Apple Terminating Music Downloads 'Within 2 Years

Interesting.. Not surprised, but will be interesting to see where the market for owned music shifts.

About 90% of the music we buy is on Amazon

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About 90% of the music we buy is on Amazon

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100% for me.

Apple is the debole!!!!

iTunes

I think two of the responses to that story puts it best...

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Calling B.S. Unlike physical formats where there is a significant cost to manufacture, there is absolutely no reason to kill music downloads. A lot of people will never want to be tied down to a monthly subscription. Windowing is still in the experimental stage and showing signs of growing. Not to mention that Apple offers video and app downloads. Not having music downloads wouldn't make sense from a strategic standpoint and it would leave a lot of potential money on the table.

[Apple] sells more downloads than every other service combined. They have licenses to sell music in nearly every country. And they have a huge hardware platform to promote sales. Some of which (like the iPod shuffle) do not even support streaming.

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As a person that likes to use tech for more than 2 years, I do not imagine I will ever get on board with an Apple purchase again. You buy in, get the peripherals, and then they shift to a better, shinier new market. A fine business model for them, but not a rewarding one for slow adopter. I suppose itunes will be out the window soon and I will have to break down and copy off all those old purchase protected songs from a decade ago to a cd to just to upload them again onto a new platform. Glad I switched to mostly Amazon.

So much truth.

http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/05/11/apple-debunks-rumors-that-it-will-stop-selling-itunes-downloads

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About 90% of the music we buy is on Amazon

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I use Google. I use what I get from the Google Opinion Rewards to buy what ever I want.

The only issue I've run into with incompatibility that was an actual barrier in Apple products was a second hand iMac that I bought that was from before they switched to Intel processors.

Rhapsody

Pirate Bay

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The only issue I've run into with incompatibility that was an actual barrier in Apple products was a second hand iMac that I bought that was from before they switched to Intel processors.

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Same here.

Not True

Napster

w/Winamp

"It kicks the llama's ass!"

I just heard that in my head.

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Napster

w/Winamp

"It kicks the llama's ass!"

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mIRC and yet still 99.5% of America doesn't know that it exists.

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Napster

w/Winamp

"It kicks the llama's ass!"

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I thought it was "it really whips the llama's ass".

This one.

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Napster

w/Winamp

"It kicks the llama's ass!"

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mIRC and yet still 99.5% of America doesn't know that it exists.

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mIRC was the ****. Then there was that moment I got invited to join OiNK

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As a person that likes to use tech for more than 2 years, I do not imagine I will ever get on board with an Apple purchase again. You buy in, get the peripherals, and then they shift to a better, shinier new market. A fine business model for them, but not a rewarding one for slow adopter. I suppose itunes will be out the window soon and I will have to break down and copy off all those old purchase protected songs from a decade ago to a cd to just to upload them again onto a new platform. Glad I switched to mostly Amazon.

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Not to sound like a fanboy here, but that is a gross misrepresentation. If we take iPhone alone to compare to your problem, you get major hardware update every two years, but all of the peripherals last much longer.

Charger was the same from 2007 to 2012, and the replacement has been the same since 2012. Cases last two generations, but if you adopt late you get cheaper and more abundant choices anyway. Sure there are new features that come every year, but that's tech.

If you look at their computer lineups you get even longer cycles of compatibility.

I have a 2009 MacBook Pro that still runs great, and looks no different than the current model.

I may be more of a dinosaur than you are thinking. My chief complaints are the switch to the lightning cable which would make all old ipod/iphone accessories obsolete and dropping the ipod classic as a large memory option to have my whole library on one mobile device. That these are not the most robust products compounds the problem. I will have to face that problem of the purchase protected songs from 10 years ago sooner or later.

Makes sense. You were very bought in and have a large digital library. Problem now is the whole industry has moved away from the way you do things. At least on the music side. I'm with you though. Storage is cheaper than ever, yet we pay a premium for large amounts of it on mobile devices.

I agree about the ipod classic with large memory. Still use my old 80gb one

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As a person that likes to use tech for more than 2 years, I do not imagine I will ever get on board with an Apple purchase again. You buy in, get the peripherals, and then they shift to a better, shinier new market. A fine business model for them, but not a rewarding one for slow adopter. I suppose itunes will be out the window soon and I will have to break down and copy off all those old purchase protected songs from a decade ago to a cd to just to upload them again onto a new platform. Glad I switched to mostly Amazon.

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Not to sound like a fanboy here, but that is a gross misrepresentation. If we take iPhone alone to compare to your problem, you get major hardware update every two years, but all of the peripherals last much longer.

Charger was the same from 2007 to 2012, and the replacement has been the same since 2012. Cases last two generations, but if you adopt late you get cheaper and more abundant choices anyway. Sure there are new features that come every year, but that's tech.

If you look at their computer lineups you get even longer cycles of compatibility.

I have a 2009 MacBook Pro that still runs great, and looks no different than the current model.

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...and you don't need to move your music to a CD (lol)...they aren't getting rid of iTunes (at least it doesn't say so) they are getting rid of digital downloads. iTunes will likely still exist and all your music in it is fine - in fact it's just in folders anyway even if iTunes did go away your music is still there. I wouldn't expect the player is going anywhere, not anytime soon anyway. Heck its still the interface for their subscription music services too.

You ought to have backup copies of your music anyway - I always have. I actually have 3 copies now. One in icloud, one on my time machine and another on a backup solid state external hard drive. Never trust iCloud alone or any single storage device. You lose your hard drive and you lose all your music anyway (purchases could be restored but not songs from other sources like CD's).

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I may be more of a dinosaur than you are thinking. My chief complaints are the switch to the lightning cable which would make all old ipod/iphone accessories obsolete and dropping the ipod classic as a large memory option to have my whole library on one mobile device. That these are not the most robust products compounds the problem. I will have to face that problem of the purchase protected songs from 10 years ago sooner or later.

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FYI you can now have ALL of your library on one device even with the smallest iPhone.

The model is changing, it's just that you don't want to. I get that I still have my library and prefer that over having the entire Apple Music subscription.

But I went to iTunes Match for just $24.99 per year they store my entire library in the cloud and guess what it's accessible from up to 10 devices anytime (with internet connection). The entire library. I have 11,000+ songs and could never take more than 2000 or so with me the old way because of storage issues. Now I have it all, all the time, anywhere.

The other option Apple Music is $10 per month and gets you basically everything in Apples library (so 30 million songs) available anytime, anywhere with internet connection. Thats a lot of music.

With both options you can also choose to download music to your device for offline listening like on a plane with only the same storage limitations you had before.

Music takes little bandwidth for downloading so streaming is not much of an issue, it just buffers a little at the start of songs sometimes.

Be sure to backup your library somewhere before using either of these two options because if you delete your music then once you stop the apple service you lose the music too. By backing it up you can always go back later and move your music anywhere.

I do have a cloud services through Amazon Prime and already own plenty of music, so I do not want to get started on another subscription service that replicates what I already have. Plus, I like not having to be hooked up and pay extra to data services at all time. Especially when I travel, go for walks, or at work (where I listen the most and do not feel good about hooking up personal devices to the wifi for constant use). Music is the only thing I would use the extra data for because it is just not my entertainment choice to be using tv/internet very much when out and about. But I like some music available.

I have my music backed up somewhat through limited apple account, amazon cloud, an external drive, plus you can use software to pull it off of the ipods. The task that I do not want to do is convert the old purchase protected files Apple used to have. These cannot be converted or moved to any non-Apple device unless you burn them to a cd and then reload them as another file format. This was the way they were up until maybe 2008 or so off the top of my head. I probably have 1000 or so songs to convert in this manner. A chore.

My wish is that I had been purchasing Amazon all along given how much more friendly and adaptable the music is with other devices (especially the file type) so I could build something to meet my preference of not being connected. I do not care that Apple will not sell music so much as that I bet they stop doing anything for owned music on their itunes and even drop that functionality on some future mandatory update to force consumers to join their service.

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I do have a cloud services through Amazon Prime and already own plenty of music, so I do not want to get started on another subscription service that replicates what I already have. Plus, I like not having to be hooked up and pay extra to data services at all time. Especially when I travel, go for walks, or at work (where I listen the most and do not feel good about hooking up personal devices to the wifi for constant use). Music is the only thing I would use the extra data for because it is just not my entertainment choice to be using tv/internet very much when out and about. But I like some music available.

I have my music backed up somewhat through limited apple account, amazon cloud, an external drive, plus you can use software to pull it off of the ipods. The task that I do not want to do is convert the old purchase protected files Apple used to have. These cannot be converted or moved to any non-Apple device unless you burn them to a cd and then reload them as another file format. This was the way they were up until maybe 2008 or so off the top of my head. I probably have 1000 or so songs to convert in this manner. A chore.

My wish is that I had been purchasing Amazon all along given how much more friendly and adaptable the music is with other devices (especially the file type) so I could build something to meet my preference of not being connected. I do not care that Apple will not sell music so much as that I bet they stop doing anything for owned music on their itunes and even drop that functionality on some future mandatory update to force consumers to join their service.

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Actually both iTunes Match and Google Play offer the chance to re-download DRM protected tracks - and at a higher bit rate too.

You don't have to burn CD's in either case.

Not sure if Amazon has anything similar, but here are iTunes Match instructions:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/2015/01/18/itunes-drm/21964513/

and a Reddit thread on Google Music:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1hnccl/psa_google_music_upload_now_supports_itunes/

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FYI you can now have ALL of your library on one device even with the smallest iPhone.

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Except that it isn't actually on the phone. If you are somewhere with bad reception/no wifi, you are screwed. Plus, I hate when people play music with their phones because the music stops every couple minutes for texts/emails/calls.

I am going to stick with my 160 GB iPod classic unless they come up with a ipod touch with that much memory

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FYI you can now have ALL of your library on one device even with the smallest iPhone.

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Except that it isn't actually on the phone. If you are somewhere with bad reception/no wifi, you are screwed. Plus, I hate when people play music with their phones because the music stops every couple minutes for texts/emails/calls.

I am going to stick with my 160 GB iPod classic unless they come up with a ipod touch with that much memory

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ummm yeah. it's a tradeoff.

more music for those with too much to store on a phone/device vs. carrying one device and not a phone and an iPod too.

you can always go airplane mode to stop interruptions.

for me i actually usually stream music thru my computer and leave my iphone alone. but i have my iphone for when i'm running around and usually don't mind the occasional interruptions. and for going on the plane (i travel a lot) i have selected stuff downloaded - and no interruptions there either.

i'd rather carry one device for music, phone, camera. it's just convenient.

I'd be surprised if this happens, at least this soon, since that is still a nice chunk of change Apple would be losing every year. It's not like killing downloads instantly forces people to move to Apple Music subs, they can just move to other stores that will happily take their download business (Google, Amazon etc...). I doubt maintaince/storage costs to maintain these downloads is more than a tiny fraction of the revenue they see.

The only reason behind this move in my opinion is that there has been tons of negative feedback surrounding Apple Music and how poorly the services work together, specifically when you use iTunes on a desktop. People find it annoying and/or confusing, and maybe Apple thinks this issue is really digging into their potential business. I'm not sure I agree, but who knows.

Unfortunately I'll admit I'm part of the problem of why these discussions are even taking place. I haven't bought a song on iTunes since I found out about Spotify 5 years ago. Even if you want to play music offline, it's pretty simple to make a playlist available offline, and the songs are downloaded straight to your device, no connection needed (other than needing to connect to the Internet using Spotify at least once a month to ensure you have an active sub). it works great and $10 is a steal for the amount of music I consume on a regular basis.