Steve Jobs gives his keynote address on the opening day of Apple Expo in Paris in 2003. Photograph: Vladimir Sichov/EPA

Apple expected to close iTunes

Once heralded as a savior of the digital music industry, Apple is about to replace iTunes download service. A report from Bloomberg stated that the company will announce three separate apps for entertainment services such as music, TV, and podcasts. Apple seeks to reposition itself from a hardware company to providing entertainment services.

iTunes was launched on 9 January 2001 as Steve Jobs’s revolutionary platform for digital music services, which allowed users to legally buy albums instead of using peer-to-peer file sharing or buying CDs. People used to use Napster for file sharing, which was released two years earlier than iTunes. Paul Vidich, the former Warner Music vice-president said that Steve wanted to replicate Napster into a single basis and a more convenient and easy interface.

However, iTunes quickly become old-fashioned as other digital music platforms including Spotify successfully introduced streaming models as ‘music’s radically democratic era’ began. Spotify was launched in 2008 and now have 217 million users with 100 million paid subscribers to access unlimited ad-free access.

In 2015, the company launched Apple Music with rumors that iTunes would not exist after 2020. Furthermore, Apple Music showed signs of moving away from a download model and featured regular shows from DJs.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jun/02/apple-expected-close-itunes-tim-cook