Apple iTunes played a crucial role in the digital revolution of the 2000s after its 2001 launch.
iTunes was rightly lauded as a powerful way to manage your music library in that it allowed you to sort, manage, and play music you bought from Apple’s online store.
And Apple iTunes also allowed users to import music files acquired from other sources and even sync them to your cloud.
Now, after 18 years of music downloads, storage, and streaming, iTunes is to be replaced by three new apps: Apple Music, Apple TV and Apple Podcasts.
iTunes will be phased out with the release of Catalina, the latest version of MacOS.
The trio of new Apple apps will then take over all of iTunes’ existing functionality.
However, the news has sparked concern among Apple users, with some worried they will need to manually transfer their library to the new Music app.
Every song in your iTunes library will automatically remain part of Apple Music following the eventual upgrade to the Catalina MacOS.
This is irrespective whether the music files have been bought, ripped, uploaded or simply imported.
And although Apple will not remove anything in your library, however it will slightly reorganise where the files are found in Apple Music.
Users will also receive access to the millions of songs already found in Apple Music.
Users will also retain the ability to burn CDs if they still have access to an external CD drive.
iTunes was also used for syncing settings and backing-up devices, and although those capabilities will continue to exist in the Catalina OS, they will no longer be found in Apple Music.
These abilities will instead be found via the Mac’s Finder.
Users wishing to move new music onto a device will simply need to open one of the new media apps, click and drag from your music library into the folder for your connected device, and it will transfer over.
Why is Apple retiring iTunes?
iTunes had become widely recognised as being bloated and an obsolete app.
Apple clearly wants to create apps that identify with its Apple Music and forthcoming Apple TV+ services.
The iTunes brand was always a bit of an odd fit for movies and TV shows for obvious reasons, so now’s the time to split ahead of the Apple TV+ launch.
While Apple Music will be designed to push users towards a subscription package they will continue to have access to their entire music library whether you downloaded the songs, purchased them or ripped them from a CD.
And the iTunes Music Store will still be accessible through this app.
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