“Apple is now preparing to completely terminate music download offerings on the iTunes Store, with an aggressive, two-year termination timetable actively being considered and gaining favor,” Paul Resnikoff reports for Digital Music News.
“According to sources to Digital Music News with close and active business relationships with Apple, discussions are now focused ‘not on if, but when’ music downloads should be retired for good,” Resnikoff reports. “The sources indicated that a range of shutdown timetables are being considered by Apple, though one executive noted that ‘keeping [iTunes music downloads] running forever isn’t really on the table anymore.’ Also under discussion is a plan to ‘ride the [iTunes music download offering] out for the next 3-4 years, maybe longer,’ when paid music downloads are likely to be an afterthought in a streaming-dominated industry.”
“Lingering large is the ghost of Steve Jobs, who created a culture of aggressively phasing products out in favor of new ones, even if the older products were still earning money. That bleeding edge approach of actively cannibalizing Apple’s own products is now legendary, and the stuff of only the gutsiest companies and CEOs,” Resnikoff reports. “Within the less renegade Apple of 2016, question is whether current CEO Tim Cook is guilty of riding out the profits on a dying technology. ‘If he were alive, Jobs would have killed it,’ one source bluntly stated.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Well, after all, Jobs was famous for denouncing something right up until he embraced it.
Never say never, but customers don’t seem to be interested in it… The subscription model has failed so far. – Steve Jobs, April 2007
Never say never, indeed.
So, if you want to “own” music, instead of paying a subscription to play it, it’s back to torrenting? That doesn’t make a lot of sense now, does it? (Not that the music industry has ever really made a lot of sense of, or since the rise of, the internet.)
SEE ALSO:
Apple CEO Jobs says iTunes Store music subscriptions unlikely; says customers not into renting music – April 26, 2007
I will NEVER rent my music!
Me neither. I buy my music to keep and own, play it when I like.
Me either they can go to hell. I’m sick of all these monthly subscriptions monthly subscription for software monthly subscription for music it’s all BS
By buying the music you dont own it!!!! All you are buying is a lease to play it. You own nothing the record company owns the music
You don’t own the intellectual property but you own rights to play back the media on any device for perpetuity. Good enough. A ridiculous, unnecessary and irrelevant observation on your part.
Don’t be a tit
On this one Jon I agree with you. I rarely play music now, the idea that I have to pay monthly just for any right to play the odd few songs when I want to simply does not add up. But then the Music Industry isn’t interested in those like me i guess. Lets hope companies in the food business don’t take up a similar approach to only being interested in those who give them the high consumption and thus high profit they desire.
Hss1: Total rubbish compared to stream-only music. Buying a downloaded tune means YOU KEEP IT. You also have eternal fair use of that music.
Meanwhile: Stop paying to RENT your tunes and… THEY’RE GONE. Just gone.
Why do people listen to these blogging idiots????
I love apple music streaming. i’ve completely embraced it. for a measly $10 i have access to over 40 million songs that i can repeat over and over with no limit and no ads. That amount would be impossible to purchase and require tons of storage, that could be easily lost over time.
Buying and downloading music is already dead for me
Oh right. Just $10 and I can listen to it forever? Great, sign me up!
Or maybe you check your bank statements?
Relax everyone. Apple has already debunked this spurious rumor only a troll could love:
“Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr told Re/code that reports of the death of iTunes downloads were greatly exaggerated, simply saying, “Not true.””
could be a straight up lie
Only to a doofus.
I see nothing credible about this story. I don’t believe the majority of users prefer to rent music. Businesses like subscription services because they are stable sources of revenue. Most consumers do not share this same enthusiasm and only pay for subscriptions where they have to.
Renting is what the record companies want, that is their end game, Amazon, Samsung, Google, and Facebook do not care, the question is does Apple.
How many billions did Apple make from the iTunes Store last quarter and the last fiscal year? That was billions, not millions. Apple won’t do it.
I really was in the same camp. You rent movies (which you, over the course of your lifetime, watch once, or twice, or perhaps no more than ten times, even your most favourite ones), and you buy music (which you listen to every day, and some tracks you had listen to several hundreds of times, over the course of your life.
The problem is, this is the thinking of my generation. I was born when Americans had JFK in the White House. We grew up collecting vinyl singles, then albums, then making mix tapes, and then CDs. Some of us have even embraced collecting songs on iTunes. But the fundamental concept about your music enjoyment was accumulating the physical (or even virtual) sound recordings and making them your possessions.
The generation of my children (a teenager and a pre-teen) has no concept of music ownership. For them, music is associated with Spotify (and now, slowly, Apple Music). You have this service where you look up the singer / band you love, and add the tracks / albums you like to your playlist. There is no concept of acquiring the music you like; you just look it up and hit PLAY.
I am not going to pass judgement on this shift. People of my generation have a tendency, increasingly more and more often, to lament the things of the past, and to resist embracing, or even exploring, the changes that future brings.
For me, Apple Music is a great service. While I do have a collection of some 300 CDs (mostly classical, some jazz), no more than about a third of it has been ripped into iTunes, some 15 years ago, in the early years of iTunes. I didn’t have the time and never bothered to complete the entire collection, and now I no longer need to. All of my collection, plus infinitely more, is available for look-up and adding to my playlist. Now, when I want a newest recording from my favourite orchestra, I look it up (on my iPhone) and press PLAY…
If This is credible – and I have doubts – Amazon will eat their lunch. I probably buy about 40% of my MP3 music now from Amazon and will find it easy to make that 100%…
I don’t buy it. That would be leaving money on the table. Apple has often left money on the table, but rarely have they had money in their pocket and then decided they no longer want it. I think the market for downloaded music is still too big to cede to others.
“The music companies loved the idea of subscriptions because they wanted to jack up the price every year. It was a money-driven thing, some finance person looked at AOL getting paid every month and said, ‘I’d sure like to get some of that recurring subscription revenue. Wouldn’t that be nice?’ It was certainly not a user-driven thing. Nobody ever went out and asked users, ‘Would you like to keep paying us every month for music that you thought you already bought?’ We told them, “Nobody wants to subscribe to music. They’ve bought it for 50 years. They bought 45s, they bought LPs, they bought 8-tracks, they bought cassettes, they bought CDs. Why would they want to start renting their music? People like to buy it and they like to do what they damn well please with it when they buy it”. The subscription model of buying music was bankrupt. I think you could’ve made available the Second Coming in a subscription model and it might not have been successful.”
“Steve Jobs Bio: The Unauthorized Autobiography.”
https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewBook?id=924800720
Count me among those who want to own my music! This would upset me greatly!!!!
Are they freaking kidding me? How utterly stupid that would ultimately be. Sorry, like others here, I won’t rent my music. Today I happily pay for Apple Music for the occasional convenience and for discovery…but I still want to buy what I really like, download it, and keep it portable (I pay twice, willingly!).
You don’t have access to the internet everywhere and cannot rely on connectivity. If they killed off music downloads, I’d begin to want to kill off my dependence on Apple altogether. Amazon – which I do not currently support, will get my download business instead. I like going to Apple for one-stop shopping and for the integration of the services which I use…dropping useful services would likely make me less inclined to want to depend on other Apple for my other software and hardware and content needs. Is Apple really going to require its users to buy CDs or get downloands from third parties instead? Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid. I hope this article turns out to dead wrong in the end.
Looks like article is baloney. Whew. See update, Apple denies story is true.
http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/05/11/apple-debunks-rumors-that-it-will-stop-selling-itunes-downloads
I like buying my music and having it with me all the time..
how does having both hurt anyone..
This rumor does not make sense to me …… Or at least imho its a bad idea.
Start collecting records if you want to own.. Most serious artists still do vinyl releases… if not its probably pop pablum garbage thats completely disposable anyways.
Vinyl is a romanticized outdated POS technology. I have always despised it. If this ridiculous story is true, I shall switch to a company like Amazon that enables me to download my music, or I shall switch to CD’s or anything that does not involve paying a subscription. BTW, this generation SUCKS. It’s not nostalgia, it’s an objective assessment. The narcissistic, slfie, incapable of introspection hip-hop-loving tatted up disposable zero-attention-span generation. The rebels, the kids I love and admire, reject most of what’s trending. Thank God they’ve always existed, no matter how outnumbered. I hope I live long enough for these guys to take over- the millennials are the least “Greatest” generation I’ve lived through.
I have to say you are spot on with your comments about this generation. I want to own my music as well, what they could do is just make it so you can buy music directly from Apple Music but the article doesn’t seem to indicate that. I keep scratching my head as to some things Apple has been doing lately and I’ve been using Apple stuff since the late 80’s
Wouldn’t the music companies be so pissed off they would cut off Apple from their contracts? After all there is more money to be made in selling music than the fractions of fractions of a cent from streaming it.
I have never used ITunes and have stayed as far away from it as I possibly could.
Could care less either way.
Spotify is the only way to go.
dumb. dumb. dumb.
Probably not a true story, but a trial balloon.
What’s next, no ownership of movies and tv shows and books?
When streaming is Apple Lossless or better, then I’ll consider it. Until then, low-bit-rate sound is for bluetooth boomboxes and $10 earbuds, not high-grade audio gear. With a good $1,000 stereo, the difference is audible.
I’ve said it before, Cook sucks. He’s screwing Apple up big time. I’m not renting music.
Two seconds ago I added to my Prince music by paying for and downloading Rasberry Beret and the bodacious and funky Chaka Khan version of IFeel For You from the iTunes music store. Since its in my music library, I can if I choose to add it to a iPad, iPod, my MacBook Air or my iphone. I can hear these tracks even if I can’t get internet, and you can’t get internet on top of a mountain, or in the middle of the ocean. If you travel out of country the Internet charges can be penal so we can’t be connected everywhere all the time.
Some of us love music so much we’re willing to pay for it and have it around for our Soundtracks of Life. I say Pwwwwwwt! to banning downloads from the Apple Store. If you like music so little that you want someone else to choose it and pay for it ok. Keep paying rent for the rest of your life. But as for the rest of us, to paraphrase Paul Simon, mamma don’t take my music store away.!
Oh and by the way, last time I checked vinyl was expensive, collectible, and making a comeback.
OMG MDN, torrents; really? REALLY?!? If you want to OWN music, but a fscking CD!! If you’re too cheap to buy a new one, go to a used record store, take a deep inhalation of the nostalgia, and appreciate the experience of finding exactly what you were looking for! Or not, and be delighted by finding something totally unexpected!
Dumbest thing I ever heard, I don’t believe the “sources” for one minute!
Either the writer is dumb enough to believe this or smart enough to know a click-gold-mine when he sees one.
I’ll never pay a subscription for music. I am more than willing to pay for music but not as a service!!
I’m not sure how accurate this article is but, if it is true it is absolutely absurd for many reasons: just one of which is that not everyone is ALWAYS in an area with a good LTE connection. I travel a good bit and am often in areas with little to no data connection – so does this mean when Apple flips this switch I won’t be able to listen to music, the rights for which I’ve paid?
I can’t see Apple being this stupid – then again, I didn’t see them letting the Mac Pro sit untouched for nearly three freaking year while less expensive Windows machines ate their lunch with regard to specs, among other things. I’ve been an Apple fanboy for quite some time but since Jobs passed the bloom is really starting to wear off the rose.
The goal of the record companies with subscriptions is not just to get money renting you music forever, but to limit what you can listen to. Once you can only get what’s in the subscription model, then next step is to say that indy artists can’t get in the system unless they sign with a big company. Small record labels can be shut out. But it’s not going to happen. Just a greedy record company dream.
From my POV:
A) I’ll be going elsewhere for my downloaded music. I own my favorite music.
B) This will generate a new drive to keep the CD market alive.
C) Streaming is for learning new music I like. That’s one reason I prefer Pandora and haven’t bothered much with Spotify or Music.
D) I see my strategy as practical, as opposed to geezerly. But a lot of kids enjoy the ‘transient’ music streaming culture. I consider that short term thinking, which I don’t consider practical regarding music collection.
∑ = Bad move Apple. I have no comprehension of the stream-only strategy. I also don’t see the problem with keeping downloads.
I’m happy to read in the comments thread that this article by Paul Resnikoff who reports for Digital Music News is TOTAL RUBBISH. I hope that’s the case. It would reduce this article to mere click-bait.
Not total rubbish. Apple meeting with media execs with an assortment of proposals on the table, or off the table, or on again has been going on for a very long time. All the same, suggestive claims about such talks and ominous rumours about balance being tipped this way or that are codswallop. This sounds like Digital Music News measuring consumer sentiment again to test the strength of the industry’s hand. Apple still holds the best card, the one with all the dollar signs.
“codswallop” <- Keeper!
I could believe this ended up being a marketing measurement article. I wonder how often the nonsense we read in tech news is more of the same.