Apple has acquired the classical music streaming service Primephonic, the company announced Monday in a statement. The terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
The acquisition adds to Apple Music’s growing library of more than 75 million songs and builds on the platform’s existing classical music content. Spotify lags far behind with over 70 million songs.
Apple said it plans to launch a classical music-focused app next year that takes advantage of Primephonic’s existing user interface. Apple will withdraw Primephonic offline on Sept. 7 and current subscribers will get six months free of Apple Music, the company said.
Over the next few months, Apple also said it plans to leverage Primephonic’s detailed information on classic tracks to improve navigation and search capabilities. Subscribers will also have access to exclusive playlists and audio.
Apple quietly buys dozens of companies each year, often to acquire engineers with experience in specific areas or to add key technology to an ongoing initiative. But some of the company’s largest, highest-profile acquisitions have taken place in the music space: it bought streaming music service and headphone maker Beats for $ 3 billion in 2014 and the music service. Shazam music identification for a price of about $ 400 million in 2017. In 2018, he quietly bought Platoon, a service to help users discover artists, for an undisclosed sum.
In a letter posted Monday on its website, Primephonic said the acquisition will help it cater to more classical music listeners around the world.
“As an exclusively classical startup, we can’t reach most of the world’s classical listeners, especially those who also listen to many other musical genres,” the company said. “Therefore, we concluded that in order to achieve our mission, we must collaborate with a leading transmission service that includes all musical genres and that shares our love for classical music.”