iTunes: Apple explains what is actually happening to your music

Andrew Griffin
Thursday 06 June 2019 13:13 BST
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Craig Federighi , Senior Vice President of Software Engineering at Apple, speaks about Mac OS Catalina during the keynote address at the Apple World Wide Developers Conference
Craig Federighi , Senior Vice President of Software Engineering at Apple, speaks about Mac OS Catalina during the keynote address at the Apple World Wide Developers Conference

Apple has looked to reassure iTunes users about the death of the music app.

The company says that little is going to change, despite the famous app being killed off and a variety of new ones taking its place.

And it has revealed exactly how that will work in a newly published support article that looks to ease users through the change.

The company announced during its Worldwide Developers Conference keynote that it would be shutting down the app. Instead, it will create three new ones, which will fulfil most of the same functions, and moving some other tools into the operating system.

Apple's primary message is that iTunes features and functions are not going away, but are instead being shunted off into other apps. It is only the iTunes app itself – and the name – that will be disappearing.

Still, the splitting of the apps will introduce a number of complications once the update arrives. And the change has led to a great deal of concern among users who fear that their libraries of purchased songs is about to disappear.

Apple is clear however that the library will stay the same. Anything that has previously been important or bought in iTunes will stay in the new Apple Music app.

Just about all the other music features will stay in the new Apple Music app, too: playlists, and smart playlists will stay, for instance.

The iTunes Store will also continue to exist, allowing people to buy music on Mac, iOS, PC, and Apple TV. iTunes gift cards and store credits will stay around, too, and will be available to use in the new versions of the apps.

As with music, podcasts, TV shows and films will move into the separate versions of the apps created specifically for them. And audiobooks will be put into the Apple Books app, which already exists separately.

Probably the most dramatic change – though one unlikely to be noticed by many users – is the fact that syncing of devices has moved into the finder menu, to be part of the operating system. That will allow people who still have devices such as iPods or iPhones that are not synced over the internet to update them.

Though Apple does not say it explicitly in the support document, the changes are only coming to the Mac, and only to the latest versions of that operating system. All Windows PCs – as well as any Mac that is not updated to Catalina or the other operating systems that will follow – will keep the iTunes app.

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