ITunes is about to become a relic of the past.
On Monday, Apple will roll out a series of replacements for the app that has been a main feature on its products for nearly 20 years, Bloomberg News reported.
CEO Tim Cook and other Apple leaders will outline a sweeping array of changes from the company during its annual developer conference in San Jose, California.
The move marks a significant shift for Apple customers who have used iTunes for music, podcasts, TV shows and movies.
Now, the tech giant plans to fill the void on its computers with three new apps ― Music, Podcasts and TV. Apple’s iPhones and iPads have already been fitted with the trio of features as alternatives to iTunes, but Macs and MacBooks have yet to see the change.
In 2003, then-CEO Steve Jobs announced iTunes’ arrival, heralding it as the answer to illegal file sharing at a time when piracy sites like Napster cheated artists out of their sales.
“Consumers don’t want to be treated like criminals and artists don’t want their valuable work stolen,” Jobs said. “The iTunes Music Store offers a groundbreaking solution for both.”
Though it was once a central feature of Apple gadgets, iTunes’ elimination has been suspected for years.
In 2016, MIDia Research founder Mark Mulligan, an expert in the digital music market, predicted that by 2020, Apple’s download business could be tracking well below its streaming revenue, signaling “the point at which Apple would chose to turn off the iTunes Store.”
“The narrative of services based music business would be complete,” he wrote in a blog post speculating about the future.
Among other announcements expected from Apple next week are the further development of the iPad as a PC replacement and the addition of new health monitoring apps, Bloomberg reported.