Apple Aiming to End iTunes Music Downloads in Two Years [Update: Apple Says 'Not True']

[xmichaelp]

Hahahahaha yes, that will change my mind about streaming music. That will persuade me to give Apple any more money, ever. Better get my superdrive while I still can.

The fact you mentioned a SuperDrive shows how behind the times your thinking is.

Seriously, just try a streaming service. They're great. I too used be so sure I needed to have physical non-DRM files on my hard drive. Then I realized it's pointless and a mess to keep track of them locally.

The cloud computing revolution is great.. Get used to it.

And to the people talking about Amazon.. Ha. They'll do it too, just watch. A couple hundred thousand iTunes defectors isn't enough for them to keep it around.

 

[pat500000]

Ah darn...maybe it was because I twitted Tim about focusing on mac line ups.

Maybe I'll have that lady in "singing in the rain" to sing me a song as an alternative.

 

[BJMRamage]

In a corporate mindset of making money and doing so at an even rate, not a varying rate, this makes sense.
Adobe saw their sales drop as people didn't upgrade their software with each release...how to change that? make it subscription only and boom everyone continues to pay and they get a nice financial figure month-over-month.

but I am not one of those people that likes subscriptions for most things. why? because it is not in MY best interest (sure some folks out there it works to their benefit). I used to buy a lot of movies and music. but then life happened and kids, and layoffs and other stuff. and that means i spend less on those items but i prefer to buy/own (yes buying a song off iTunes isn't owning but leasing it anyway) the music i really like. no need to have a ton of crap anymore. i have no time for crap.

for me, I buy music. i used to use Apple Music for free but they stopped that and i didn't buy into AppleMusic because what i heard off the free station they have now totally SUCKS. and there is a ton of music out there that sucks. that's another reason i stopped buying as much as I did. I prefer to buy from artists I really like.

Data is expensive stateside and streaming sucks into that cap. heck streaming itunes movies does the same for home internet. and that means more money to the internet providers. *that's a whole different story to get into*

bottom line is this. a move to subscription means i buy even less from Apple. I get it, moving to subscription-only music means some will buy into it and they have an even monthly income. but i haven't paid money to Adobe since they switched to a subscription method either.

 

[autrefois]

Apple is also said to be considering ending music downloads due to the confusion it causes with Apple Music, mixing downloaded music purchases with Apple Music content.

People might misunderstand this part of the article. It's not talking about confusion among consumers, but rather it obviously must be aimed at Jony Ive and others at Apple in charge of the interface. They clearly can't figure out a way to make this essential, basic part of the experience work in a straightforward way, so instead of actually solving the problem they're just going to get rid of downloads. Problem solved!

 

[now i see it]

Another crock of MR BS.

People will always want to own music. How the heck are they going to add soundtracks to their beloved iMovies?

How are they going to listen to music when off the cellular grid?

Rumors are exactly that.

 

[Thunderhawks]

Sad to see Tim Cook running Apple into the ground with bad idea after bad idea. I suppose I should start converting my library to FLAC as Apple will probably remove iTunes' ability to play local files.

Hello, rumor?
Overreacting?

I think getting off the ledge and waiting to see what happens is the better alternative.

 

[DudeDad]

Eh, while it has the name, I don't consider iPod Touch (at least post-generation 1) an iPod - if that makes sense.

It makes perfect sense. The classic is gone, sadly (I have the 160 GB in my car). The nano will die off, which is sad because lots of people like it because of its size.

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

I knew this would happen sooner or later, it was just a matter of time...

The great thing about download purchases however is that Apple has no monopoly! Unless they don't allow you to import your own music.

 

[barkomatic]

I would consider renting music but only to find material that I want to buy, download and OWN without any strings attached.

If other major distributors follow suit than I would imagine we would experience and odd resurgence in old fashioned formats like CD's. Though of course by 2020 it might be extremely difficult to find a player.

 

[BJMRamage]

oh and to the folks saying if you buy one album a month you could stream unlimited....

I buy, on average, 6 CDs a year or less. if i want to hear other songs, I can use music channels on TV or radio.

 

[robotica]

Why anyone would want to buy music on anything other than physical media?
This just proves that unless you actually hold onto something physically the "privilege" of "owning" something digitally just isn't worth anything.

 

[t76turbo]

I have my doubts about this rumor....

I bet it isn't the whole story. I like playing owned music from my device much better than I do streaming.

BUT, when I do stream music, I am happy streaming Pandora for free and just listening to an ad occasionally. I own a lot of stock in apple. Have for a while. But I will not pay to stream music based on my current listening habits. Sorry apple, I hope this is not true.

 

[pat500000]

This is the reason why I DON"T BUY from ITUNES. As matter of fact..I WON"T BUY FROM ANY ONLINE STORES...
I got youtube as an alternative....but why you ask? Because what's the point in buying if they will destroy your songs that you purchased? It's better to download free and not worry about about the losses.

Piracy will be sky rocketing high if apple and other online music service goes to the dark side of the force.

 

[EM2013]

So dumb if they do this. Doesn't matter though I'll never get an Apple Music subscription or any streaming service for that matter.

 

[xmichaelp]

Queue the avalanche of macrumors geezers who don't get it.

USB ports? check
Desktop OS on every device? check
Local 100GB music library with five backups? check

Yep, this guy gets it. I know how they are though because I used to be the same. I feared mobile and still had a desktop computer as the center of the computing world as my mindset. The cloud didn't click with me until not too long ago.

 

[pat500000]

Why anyone would want to buy music on anything other than physical media?
This just proves that unless you actually hold onto something physically the "privilege" of "owning" something digitally just isn't worth anything.

Piracy will be all time high.

 

[alphaod]

That's okay. I buy CDs anyways.

 

[BornAgainMac]

I am actually ok with it.

 

[FasterQuieter]

Here's a huge misconception about Apple Music. Let me share my story:

I use the cloud for everything:
Music = Apple Music
Photos = Google Photos
Documents = iWork

Realizing this, I decided to "test" getting a 16GB iPhone 6s Plus. I'm on a leasing program with T-Mobile that lets me trade in my phone whenever I want to get a new one (almost whenever I want ). I figured if 16GB wasn't enough for my needs, I'd return the phone and pay $100 down to get the 64GB version.

To my surprise I was about of space within a month. I was shooting a video while on vacation and I ran out of storage space. I was so confused because I didn't install any games, and only had a one and a half pages of apps, none of which were more than 300mb. I wrote it off as the 16GB simply had little space to work with.

One day I realized there was no way my phone was using that much storage space. I started to investigate and couldn't figure it out. I called Apple Support.

Within minutes, we were able to diagnose the problem.....Apple Music. Apple Music takes up your ENTIRE phone's available storage. I had 7GB of Apple Music cache files. Not one megabyte could be traced back to Apple Music, without the help of technical support. The reason I purchased the 16GB iPhone was so that I could stream my music and photos without using local space. What a crock! The space comes through as "Other" in iTunes when providing storage information. On my iPhone? There was no way to tell. I was literally left guessing. Luckily, you can turn off "iCloud Music Library" and turn it back on to reset the cache. That's not a very elegant solution. I have a few things that I take away from this....

#1 - Apple needs to do a better job telling its users what is taking up storage space on their phones. The current page that shows your usage is laughable. "Other" needs to be present, otherwise it's a mystery.

#2 - Apple needs to let users limit the amount of cache Apple Music allows for streaming. There is no WAY I would ever let Apple Music take up 7GB of storage on a 16GB (12GB) device. That's lunacy.

I think it's shameful what Apple is doing. If I wasn't part of T-Mobile's program, I would be stuck with this 16GB brick forever. Luckily, I can trade-up to the new phone upon release to solve my storage woes. It could be worse having to reset my Apple Music cache every month, but I can survive until the new phone comes out....

And this is the precise reason I gave up on Apple Photos. it used 23GB of my phone's storage, 7GB of which were undeletable thumbnail files. So once I removed iCloud Photo library and deleted all the images, I still had the 7GB of thumbnails. I had to go into the file system and manually delete them. Also, these 23GB didn't magically free up when I needed them. If I tried to copy a movie to the phone for a plane trip, I'd be told I had no space. Long story short, I now use Google Photos and have it set to use 1GB only. Google make services that actually work.

 

[pat500000]

..and hello piracy.

If I cant buy my own music, I'll probably then just pirate it.
This is a ridiculously bad move. Seriously who comes up with the b.s? I mean 'innovation'?

And people condemn piracy....lol. This is the reason why people will pirate songs....with so much investment..and suddenly..boom...bye bye.

 

[gri]

yes but you have to pay 10$ for an album, so 10 albums are 100$ and 100 albums are 1000$ and so on....with this you pay 10$ per month and you have unlimited albums every day for 10$/month

But once they decide to take the album off your music is gone. Not with the download (I hope) and certainly not with the physical entity, digital or analog.

 

[daanodinot]

So what about the albums I've purchased on iTunes because they're NOT on Apple Music?

 

[xmichaelp]

I want to own my content and I hate subscriptions. That's not because I'm old (27) or don't like changes. The idea that a company can just remotely shut your subscription down at any moment is horrific. What's next? That we lease our next iPhone or Mac from Apple? Oh wait, for the phones that's already happening. Soon there is no other option than to get a new one every 2 or 3 years or else you're out. If you can live with a phone for 5 years now you're out. Companies having total control over everything you have in your own house is total nuts. Nobody should want that.

Your logic doesn't make any sense seeing as Apple can shut down itunes and any time and it's no different than your scenario with a subscription shutting down.

 

[ctg7w6]

Lol at some of the decisions Apple makes these days. I will own my music one way or another. You can help with that (and make money), Apple, or you can shuffle my business elsewhere.

 

[xmichaelp]

Vinyl records are looking pretty good these days.

No they don't. They remain a bulky utterly not versatile and basically worthless music medium in 2016.