Apple recently made the announcement that they are killing off iTunes. Oh no! What will happen to all my downloaded music? What about the songs I copied from CDs onto iTunes? My playlists!
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We need to start at the beginning. Many people think that the iPod changed the way we listened to music forever. Well, that is only partly true. The first iPod was released on October 23, 2001. Three years previous to the iPod launch, the MPMan F10 launched. We don't talk about this but we talk about the iPod. Why?
The secret to the success of the iPod was not the device. It was iTunes. On January 9, 2001, Apple launched iTunes. It was mildly successful but the coup de grâce for iTunes occurred on April 28, 2003.
Apple launched the iTunes Music Store, "a revolutionary online music store that lets customers quickly find, purchase and download the music they want for just 99 cents per song, without subscription fees."
The iTunes Music Store was the only legal digital catalogue of music to offer songs from all five major record labels. Apple boasted at the time that an incredible 200,000 songs were available in the store which was impressive in 2003 but there are now over 30 million songs available.
To say it was an instant success is like saying that Roger Federer hits a tennis ball OK. Within 15 months, 100 million songs had been sold. The first billion songs took less than 3 years from launch date and 10 years after launch, 25 billion songs had been sold.
Surprisingly for Apple though, they missed a market trend. As mobile reception improved, the concept of streaming music rather than buying individual songs started to gain momentum.
Why buy one song when you can pay a small monthly fee and have access to all of the available songs on a platform.
Spotify is the best known of the challengers.
It launched on October 7, 2008 - possibly before its time - but as reception and data plans have improved, Spotify has grown to now be at 207 million users worldwide.
Apple was late to the party and their streaming service only has 50 million users. Apple originally boasted that you could buy their songs without subscription fees but as it turns out, that is actually what we want.
So why kill off iTunes?
The market has changed.
iTunes hasn't. It is still the same basic program it was in 2001 but now tries to include everything.
Instead, they will shut down iTunes and repackage three different dedicated apps.
Apple Music, Apple Podcasts and Apple TV.
Apple Music will focus on Apple's streaming service to try and catch up with Spotify but they will still allow you to keep all of your old purchased songs - phew!
Tell me how you listen to your music at ask@techtalk.digital