Goodbye iTunes: Apple To Kill Off The Service After 18 Years

It may be time to bid iTunes farewell.

It was back on January 9, 2001, when Apple co-founder and then CEO Steve Jobs introduced the company’s iTunes software at the Macworld Expo 2001 in San Francisco, the product that started a “music revolution” by bringing in digital music in the 21st century. After a little over 18 years, with Jobs long gone, the company is reportedly planning to bring an end to the app—After nearly two decades, the technology giant and maker of the iPhones, Macs, and iPads, is all set to finally announce the shutdown of iTunes at its developer conference that kicks off on Monday, Bloomberg reported.

The announcement of the company’s plan to kill off the platform shouldn’t come as a shock though, as Apple has slowly been rolling out replacement over the years, many of them now overtaking iTunes, such as the standalone Apple Music and podcast apps—While a date, as of 1 June 2019, has not been set for the official end of iTunes, it is expected that users of the product will be given several weeks, if not months, to get their files and data in order

iTunes was the first and probably one of the largest service, which offered a solution to the music industry’s fight against piracy particularly in the US. The app soon became a one-stop shop for its users to consume any media that includes music, movies, and TV. The product has heavily contributed to the growth of the music industry across the world by eliminating piracy. So much so, that as per a 2018 year-end report by the Recording Industry Association of America, music streaming amounted to a whopping 75 per cent of the music industry’s revenue in the US.

The “End of iTunes” was revealed by Bloomberg in an article previewing the Worldwide Developers Conference:

” iTunes has been the way Apple users listen to music, watch movies and TV shows, hear podcasts, and manage their devices for almost two decades. This year, Apple is finally ready to move into a new era. The company is launching a trio of new apps for the Mac – Music, TV, and Podcasts – to replace iTunes. That matches Apple’s media app strategy on iPhones and iPads. Without iTunes, customers can manage their Apple gadgets through the Music app.

According to a  post,

“Apple has done what Apple does best, make complex applications easy, and make them even more powerful in the process. iTunes is miles ahead of every other jukebox application, and we hope its dramatically simpler user interface will bring even more people into the digital music revolution.”said by Steve jobs, CEO of Apple Inc—Instead of customers using iTunes for all their entertainment needs, Apple will split Music, TV and Podcasts into three separate apps to be used on iPhones and iPads.

Over the years, iTunes software itself has become so bloated and cumbersome that many Apple fans hope the company kills the app. By moving sections like Apple Music and Apple Podcasts into their own brands, Apple is clearing a path to put iTunes out to pasture.

So long iTunes and thanks for all the upgrade invites.