Apple Music Classical Comes to CarPlay
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Last year, Apple launched Apple Music Classical, a dedicated app for classical music lovers to browse through and enjoy a properly curated catalog of classical music. Now, it’s finally bringing that experience to your dashboard.
Apple Music Classical was a labor of love from the Apple Music team that was nearly two years in the making. The company first announced its plans in 2021 following its acquisition of Primephonic. It missed its 2022 target date but finally debuted in March 2023.
While technically released at the same time as iOS 16.4, Apple Music Classical was and remains a standalone app that must be downloaded separately from the App Store. However, despite this, the classical music app still ties into the same Apple Music subscription as the mainstream Music app. It doesn’t provide access to any new tracks that aren’t also available on Apple Music; it’s more of a unique view into Apple’s library of classical works.
Still, that’s a much-needed perspective, as classical music doesn’t fit the same mold as popular contemporary music. Instead of only artists and albums, classical music has composers, conductors, works, catalog numbers, and much more. These additional fields have been available to classical music enthusiasts in iTunes for years, and many meticulously used them to organize their own libraries but found themselves lost in the realm of Apple Music.
Apple Music Classical is the answer to that, but more than just extra metadata, it offers a much deeper dive into classical music, with biographies on composers, conductors, and performers, background on popular ensembles, and editorial selections and insights. You can even browse for works featuring specific instruments, so if you’re looking for Bassoon solos, Apple Music Classical has your back.
Sadly, as great as Apple Music Classical is, access to it is a bit more limited than the primary Apple Music app and service. The initial release of Apple Music Classical was iPhone-only; it didn’t come to the iPad until November — ironically, six months after it was released for Android. Meanwhile, it’s still unavailable on the Mac and Apple TV.
Meanwhile, even though Apple Music Classical was available on the iPhone from day one, one conspicuously absent feature was support for CarPlay. Not every iPhone audio app is available on your dashboard, as they have to be specifically written to support CarPlay, and Apple Music Classical was not.
You could work around it by creating playlists in the classical app and pulling them up through the standard Music app in CarPlay since those playlists are shared between both apps. However, that’s still a kludgy and less-than-ideal solution, and it doesn’t allow for the more seamless browsing and discovery experience that Apple Music Classical offers.
So, it’s good news for classical music fans that Apple Music Classical is now available via CarPlay. Apple quietly released version 2.1 today, noting that it adds support for both CarPlay and Siri. While CarPlay support brings your classical music library to your dashboard, Siri integration works in and out of your car to help you pull up classical music by voice.
What’s interesting is that Apple has done something clever to ensure that the proper app is opened based on your request. While you’ll need to give Siri access to Apple Music Classical (aka “Classical”) the first time you ask for it, after that, requests are intelligently routed to the appropriate app wherever possible. Ask for Rush’s YYZ, and the Apple Music app will open, while a request for a Mozart symphony or an Oboe solo will be appropriately directed to Apple Music Classical. It’s not entirely clear what’s going on behind the scenes to make this happen, but it works surprisingly well, even with lesser-known classical artists.
Apple Music Classical is available as a free download on the App Store for the iPhone, iPad, and Vision Pro and requires iOS/iPadOS 16 or visionOS 1.0 or later and an Apple Music subscription.
