Bottom line: Apple last summer purchased streaming service Primephonic to improve the classical music experience for Apple Music subscribers. We still don’t know for sure if the service will be a standalone app or reside within the existing Apple Music app, but evidence seems to suggest the former.

The company stopped accepting new subscribers and took the service offline on September 7. Existing Primephonic members were given a free six month subscription to Apple Music to hold them over while developers prepped a dedicated classical music app to launch this year.

Code recently found in the Apple Music beta app for Android suggests a launch could be imminent, and that the new app might be called Apple Classical.

Interpreting Apple’s message word for word, the company said it plans to launch a “dedicated classical music app next year combining Primephonic’s classical user interface that fans have grown to love with more added features.”

Why is Apple keeping classical music in a separate, standalone app? Why not just roll it into the existing Apple Music app, or at least make Apple Classical a subsection under the Apple Music umbrella? One would think that any tech or special features acquired as part of the Primephonic deal could be equally beneficial to Apple Music, and vice versa.

Furthermore, combining the two would only boost Apple Music’s subscriber numbers and put it in a more favorable position to compete against rivals like Spotify.

If the September shutdown date and six month free subscription to Apple Music is any indicator, the new classical service could debut sometime early next month or sooner.

Image credit: Pixabay, Brett Jordan