Ian Sidden

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What’s Wrong With Classical Music on Streaming Services

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Kirk McElhearn writes:

unCLASSIFIED, an affiliate of the Naxos Music Group, a large independent classical record label and distributor, creates playlists. They’ve been doing this for Spotify for a while, and they are now on Apple Music…

As the description says, whether you “need a soundtrack for studying…” As if there aren’t any other reasons to listen to classical music. Oh, wait, there are: there is “Serenity Now,” because classical music is “serene.” Or classical music for running, because, I don’t know, you run better with Mozart? And Supper Club, so you can seduce your date with some subtle Bach playing in the bachground.

I’d suggest that it’s marginally better on Spotify simply because public playlists on Apple Music are completely under their official curators’ control. Which is too bad since Apple Music has actually made some terrific improvements for classical organization. I’d love to see better playlists and even a Beats 1 classical show. 

That last bit might just be pie in the sky wishful thinking, but their other shows are often excellent, and seeing classical get the same treatment would be a delight.
Link: Here’s What’s Wrong with Classical Music on Streaming Services (Part Whatever)

Classical Music for Elevators

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Kirk McElhearn writing on Kirkville:

I know Apple Music is just getting started, but they can certainly do better than just provide “Classical Music for Elevators.” Maybe Apple needs to hire some classical music “curators.”

I actually haven’t even received a single classical music playlist suggestion under the “For You” tab. So he’s ahead of me in this metric. It’s been all popular music like rap and classical rock even though I “love” (click or tap the little heart icon) many of the classical tracks I do find. I do get album suggestions.

They do have curators, but for some reason, the myriad playlists offered don’t actually make it to the “For You” section. Except for the elevator music one apparently.

Thoughts on Playlists in Apple Music

And I've added the "New Listener" Playlist to Apple Music

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I just updated my giant post “Don’t Know Where to Start with Classical Music? Start here” with a playlist made in Apple Music. If you’re – like me – an early adopter of Apple Music and want to try it out, then here’s the playlist link directly. Have fun!

A few thoughts on Apple Music playlists so far.

Their Curated Playlists are Great

In general, I like it. It’s a solid streaming service, and I’ve been able to find all the music I could want (absent a few notable exceptions). It’s very easy to find new music as well. As I write this, I’m listening to a curated playlist for people working. Right away, I’m being introduced to some new stuff, and because it’s human curated, there tends to be a logical and fun assembly.

I honestly think these playlists are Apple Music’s greatest strength. Integration with iPhones and Macs and our iTunes libraries is fine great etc., but we’ve been living with streaming services for a few years, and it’s hardly been a giant imposition to open a different application to stream stuff. But the playlists are very nice, and I’ve heard they’re what made Beats Music special.

Making Playlists in Apple Music: Too Hard

However – and it’s a big “however” – making playlists is way too complicated at this point.

For one, there’s no way to import playlists from other services. I recreated the above playlist myself, and it took about 45 minutes. There are public playlists on Spotify that are many times longer than that, which individuals have been creating for years. Do we expect their owner’s to actually recreate them by hand in Apple Music? No.

The question then arises; why is it so hard to move playlists? Here’s why. Songs that you find in Apple Music can’t be added directly to playlists. They must first be added to your library and then added to playlists. This is not how Spotify – for example – works. I can add music to any playlist in Spotify and not add it to my larger library. Because of this limitation in Apple Music, imported XML playlist files can’t just auto add songs to playlists because those songs aren’t in the user’s library yet.

If you do want to create a playlist, as I just did, then you have to navigate back and forth between the “My Music” and “New” tabs in iTunes. Using the search field while in “My Music” searches your library by default. You must then click the button to specify that you want to search Apple Music, which will then take you to a page with your results. The search field is then erased, so if you want to refine your search, you have to retype everything.

Banging your head yet?

Mutually exclusive

Once you find what you want, you must first add it to your library before adding it to a playlist (even though you are presented with the option to add it to a playlist!!!) by clicking the plus symbol. Then you go to the track and click the three dots (don’t right click, because you’ll get a different menu and different playlist options), and then you can add to a playlist.

Along the way, you might run into a few bugs, which I won’t go into here, but suffice it to say, they slowed me down.

Once you have the playlist, you can share it with a link. There’s no embedding yet, which is a drag, and I don’t know if we’ll ever get that. I hope we do. I also can’t just “publish” it somehow within Apple Music for other people to stumble upon. That’s also a drag. I’ve found some really good playlists made by users in Spotify, and I’d like this to work a little more seamlessly.

Caveats

I like the service. I really do. I like that my wife and I can have a family account that’s cheap. I’m glad I can mix my own recordings and the streamed ones. I love the playlists. I’m glad they’re paying musicians slightly better. There’s a lot of stuff to listen to. Metadata is decent (I want to write a post about this). I even dig the new icon. All good stuff.

But it has a ways to go yet, and I’m hoping they’re going to iterate it quickly.