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Leaked Apple Email Hints at the Possible End of iTunes: Report (cultofmac.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple could kill off iTunes in the near future, a new report suggests. It cites an email that Apple reportedly wrote to people in the music industry recently, announcing the "end of iTunes LPs." The iTunes LP format was first introduced in 2009 and let publishers add interactive artwork, along with assorted iTunes Extras, with their content. The LP format never achieved great popularity. However, the fact that Apple plans to ditch iTunes LPs in 2018 potentially hints at the possibility that Apple may stop selling iTunes music downloads in the near future. The Apple email announcing the change was reportedly sent two weeks ago from an address at "The iTunes Store" and signed by "The Apple Music Team." But its existence has only been highlighted now through a report by the U.K. newspaper The Metro. "Apple will no longer accept new submissions of iTunes LPs after March 2018," the letter notes. "Existing LPs will be deprecated from the store during the remainder of 2018. Customers who have previously purchased an album containing an iTunes LP will still be able to download the additional content using iTunes Match." The news about the possible winding down of iTunes would come as no surprise to many users. Not only has iTunes been outdated for years in terms of its interface and functionality, but Apple clearly aims to move to a streaming model of music selling. Further reading: 'Apple Stole My Music. No, Seriously'; Apple Says It Doesn't Know Why iTunes Users Are Losing Their Music Files; iTunes Turns 13 Today -- Continues To Be 'Awful'.
It would be a favor to all of us.
Of course they'd rather let you rent music than buy it on a subscription model... "brave"
where you can go and download iTunes LPs like in the old days.
...before you have to rent it
I know, reading is hard, but the LPs sold on iTunes are the extra content, liner notes, etc. Not iTunes itself.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
What will replace the local iPhone synchronization features if iTunes dies? BTW - don't confuse "iTunes LP" with "iTunes Music" -- one is a specific subset of music. Basically a more-expensive bundled album vs individual tracks.
Apple is overpriced junk for faggots. If you use Apple, you deserve what you get.
Get AIDS and die.
Nobody is stopping me pirate it either.
That's all I had to read to realize this article was submitted by an idiot. "iTunes" the music application/media store portal is NOT the same thing as "iTunes LPs". All they are doing is getting rid of a special content-addition option for album sales on the music store that let publishers include digital version of the booklets that normally accompany physical CDs, containing linear notes, photos, and other printed content from the band.
Yes, the company who legitimized music on the internet is going to give up selling music... A model that hugely benefits Apple, for the "lucrative" business model of streaming only, a model that primarily benefits the record companies.
for my kid. I used to buy about $120/yr worth of iTunes cards for her. Now I pay $5/month for Apple Music. She's in college so I get a discount, and once she graduates she's on her own :).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
There is literally nothing in the article to suggest that because Apple will stop selling their proprietary special featured albums that they will stop selling music all together.
It's clickbait, nothing more.
I just confirmed that iTunes is not going away. iTunes music revenue is still growing as of Q3 2017 at a clip of 20%. 99 cents for a track is pretty reasonable. So iTunes is profitable and growing. iTunes LP (whatever that is) is going away, I think this is the interactive content and cute liner notes that typically come with CDs. YouTube is currently the go to place for extra content and as a heavy iTunes user, I did't know iTunes LP existed, so it must be hidden well.
That argument is quite a leap beyond logic and reason. It sounds a little bit to me like if someone had tried to suggest that Apple was abandoning removable media when they started shipping the iMac with no internal floppy drive. Removing one largely unused and/or obsolete feature does not suggest that the entire product is going to be killed.
Mind you, as buggy as iTunes is, it seems likely that this particular leap really boils down to wishful thinking from Apple's biggest fans and/or biggest critics -- which are often one-and-the-same people, by the way -- but I'm afraid there are far too many things which still require iTunes, for it to be discontinued entirely, this early in the game.
I really liked Apple hardware but couldn't stand iTunes and being forced to sync with it to add my own content. On Androids all you do is hook it up to a PC and it shows up like another drive.
If they dump iTunes I'll seriously think about getting a new iPhone.
However, the fact that Apple plans to ditch iTunes LPs in 2018 potentially hints at the possibility that Apple may stop selling iTunes music downloads in the near future.
No. Just. No.
That's the sound of the last death knell of this once great company.
iPod Classic (dead)
iPod Shuffle (deded)
iPod Nano (more ded)
Macbook 17"
Mac Mini (might as well be, 1.4ghz cpu)
Real Mac Pros
Cinema Displays
Airport
Net Storage version
All 32bit software on iOS (30% of the available code for it)
Audio Jacks
iPhone 4/5 style body (Se technically, but with no upgrade... obvious theyre killing it)
[+ Whatever the fuck they call their 'new' macbook keyboards]
Their Photo software/Final Cut X being garbage
We've actually reached a point where there's more they've given up on, than invented and renewed these last few years.
That's pretty sad for a once great giant like Apple.
RIP, Steve. A technological giant.
iTunes LP format has failed... so Apple may pull iTunes?
Google Wave failed - Google to leave the advertising industry?
Can't you just copy *.mp3 and *.ogg onto it? The filesystem mounts as a USB device, doesn't it?
Apple: iTunes LP doesn't make us money, never really did, so we'll ditch it
News hack: OMG Apple is exploding!
How does that even hint at Apple stopping sales of music?
"Everybody's naked underneath" -- The Doctor
There is a reason that blog is nicknamed "C*nt of Mac"
Its like you know, how Ford closed up shop when they stopped selling the Model-T
The US in unique it seems in that the total IQ of the country remains the same even as the population has grown. You have have more and more really stupid people. and these blogs cater for that crowd because they are the majority.
I dont have any inside knowledge, nor any further "evidence" than TFA, but i do think that it's likely that iTunes will be deprecated, in favor of Apple Music, with more iTunes like features.
I guess I will just have to buy my music elsewhere. I already own so 50K+ unique songs I am not going to start renting music any time soon.
What a moronic article. The actual news is simply that Apple will be deprecating their _album_ format. This is not surprising, because digital singles have always outsold digital albums, and it's far from clear that the added album content increased album sales. I'd give Apple credit for at least trying to make digital albums interesting, but the reality is that for the majority of albums there are only one or two songs that are really popular, so only dedicated fans buy entire albums, and they'd probably buy the album even without the "extra stuff" in the LP format.
The idea that Apple is discontinuing iTunes completely is beyond stupid. It's a $billion revenue stream for Apple. Yes, digital downloads are shrinking a bit, while streaming is growing rapidly, but the two compliment each other, and both are highly profitable. And, perhaps more importantly to Apple, the more people's music is in iTunes, the more likely they are to buy Apple hardware to listen to their music.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
Happily, this doesn't impact me. I just sold off my last Mac.
Actually, I'm typing this on a Mac, but it runs GNU/Linux, so... Apple can take iTunes and all their other garbage and shove it right up their asses. So happy to be done with them, and so glad to be back using free software.
In case anyone should wonder why I stopped using Linux, I'll tell you, it's because of Apple's much vaunted, "it just works," reputation, which has turned out to be total bullshit. I was trying to find a DECENT Android (Android/Linux,) PHONE, and couldn't stand any of the (at the time-) current crop of Android phones, so I bought an iPhone, then an iMac on ebay, so I could put music on it, among other things. But I've finally reached a point of so sick and fucking tired of all this bullshit that I have resolved to switch back to a dumb-phone, pull out and dust-off my old MP3 player, and say "screw all this" to the increasingly connected, INCREASINGLY DISTRACTED "lifestyle" and get back to basics. Dumb/burner phone, music on my music player, and I'm e-bay'ing all my other Apple bullshit as I get workable replacements. Because fuck ALL that shit.
Sorry if this offends, but not half as sorry, not a tenth, actually, as sorry as I am that I ever bought a single, solitary, goddamned fucking piece-of-overpriced-designed-to-be-obsolete-in-a-year, APPLE SHIT. I have given Apple so much money they didn't really earn or deserve, that I could have done so much better with, than buying into their bullshit cult.
Just feels good to be out of it. Apple iWorld. You can iKeep it.
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
other than those Irish songs they forced on me, I've never paid for a danged song.
Does this mean they're going to do away with webcasts too? What will I fill my Rio Clear MP3 player with?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
âoeHowever, the fact that Apple plans to ditch iTunes LPs in 2018 potentially hints at the possibility that Apple may stop selling iTunes music downloads in the near futureâ How is not supporting a single format (LPs include extras above and beyond music - thatâ(TM)s what is being retired) a hint that they will cease all sales and move exclusively to subscriptions? Holy shit thatâ(TM)s stupid.
If apple itself disappears tomorrow nothing of value will be lost.
If you're stupid enough to use an Apple device as an MP3 player, and/or to use iTunes, you deserve everything you get.
What was wrong with just plugging in your cheap MP3 player to your PC with a USB lead, it appears as an external hard drive, you copy the files over to the folders you want, and that's it.
Oh - I know what was wrong - Apple users are generally stupid and don't even know where their music files are. And probably don't WANT to know.
I just had to weigh in here, because every time there's a story about iTunes, i read how much people hate it. Even at work, there has been one or two occasions where someone has talked about iTunes and someone else jumps in showing their disgust of the product.
Apparently there is something wrong with me. I've used iTunes since my first iPod in 2004, on PC. Yes, PC. In the early versions there was a bug that instead of ejecting the CD unmounted it. Makes perfect sense on *nix, but doesn't translate that well to Windows. Anyway, I thought it was fine. I still use it, although on a Mac. I regularly buy albums from the iTunes Store and Bandcamp, even though I have Spotify.
I'm happy, but.. I understand that what I'm doing is wasted, hopeless and that I shouldn't. But I need someone to tell me why, in a way that makes me understand. Because very often, when someone lashes out against iTunes, they expect me to have the same foundation of frustration and agony with it. Music is, at least in my life, highly valued and at times considered a fundamental part of staying happy and productive. So I can understand how something like this not working can cause a minor outburst.
It would actually be great to have a bullet list of the major gripes people had with the product, worded in a manner that I could comprehend. Because it seems to me I might be missing out on a lot. Would anyone care to expand my universe? :)
Once I've written a song, how do I make sure it isn't substantially similar to any existing copyrighted song
No need. You need that only if you're going to sell recordings or perform for pay.
According to 17 USC 106, a paywall is not the threshold for activity that meaningfully infringes exclusive rights in a copyrighted work; distributing or performing publicly is. Someone making a recording of a song available without charge through the Internet is still operating publicly and thus needs to either take a license or somehow certify originality.
I used to buy MP3s from Appleâ(TM)s ITunes Store. But why should I continue it now after hearing the news that they might drop it!? But replace it with what new format?!
Wanna know why why it takes two phones
It's really simple said the PHB.
One is for sending phone messages. Texting. I don't want you scrambling to write down a phone number that anyone can read. I don't want any of my agents scribbling down an address that can be sent by email anyway.
This is the 21st century, gents. The pen is so yesterday.
You want to borrow a pen?Hit the bricks, pal, 'cause you are going out! You're going to be shining my shoes