Will iTunes be phased out? The death of music downloads.

[Bear 7,515]

Yes, I think you're right. 

I wish it wouldn't though. There is something just more permanent and solid about owning the music either physically or at least as a digital download that I prefer.

I can imagine in the future CD's having their retro revival like the vinyl had. 

[SMILE2NE1 3,566]

IT companies are changing to an annuity based and service oriented way of monetising their business. 

-Look at Windows 10 from Microsoft.
-We are paying for a running service as opposed to a product/product refresh
-Its about creating the quickest connections possible (that is the internet), streaming a song is almost faster then downloading it, Windows 10 as an OS is updated perpetually as opposed to seeing big refreshes every few years

-In the IT space, I don't see this happening in the hardware space too much, but Microsoft have already started it with Surface memberships..

[Kulture Kiari 3,433]

This was discussed before and someone posted a link that confirmed this was fake news. Im on mobile, so I cant find it. If it were one day true, we are still a decade away from it. While it is true that many are using streaming now, downloads still hold a huge fortune as of right now. Forgeting the download's worth, I get what you are saying about how some singers might not survive because they are not popular in streaming, but think about indi writers that help create the song. Their salary will decrease a sh!t load. While it is good for the gp, it is bad for up and coming singers and writers. 

[fashion monster 397]

I hate streaming music. I don't wanna waste data traffic every time I want to listen to a song. And I think the possibility to choose is always the better option so, why should we only stream music when we can easily download it or vice versa? IMO it would only bring more people to illegally download music.

[ryanripley 86,575]

torrents are forever  

[memomemome 1,482]

Although I subscribed to Apple Music, I thought that's quite surprising. I mean iTunes is known for onestop place to buy music. Sometimes you want to buy, not rent. 

[Boyboi12 2,125]

1 hour ago, PaperIz said:

Depressing. I want to own my music. I just fear the day companies quit making hard copy cds and stuff. This is all a slippery slope

See I agree with you one hundred percent. I don't think I'll buy music any more if I can't get the Physical Copy. I would hope the future of music won't only turn into streaming!

[Manul 7,377]

Well, according to sources, we'd get LG5 this year, but reality is a different story. 

[Boyboi12 2,125]

1 minute ago, Love Drought said:

Well, according to sources, we'd get LG5 this year, but reality is a different story. 

Lol.... some of you guys need to take a chill pill

[Dangerous Man 9,245]

I don't really like to use streaming app all the time, they drain my battery fast. So hopefully digital download will stay.

[kvnrp 48,353]

We still can choose the services we want to use tho.
If you don't like streaming, buy from iTunes. If that won't work anymore, buy the CD, if CDs are gone and you still don't want streaming, torrent the f*ck out of your music, so companies make a loss and better start serve what you want.

I buy every album that I like on CD now, exclusives like Lemonade on Tidal are the reason for that.
I'll even re-buy some albums on CD because I want a physical copy and the higher quality.

I think streaming will have it's place but sales will be there forever.

<Insert comment about open software, platforms and Linux here>

[RadioIsOurs 13,876]

Pfftt in 20 more years streaming will be dead too!

Instead, we'll have ILLEGAL DOWNLOADING! Yay! Isn't that great? In fact, all of my music is already illegally downloaded...

[Teri Hatcher 2,053]

As long as there's illegal downloading of music for free, we're all gonna be fine!  

 

[ItsTommyBitch 12,640]

I feel like it will happen eventually, but I don't want it to happen personally. I rarely buy things on iTunes; its always an impulse purchase  

I'm not an audiophile or purist or anything (though I do opt for flacs whenever possible  ) and I don't currently own a vinyl player (It's on my list though; I never knew they made like, electronic ones and modern ones  ) but I buy physical CDs. I probably have around 100, which isn't that much. Lots of classical musicians, especially teachers buy or own classical music on CD ive experienced. One flautist I considered studying with probably had 200-300 cds of just flute playing on a huge shelf in her office. Anyway, I have a large speaker system embedded into my house so I can answer the door in any room pretty much and play music throughout it. I often have dance parties for myself that way throughout my house when people are gone  Other than that, I like to keep them to look at.

A lot of the music I physical own is Japanese though, and they are the last frontier of physical album sales and the #2 music industry in the world. Tower Records still exists there and physical sales are the brunt of their sales because there's still a lot of value placed on them; even though Japan has had the technology and innovation to be way beyond physical albums and into streaming for a long long time. That being said, their marketing and the amount of effort into delivering albums as full packages, not just an album cover and a booklet with the lyrics in basic font and maybe 2 or 3 good pictures and a thank you. I've gotten so much "swag" from ordering Japanese music. They really make an incentive for people to purchase physical albums.. English artists do it too sometimes, but I find its rare in mainstream pop. The most interesting album ive physically bought recently was ARTPOP and its "foil edition" back in 2013  There's just a lot of creativity and effort put into physical albums that really warrants buying it, I never feel like "is this really worth it?" because it adds some value to the physical object, the same way that one might buy Jewelry or any accessory. There's also a lot of other swag that comes with it, raffles for concert tickets and showings at venues are pretty common (and I've always had to disregard those  ) Posters for physical singles and sometimes albums are pretty much a given on a good percentage of releases. I've basically got a **** load of posters, stickers, key chains, bookmarks, figurines, accessories and trinkets of all sorts from buying albums and I save them all  

 

[JusKeepBreathin 19,311]

2 hours ago, Dayman said:

There's no reason to phase it out. All the same songs would be available for streaming - with them being hosted anyway what practical reason would there be to cut out the option of buying the songs as well as streaming them? They would just be eliminating an extra source of profit without any gain for cutting it.

You're right it probably would have nothing to do with practicality and would be a move driven purely because of profit. It all depends on if the profit of digital music out weighs the profit they could be making off streaming. If iTunes declining profits are holding back Apple Music's growing profits, then that is enough of an argument to get rid of digital downloads.

It's not like a second job in the real world where iTunes would just be an extra income. It's a dying industry and it's holding back the growth of Apple's streaming service, which is the future of music. In any case its not happening tomorrow. It's a few years away. The article says its 2 to 3 years away, I think its still profitable enough to be a good 6 to 10 years away before digital music downloads are completely replaced by Apple Music. It all depends on how bad the deterioration of digital music sales become. They could very well offer big stars like Adele, Beyonce, Drake and others the opportunity to sell their new albums digitally for a limited time. I think thats more of a possibility than making every album available for digital download.