcast of concerts, the lyrics function in its web interface or Apple Music Sing, among others. The focus seems to be on the core service, so Apple Music Classical might have been pushed down the to-do list.
And the third option is that, at some point, Apple has changed its mind and has decided that there will be no specific app for classical music. This would undoubtedly be bad news for all those users who have been waiting for it since the acquisition of Primephonic. This decision could have an explanation but, in such a case, I am afraid that it would not be well accepted by these users.
