Primephonic - Classical Music

There is room to improve. One is little dropouts, an intermittent problem. I have a very good internet system, and I do not have this problem with movies or casts from the Berlin Phil or Medici. Another is an idiosyncratic layout that has my fingers confused when I try to find the apple airplay button several layers away From where I push play. I wish there were pics of the back of album covers or digital booklets. Much more info needed about new works. That said, and expecting they will get better, I love the exposure to new artists and recordings that are no longer easy to learn about from magazines like Stereo Review or High Fidelity, all alas defunct. Hooray for vikingur Olafsson. I have 100,000 plus tracks in my iTunes library. The murder of iTunes by Apple is loathsome. The new OS X says, if you want to manage your library, buy a PC where iTunes still exists. This is like a kosher deli recommending bacon. So, my iMac will never be updated. But, Primephonic is a consolation. Please make it cleaner, fresher, smoother!

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I am excited about the possibilities for this service, but there are some things I’d like see improved before I pay for a subscription. 1. It’s too difficult to just play music. Pandora starts playing the most recently played station right away when the app is opened. This app requires several interactions before any music can play. I tried to quickly turn on some music in the car the other day while I was stopped, and it was very difficult to get to anything (that’s not a highlight or something specific) 2. How about suggesting to play the last thing I heard? I don’t think I should have to create a playlist or save something to favorites just to find it again. Case in point: I was listening to a Hindemith sonata during a commute. I stopped at a rest area and brought my phone in with me. When I came back out, I had to search for the Hindemith again, find the artist I was listening to, and try to guess where I had left off. Frustrating, especially for this price point. 3. Definitely needs a CarPlay/AndroidAuto capability, beyond being able to play/pause, forward/backward skip. I would love to see an actual CarPlay app to help me select music.

After a 14-day trial, I decided to subscribe, in part because I badly want this app to keep improving and realize it will need subscribers to help get there! I love the concept and, when I have found what I was looking for, have been very pleased. I think there is a lot of potential. The library is really very vast already and this alone may justify the investment, despite some obvious areas for improvement. First, the search feature is inconsistent. While there is a generic keyword search that will turn up items that share words in their title with your search, Primephonic does try to further group searches into composers and specific pieces, which solves the search woes of other services... when it works! I find the catalog must not be fully tagged yet because many recordings in its database that you can find through the generic keyword search don’t seem to make it into this more streamlined search output. Hopefully with time this improves. Second, there is currently no ability to cast audio over Chromecast and I very much hope this is added soon.

I am so thrilled with Primephonic and its recent improvements to the search and favorites functionality! The sound quality is spectacular needless to say, but the initial search function was poor. All that is more than fixed now, and an enormous classical catalogue can be instantly accessed with great ease! I nearly shrieked with delight a few nights ago when I saw that favorite albums are now alphabetized by last name of composer, instead of Spotify’s ludicrous method of first name of conductor or performer! I am having great fun exploring new recordings of favorite works and re-listening to old favorites. If I can’t yet find an occasional old CD, I always discover a new recording with perhaps a pairing of an unfamiliar work, so I continue to expand my personal horizons! The Platinum service is worth every penny, in my opinion. BTW: I listen on an iPad with an outboard Dragonfly DAC from Audioquest and the incredible Audioquest NightHawk headphones - sublime. - Jonathan D.

Very much enjoying this service! Grew up casually with classical music and played multiple instruments in middle school, I can find the songs playing at my local symphony and my favorites. Some more contemporary composer’s works may be more sparse as that I couldn’t find some e.g. Saariaho’s Ciel d’hiver. I especially appreciate how the app understands the nuances of classical music workflows and makes it easy to listen to different recordings of the same song, and the curations by country and compose are nice since I’ve missed some marvelous pieces over the years. And the app doesn’t cut off the names of songs, which is unbelievably annoying in other apps. The down side is Sonos support is still missing, you can’t download the songs for offline play, and oddly I’m not able to remove songs from my playlists. Hopefully they can resolve those issues.