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 Not only has iTunes been outdated for years in terms of its interface and functionality, but Apple clearly aims to move to a streaming model of music selling.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'.

Comments

"iTunes LPs" != iTunes.

[Kenja]

I know, reading is hard, but the LPs sold on iTunes are the extra content, liner notes, etc. Not iTunes itself.

Re:"iTunes LPs" != iTunes.

[Schnapple]

I know, reading is hard, but the LPs sold on iTunes are the extra content, liner notes, etc. Not iTunes itself.

To expand on this slightly, there's a couple of similarly named concepts people get tripped up on.

iTunes was and is the name of the music player and organization app on Mac and Windows. It's also what Apple uses to sell people content via the iTunes Store.

Apple has been selling full albums from day one of the iTunes Music Store. They also sell the songs individually for varying amounts - usually $0.99/pop, though after some label finagling they also have $0.69 and $1.29 price points.

The record industry has used the term "LP" for many years to refer to a full length album to be sold at full price. The term comes from "Long Play" and it's a holdover from the early phonograph days. The record industry also uses the term "EP", for "Extended Play" and despite the naming it's the term they use for a smaller, shorter album that sells at a reduced price (the etymology comes from the fact that it's extended compared to a single).

Some artists don't like their albums to be purchased song-by-song and notable examples like Pink Floyd were slow to adapt for that reason.

"iTunes LP" was a format idea Apple came up with. The idea was to both provide incentive to purchase full albums as well as recreate some of the look/feel of albums with liner notes, etc. They borrowed the term "LP" to invoke the notion of it being a more substantial thing than just buying the album. I believe it was designed to help you envision buying an LP record (i.e., gatefold cover, lyric sheet, etc.)

Like a number of half baked Apple ideas it never really got the attention it needed and it never really got used much. So they're phasing it out.

But so everyone is clear:

• iTunes, the application, is not going anywhere.
• The iTunes Store is not going anywhere.
• The iTunes Store is still going to sell whole albums just like it always has
• Even if Apple did want everyone to be an Apple Music subscriber, they still use iTunes the application and the iTunes Store sell tons of other things like movies and TV shows.
• iTunes LP, a technique and format for packaging certain albums with extra digital materials, is being phased out. That's what the memo is about. That's what the story got wrong.

It is true that Apple does name things somewhat confusingly, with most product offerings having some combination of "iTunes", "iCloud" or other words and it can be tricky to make sure you're referring to the right thing. But the notion that someone could take a memo about the iTunes LP digital music format being phased out and extrapolate it to Apple is finally killing off the main program they have all their users tied in to is just comical.

Two sentences to see the headline is bunk.

[SeaFox]

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."

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.

Clickbait.

[Cheviot]

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.