Apple will shut down iTunes, ending the download era, report says

The iTunes store is a dead service walking.

On Friday afternoon, social media erupted after Bloomberg News reported that Apple was set to announce the end of its iTunes store, which transformed the music business when it was launched in 2003.

Apple will hold its annual developer conference Monday, and among the slate of expected announcements is a reconfiguration that will divide iTunes’ offerings into three newly developed applications for music, TV and podcasts, according to Bloomberg. Apple representatives did not respond to requests for comment on the report.

The end of the iTunes era: The life and death of Apple's curator-in-chief »
If true, it will mark the end of a 16-year run that kick-started the digital commerce revolution. For better or worse, without Apple’s experiment, the ways in which culture consumes entertainment wouldn’t be the same.

Apple’s Steve Jobs set his sights on music before moving into movies and podcasts. In introducing the store in 2003, he told Billboard that Apple hoped to help the music business navigate out of the Napster-driven file-sharing free-for-all that devastated companies’ bottom lines.

“The record companies are in a difficult situation because people want to buy their music online, but there’s no real way to do it, so they steal it,” Jobs said. “The users are in a bad situation because most of them don’t want to steal music online, but there’s no other way to get it that’s any good.” Jobs proposed iTunes as “a middle way, a middle path out of this.”

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RadioPatrol said:

Part of the issue here is that competitors like Spotify, Iheart, Tunein, Accuradio, 8tracks and Youtube have taken over for people who watch and listen to music on the apps.

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LG73 said:

This story about the alleged end of the iTunes Store was fake news.

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