End of the Download Era?

According to Bloomberg, Apple will kill its iTunes service. Instead, Apple will pivot to standalone music and TV apps. I haven't used iTunes to buy music in years. I own a MacBook Air and iPad Mini. I typically buy two movies a year for the iPad for when I fly long-haul and that is it. I prefer to stream/download all my music from Amazon because it is already paid for in one annual fee and forgotten about. I do have a legacy iPod - you know, the big one with the steel backing that could be engraved? - but I haven't used it in years either. I would say we are now 100% in the streaming era and we were nearly there anyway. Thoughts on this?

According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple will be ending iTunes after 18 years. Apple will be launching standalone Music, TV, and Podcasts apps in macOS 10.15 next week, paving the way for end of iTunes. pic.twitter.com/HFmCSxzC4z

— Apple Hub (@theapplehub) May 31, 2019

Comments

[Jeff]

Dang.....I use iTunes daily and have all my music on there and backed up in the cloud. I wonder if everything will port over to the new product and non-Mac users will have access? Oh well, time to start backing everyhting up on my external hard drive.

[texjay]

I'm livin' the true glam life and still buy CD's. I can rip em' and put them wherever/whenever I like. It's getting harder to manage that but I'm gonna hold out as long as I can! lol....

[Metalboy!]

Yeah, I use Apple Music which integrates all the stuff I’ve transferred over the years from CDs.

Same as Jeff, I wonder if Apple will “port over” everything but anticipate they will.

[stu]

i’ve never bought or streamed anything from itunes, don’t plan on it either. but on a daily basis i use itunes to listen (on my computers) to all my mp3 files i’ve ripped (“off”) over the years. curious as to how that will play out for me. maybe it’s time to switch back to winamp.

[Mike]

They aren't shutting down the download store... just separating TV / Movies / Music into separate apps, retiring the "iTunes" name.

PS, I still buy CDs and cherry pick certain songs from iTunes Store.

Streaming is baaaad m'kay???

[GNR]

Streaming is fine as long as you have "signal" :) I am concerned on my big ipod that i port all my music to and sort using the itunes platform.

[Bryon]

I felt a twang of nostalgia when I read that. I remember jumping all over iTunes when it was released for PC in the early 2000's, and immediately began creating a library from my ripped CDs. It completely transformed the way I listened to music, and also the way I thought about physical media. I've never been much of a collector, so I didn't have any reservations about selling about half of my CD collection, keeping only my favorites.

As soon as streaming became popular, I left iTunes behind as well. I still do have my dusty collection of favorite CDs, even though I haven't played one in probably 10 years. In fact, I think the last CD I played was Metallica's Death Magnetic, which I listened to in the parking lot of the store before going home and ripping it.

Last summer, Metallica sent a copy of their CD with each concert ticket purchased. I was the ringleader for my group of friends, buying 8 tickets. A few weeks later, a box of 8 CDs arrived. I was able to give two of them away, but I still have a pile of 6 of them sitting on a shelf, still in shrink wrap. Throwing them out doesn't feel right, but I'm sure that's ultimately what will happen to them. It's funny... 20-25 years ago, those CDs would have been treasured by all 8 of us.

[Gunntherd]

I do internet radio mostly now, I figured out how to burn mp3 onto a dvd and my blu ray player plays it hooked it up to my Stereo at home and play that on shuffle mode idk about 300 different tunes maybe more.

[Bob]

this whole musical revolution has been very intriguing to me. I have tens of thousands of albums, (No exaggeration), stored on external hard drives that I have connected to my home PC. I have an FM transmitter hooked up to that PC that broadcasts to my big stereo system. So, I can cue up a bunch of albums on my computer, and have them play on my stereo through the FM transmitter. This is of course great until my mood suddenly changes, and I have to go change the music. I just got my first iPhone only a month ago, and already my habits have changed. Apple Music is so tightly integrated with Siri that I can hook my iPhone up to my stereo system with a patch cable, sit on my couch, call out albums for Siri to play, and within like two seconds, the music is blasting away. that kind of instant access is a game changer for me. I do have some albums that apple music doesn't have, but I can copy those albums into my phone and have that same instant access. This won't stop me from buying new albums that I love, but my iPhone and Apple Music subscription has definitely changed the way I listen to music at home. When I'm out on the patio now, I can take my phone out with me, plug in my headphones, and fill my ears with music without disturbing the neighbors. it's a beautiful thing. Apple now just needs to come up with a far less clunky way to copy music from a Windows machine to the phone than that huge piece of bloatware known as iTunes for Windows.