Apple Music’s curators are continuing their quest to win over the hearts of classical music’s biggest fanatics. Company officials announced Monday plans to add support for album booklets to the Apple Music Classical app.
A post made to X reads that the app will feature more than 50,000 booklets for the albums featured on the service. Booklets include liner notes, translations, composer biographies and more details that they hope will enhance the listening experience, they said.
The post features screenshots of the feature in action on 72 Preludes by Japanese pianist Mao Fujita. It depicts a button with a book glyph in the top-right corner of the interface next to the ‘Add to Library’ button. A second screenshot depicts scans of the pages of the booklets with photographs and text.
Apple Music Classical has proven to be a labor of love for the company. A spokesperson first announced plans for the app in the press release announcing the company’s acquisition of Primephonic in August 2021. Apple fanatics awaited the app’s launch after it missed the announced launch timeline of 2022. It finally appeared on the App Store in March 2023.
Apple has been working to promote the app well after its launch with placement alongside Apple Music proper in Apple Stores. The app integrated with Apple-owned Shazam in May 2023, and its developers added native iPadOS support in November 2023”“though it still does not have Mac, Apple Watch, Apple TV or Vision counterparts. In January 2024, Apple announced plans to expand the app to more Asian countries.
The app serves to enable fans of classical music to enjoy their libraries with an experience better tailored to the genre. Classical music compositions are often recorded many times by many different artists in different roles””including the conductors and instrumentalists. Apple Music Classical solves this problem by providing rich metadata for the recordings, allowing users to search within a wider range of criteria and listen in Spatial Audio and Lossless formats.
The app also features curation from the Apple Music team and exclusive content to help listeners discover the world of classical music. The app has even helped new listeners learn to appreciate the genre more.
We have not spotted the feature in the app at the time of publication. The album description for 72 Preludes already includes mentions of the album booklet; however, company officials did not provide official word on when it will be rolling out.
