It’s an Exciting Day for Classical Music Fans as BIS Records Joins Apple Music

It was a little over two years ago that Apple announced a new foray into classical music through its acquisition of the classical music streaming service, Primephonic. Now, it’s taking another big step to bolster its classical music ambitions by adding a major classic music record label to its portfolio.

As reported this morning by MacRumors, Swedish classical music label BIS Records announced on X that it has “joined the Apple family” to “become part of Apple Music Classical” and Apple’s Platoon, a startup Apple acquired in 2018 that helps rising early-stage artists get off the ground in distributing, selling, and marketing their work.

The BIS Records homepage has been replaced with a letter from the label’s founder, Robert von Bahr, celebrating its 50th anniversary and announcing “the rather momentous news that we have made the decision to become part of the Apple family.”

With the launch of Apple Music Classical earlier this year, Apple Music has become a premium destination for classical music enthusiasts, providing not only exceptional sound quality but also a carefully curated collection of works organized in a way that allows both experienced veterans of the genre and newcomers to easily find recordings by a variety of criteria from instruments to opus number, conductor, artist, and even nickname, as well as dive deeper into the biographies of composers and artists.

Apple Music Classical is effectively an extension of Apple Music that works through a dedicated app. While Apple boasted a library of over five million classical works at launch, these are part of the core Apple Music library. It’s just that the Apple Music Classical app offers a much better way of browsing, searching, and tracking down classical works than the standard Music app, which is focused on organizing songs by more traditional fields such as artist and album — neither of which fit the classical genre particularly well.

Founded in 1973, BIS Records has spent years preserving eclectic classical works in the best possible quality and developing young classical artists. It’s won multiple awards in the classical music world, where it’s well-known and highly regarded among fans of the genre. However, as the company’s founder turns 80, he believes it’s time to pass the torch to Apple, a company that he says “is the ideal home to usher in the next era of classical and has shown true commitment towards building a future in which classical music and technology work in harmony.”

Apple and BIS also share a fundamental belief in the importance of preserving audio quality. As you are all aware, BIS has always been about exceptional sound quality, and Apple’s dedication to sound, as well as to Spatial Audio, is something I have followed with interest.

Robert von Bahr, Founder, BIS Records

BIS’ founder, von Bahr, also praises Apple for its “dedication to sound,” expressing confidence that it’s the right platform to preserve the audio quality that BIS Records has also been fighting for over the years. He also adds that the entire BIS team has been retained and that he will also be joining Apple Music Classical as part of the new deal.

Comment

We all look forward to a future filled with new music and artists in golden sound from this increased force in classical music.

Robert von Bahr, Founder, BIS Records

Thus far, Apple Music Classical has primarily been about making the vast catalog of existing classical works more readily available. However, when Apple launched the service in March, it also said it would be working closely with “some of today’s most renowned classical composers, artists, and musicians” and building a library of “thousands of exclusive recordings.” The addition of BIS Records into the mix with Platoon will likely help to bring more aspiring young classical musicians and composers into the fold, helping them to publish their works on Apple Music Classical.