Soon, all that will be left of the iTunes brand is the iTunes Store for music. And people buy much less music [than] in the past, having mostly shifted to streaming. Will the iTunes name finally fade away as music sales dwindle? It’s hard to imagine Apple stopping digital music sales entirely; even if fewer people buy digital music, the market isn’t dead, not by a long shot. Global digital music sales peaked in 2012 at around $4.4 billion, and in 2021 they had dropped to $1.1 billion. That’s a decline of about 75%, but Apple still earns a hefty amount of money from selling digital music.
More Information About New Music App on macOS 10.15
Some more information has been uncovered about the upcoming iTunes changes answering some of the questions people had.
The Music app is basically iTunes—but with a design update that puts Apple Music at the fore. You can still see your entire music library, of course, and even buy music on the iTunes Store if you want to. As someone who uses iTunes with Apple Music every day, I’m okay with this change. And if you click on the Songs view in the Library section of the sidebar, you will get your classic iTunes song list back, like it never left.
Apple told Ars Technica that on Windows, there will be no changes. Those who use iTunes on a PC to manage their devices, listen to music, and make iTunes purchases will be able to continue to do so.
What about the syncing features of iTunes? macOS Catalina builds them into the Finder. Attach an iOS device to a Mac and it appears in a Finder window’s sidebar. Select it and what looks like the standard iTunes sync settings screen appears in the window. You won’t get syncing or management of iOS apps, but you’ll be able to back up, update, and restore devices from the Mac.
Spend the Holidays in Pawnee, Indiana
Just a public service announcement to say that the entire series of The Office and Parks and Recreation are currently available on iTunes for $30.
iTunes Gets a Little Streamlined
iTunes has seen a slight revamp. MacStories reports:
The update to iTunes also adds the Friends feature first seen in the iOS 11 beta. Apple Music subscribers can set up a profile and follow friends to see the music and playlists they are listening to. I’ve been using the Friends feature all summer and it’s been a great way to find and try new music.
You can follow me if you want.
iTunes Gets an Update
iTunes received an update today. They’ve refreshed the look a little bit and fixed some bugs. Overall it looks pretty good, but I’m already annoyed I can only view my “recently added” screen in the “album format.” I liked the list view.
OS X 10.11.5 is likely to be the last major point update to El Capitan. All versions of OS X since Apple switched to a yearly release model have gotten five major point updates followed by a couple years of security-only updates. Work on major new features and improvements at this point has presumably shifted to the next version of OS X, which Apple will demo publicly at WWDC next month
Safeguard for iTunes Coming Next Week
Apple has given a statement about that “iTunes deleting your music” bug:
In an extremely small number of cases users have reported that music files saved on their computer were removed without their permission. We’re taking these reports seriously as we know how important music is to our customers and our teams are focused on identifying the cause. We have not been able to reproduce this issue, however, we’re releasing an update to iTunes early next week which includes additional safeguards. If a user experiences this issue they should contact AppleCare.
I’m not sure how they safeguard against a bug they can’t reproduce. Weird. Think they know about the bug that keeps showing me “intro to New Found Glory” in the “for you” section?