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iTunes Expected to Be Retired After Over 18 Years
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This would be disappointing, I don’t use it for matching anymore but primarily for custom songs not available on any cloud based platform and always utilize iTunes Match to upload them and listen on all my devices. Hopefully it’s still part of the new app
Oh, hey, MR Twitter has a funny and good and great animation accompanying this article link. Maybe we should all—I don't know—like or subscribe or follow them or whatever. 
Yep, and it's going to start dating somebody half its age. Watch out, Spotify!
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A Music app, that goes back to basics, that can catalog your music properly, and gives us the option of placing the library on external drives , clouds etc etc instead of constantly forcing it back to the build in drive after every update etc. Improved audio quality (support for higher bit and sample rates) so it's actually useful for audiophiles etc too would be nice... but probably wont ever happen....
I hope those of us on Mac will still be able to use Apple Configurator for encrypted iPhone backups.
I also still use iTunes Match to store music in iTunes (and in the cloud) that isn't available on Apple Music or in the iTunes Store (mostly Garth Brooks). I really hope that doesn't go away. My parents also use it a lot for their PianoDisc system. I realize there's probably not many of us iTunes Match users left after Apple Music was released, but the system works great and I am more than willing to continue handing $25/year over to Apple to use it.
I also still use iTunes Match to store music in iTunes (and in the cloud) that isn't available on Apple Music or in the iTunes Store (mostly Garth Brooks). I really hope that doesn't go away. My parents also use it a lot for their PianoDisc system. I realize there's probably not many of us iTunes Match users left after Apple Music was released, but the system works great and I am more than willing to continue handing $25/year over to Apple to use it.
I remember the years when I looked forward to new versions with a different note icon. iTunes went through a rough period on Windows, it was constantly getting minor point updates you had to download. I rarely use it these days though.
Certainly the earlier versions of iTunes were insanely great. As a user and developer I see the need for a new iTunes. Not only the interface is bloated, but the code too. iTunes origins come from Mac OS 9. It's the oldest app Apple has around without rewrite. The Mac OS 9 code is likely not there anymore, but because it went through all the iterations. Mac OS 9 > Mac OS X > 32-bit Intel > 64-bit Intel (and Carbon > Cocoa) it's codebase is likely very hard to maintain. If you need to rewrite the entire codebase, you may as well delete the old interface and start from scratch. I still like iTunes a lot. Apple added some stupid features over the years (the default playlist view and the removal of the per-playlist shuffle and repeat settings), but overall it's one of Apple's best apps. If Apple chose to keep iSync and do iOS-device syncing over iSync I think iTunes could've been around a few years longer.
And just like that Apple killed off the last vestiges of owning your own music.
They said streaming would eventually take over, and here it is. The iTunes store will go away since apple doesn't want you to "own" your own music anymore. They have proven that with movies purchases. Streaming is so much better for providers (Apple, Spotifiy, etc) so much easier to gather metrics, underpay artists, manipulate playlists with "curated" selections. Its the new payola.
They said streaming would eventually take over, and here it is. The iTunes store will go away since apple doesn't want you to "own" your own music anymore. They have proven that with movies purchases. Streaming is so much better for providers (Apple, Spotifiy, etc) so much easier to gather metrics, underpay artists, manipulate playlists with "curated" selections. Its the new payola.
Whatever comes better not disable iTunes or destroy my playlists that have been years in the making!
And it will take 6 months to a year to come out on PC and still have the stupid mac UI on Windows.
How will I be able to stream content (movies mostly) to my AppleTV? Nearly half of the 1000 movies I have stored on external hard drives are burned from my Blu Ray collection.
This is terrible writing. Basically describing the Watch as a failure because it doesn’t sell in iPhone like quantities. When did anyone at Apple ever suggest the Watch should/would reach iPhone sales levels?
Originally iTunes is music focused application then they cluttered with kinds of stupid stuff to handle the growing iOS. Now they wan't to kill and make a new music focused application which they should have done long time ago a separate application to handle they syncing between macos and ios. I'm going to miss iTunes it the basically the door that opens me into Apple.
For playing and archiving my music I pretty much like it.
They just killed Safari on Windows. I expect Apple to abandon the PC.
I like that it looks like Mac on Windows.
That's a good question! I wonder what is going to happen to the version on Windows?
So I now need to use the "Music" app to perform a DFU update on my phone? Riiiiiggghhhht
Check out their website. It is purely for library management and playback. No store, no podcasts, no radio, no apps, no streaming, no movies, no tv shows. But it does have a good/smart duplicate finder.
It sure has hell better allow me to upload my own music via iCloud Music Library.
Not only that, I don’t see how logistically another tech product could ever sell as well as the iPhone. Computers won’t (not to consumers), so unless there is another major paradigm shift it’s simply impossible to match the best selling consumer computing device ever made.
Note that I’m not praising the iPhone/smartphones (they’ve frankly done just as much damage as good to society), I’m just talking about the logic at play here. Most people’s computing needs are met by either an actual computer or a smartphone. I don’t see any type of device category that can open up a new face of computing. We may find ambient computing slowly takes over, but that would be a paradigm shift of LESS screens in our daily lives and I don’t see that becoming the dominant norm in society.
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How do you get music into iCloud music library outside of iTunes? How do you manage metadata on your library outside of iTunes? And if you’re not using a 3rd party video player iTunes is the only way to sync media to your device. There is iTunes functionality that is still needed.