Apple Purchases Classical Music Streaming Service Primephonic

Apple:

Apple today announced it has acquired Primephonic, the renowned classical music streaming service that offers an outstanding listening experience with search and browse functionality optimized for classical, premium-quality audio, handpicked expert recommendations, and extensive contextual details on repertoire and recordings.

With the addition of Primephonic, Apple Music subscribers will get a significantly improved classical music experience beginning with Primephonic playlists and exclusive audio content. In the coming months, Apple Music Classical fans will get a dedicated experience with the best features of Primephonic, including better browsing and search capabilities by composer and by repertoire, detailed displays of classical music metadata, plus new features and benefits.

I am very excited to see what Apple does with this. Apple Music (and Spotify) are not set up for classical music and Primephonic is a fantastic standalone service for the “genre.”

Chorus TV: Vinnie Caruana

Vinnie Caruana

With music fans eager yet apprehensive about the return of concerts, Vinnie Caruana has been providing an ideal experience in the form of private outdoor shows throughout the summer. After over a year without live music, I found myself in the cranberry capital of the world – Middleborough, MA – being serenaded by his acoustic performance in a safe, intimate backyard setting on July 24. Enjoy the full set of The Movielife, I Am the Avalanche, and solo material.

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Review: Chvrches – Screen Violence

It’s been written several times over the course of music history that an artist’s most important album is their current one, since it has the potential to make or break their career depending on the commercial and fan reaction to their product. In a lot of ways, a band usually makes their next album as a reaction to the one that came before it, and that rings very true on Screen Violence. CHVRCHES released their third record, Love is Dead, to a mixed bag of reviews with some reviewers claiming it was a step back from their early magic found. I personally didn’t see Love Is Dead as a step back, but after hearing the major step forward on Screen Violence, I can at least see where some of those reviewers were coming from. Screen Violence is a direct reaction to society’s obsession with others reactions to social media posts, how the media portrays major news events, as well as keeping our own mental health balanced through all of the distractions that exist in our world. With so much “noise” in today’s world, it was only a matter of time before this band made one of their boldest artistic statements to date on their fourth full-length record that shatters even the highest of expectations for where they could take their sound.

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Olivia Rodrigo Tops the Charts

Olivia Rodrigo

Olivia Rodrigo once again has the number one album in the country:

In the tracking week ending Aug. 26, Sour earned 133,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. (up 133%), according to MRC Data. Of that sum, album sales comprise 84,000 (up 1,201%), with vinyl LP sales equaling 76,000 of that figure (the second-largest sales week for a vinyl album since MRC Data began electronically tracking sales in 1991).

Liner Notes (August 28th, 2021)

Turnstile - Background

This week’s newsletter has my first impressions on the new Every Time I Die album, thoughts on Turnstile’s masterpiece, and some other random commentary on music, movies, and TV shows I consumed over the past week. There’s also a playlist of songs I enjoyed last week, and this week’s supporter Q&A post can be found here.

If you’d like this newsletter delivered to your inbox each week (it’s free and available to everyone), you can sign up here.

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