Roger Fingas
There is no official wind-down schedule for iTunes music downloads, and while sales are on the decline they're still doing better than expected, Apple's head of internet software and services said in an interview published Tuesday.
"There's no end date, and as a matter of fact, [labels and publishers] should all be surprised and thankful to the results that they're seeing because our music iTunes business is doing very well," Eddy Cue told Billboard. He suggested that the decline is being staunched partly because "a lot" of people are content with downloading music and not veering towards subscriptions.
Another Apple executive, Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor, said it was "inevitable that downloads will diminish" — much like CD sales crashed in the 2000s — but also argued that there was no reason downloads couldn't co-exist with streaming, in the same way people still buy vinyl.
Recent Digital Music News reports have claimed that Apple is preparing to phase out iTunes downloads in the next few years in favor of Apple Music. Earlier this month the site said that Apple is simply keeping its options open, and rearchitecting iTunes in a way that will let it drop music downloads if sales fall dramatically.
In 2015, streaming revenues surpassed downloads for the first time as people increasingly turned to services like Spotify, Apple Music, and Google Play Music. Apple Music recently hit 15 million paid subscribers, about half of Spotify's, although the latter also has many listeners on its free ad-supported tier.
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19 Comments
Good to hear. I for one do not stream anything. Why should I have to pay by the bit for the bandwidth and again for the item to be streamed. Maybe I'm just an old skinflint but I'd rather buy the item than rent it for the duration of the song.
I'm buying Vinyl again as well. Sorry Apple, spotify etc streaming is not for me so please continue to offer an alternative service.
How am I going to use streaming music to portable slideshows without access to Mac or Internet? Anybody thought about that music is not just for itself, but it could be used for illustrations? Sounds like pop-corn is for watching TV only. I know it is driven by profit, but then provide some options for those who need something else. I still buy music from iTunes and sometimes even on CD (I decide on encoding format and quality - not computer/system vendor).
I like the streaming service, as I easily spent more than the subscription fee buying music. Now I can do a lot more exploring of new music or diving deep into an artist's catalog without paying a purchase price for something I might only listen to once or twice. On the other hand, I like the idea of still being able to buy favorites that I'll be able to keep even if I should let the subscription expire. Unless there is something mysteriously difficult about the back-end licensing and contracting of for-purchase content, I can't see why Apple wouldn't maintain both options. The technical end for differently tagging rented DRM content versus purchased non-DRM content already exists, so that shouldn't be a barrier.
The fact is, this is already happening. Maybe not with music, but it's happening with movies. Ever notice you CAN'T download iTunes extras anymore? It HAS to be viewed while you're connected to the Internet, not locally from your computer. This is something that I paid for, but not allowed to consume without an Internet connection, why?
The only people who have a reason to want downloads to go away are music companies would would rather be paid every time a song is played, as they are with streaming. I like having a large collection that works without the Internet.