Apple’s quiet visual overhaul of its music apps has reached its second stop. Apple Music Classical has been updated with a new monochrome icon and refreshed interface, bringing the standalone classical streaming app in line with the black-and-white identity Apple recently gave its main Apple Music app.
The new icon keeps the treble clef that has defined Apple Music Classical since launch, but swaps the old colour scheme for a black symbol on a white background. One difference stands out. Where the redesigned Apple Music icon went flat, the Classical version holds on to a three-dimensional look, with soft lighting, shading and a degree of transparency that give the clef some depth. It is a small inconsistency, and Apple hasn’t explained the reasoning, but it suggests the two apps aren’t being treated as identical twins.
Changes go beyond the home screen. Inside the app, the red accents that used to mark buttons and controls have been replaced with a blue tone much closer to the default accent colour Apple uses across its other built-in apps. For an app that previously borrowed Apple Music’s signature red to signal the family connection, that is a noticeable shift, and it makes Classical feel more like a standard Apple app than a spin-off of the main service.
The timing is the more interesting part of the story. Only a few weeks ago, Apple launched a much more colourful branding campaign for Apple Music, built around visuals created by using sound waves to move water. Plenty of observers expected those vivid designs to eventually work their way into the app icon, treating the monochrome version as a stopgap. Extending the black-and-white treatment to Apple Music Classical makes that look less likely. Apple appears to be keeping the bold colours for marketing while settling on a restrained look for the apps themselves.
Not everyone will welcome that. The red Apple Music icon was one of the most recognisable on an iPhone home screen, and a white tile risks blending in among other apps rather than standing out.
Apple Music Classical first arrived in 2023, building on Apple’s 2021 acquisition of the classical streaming service Primephonic. It still isn’t sold separately and requires an Apple Music subscription, priced at $11.99 a month with a one-month free trial, or through the Apple One bundle.
With both music apps now sharing the same monochrome direction, the obvious question is whether other Apple services will follow.