At the time, Apple said it planned to launch a dedicated classical music app this year, but time is starting to run out if the company wishes to follow through with the plans on time.
“Apple Music plans to launch a dedicated classical music app next year combining Primephonic’s classical user interface that fans have grown to love with more added features,” said an Apple Newsroom press release shared last year.
Primephonic’s website originally said it was “working on an amazing new classical music experience from Apple for early next year,” but the “early next year” wording was changed to “next year” on March 9, 2022, just one day after Apple held an event to introduce the Mac Studio, Studio Display, fifth-generation iPad Air, and third-generation iPhone SE.
That means Primephonic subscribers were able to listen to Apple Music through February, suggesting that Apple might have planned to announce the classical music app at its March event this year, but wasn’t ready to.
In February, a code-level reference to “Open in Apple Classical” was discovered in a beta version of the Apple Music app for Android. These clues have never been made public, but they could reveal that Apple plans, or at least plans, to call the app Apple Classical instead of Apple Music Classical.
In late September, as backend preparations continued, more references to classical music apps were discovered in his XML files on Apple’s servers.
Apple says it will integrate some of Primephonic’s best features, including “better browsing and searching capabilities by composer and repertoire,” and a “detailed view of classical music metadata,” but the task is complete. It is possible that the company simply needs more time to develop the
A less likely possibility is that Apple will decide not to release a classical music app, instead bringing more classical features to the Apple Music app in future iOS 16 or iOS 17 versions.