iTunes music downloads still rake in millions of dollars every quarter for Apple, but they’re falling fast.
According to sources who claim to be actively working with the company, it is already mulling the idea of chopping music sales completely in as little as two years, and instead placing an even greater focus on Apple Music.
Is it a good idea for Apple to boot such a popular service in the same way it massacred floppy discs and FireWire, forcing users to stream all their music? Or should it keep iTunes alive until downloads die out naturally?
Join us in this week’s Friday Night Fight as we battle it out over the future of the world’s most popular music store.
Killian Bell: Even though Apple has bluntly denied this rumor, it has to be thinking about a future without iTunes music downloads. Sales have fallen pretty sharply since hitting a peak in 2012, and it’s highly unlikely they’re going to rise again. Sure, downloads won’t disappear within two years, but how long can Apple leave iTunes music hanging before putting it out of its misery?
It would certainly make sense to do so in the very near future. Apple’s focus is now on Apple Music, and growing its subscriber base as quickly as possible. According to music industry analyst Mark Mulligan, by 2020, the service will already have enough subscribers to generate more revenue than iTunes was in 2012. And ditching the latter will only help streaming take off even faster.
I know there are a lot of people who still like to download music, but if anyone can persuade them to stream it instead, it’s Apple. After all, this is the company that’s already convinced us to bid farewell to the technologies I mentioned above — plus CDs, the 30-pin dock connector, and more.
Don’t you think the iTunes music store should be sent packing in two to three years for the good of Apple Music?
Luke Dormehl: Well, you’re right that iTunes revenue is declining right now. Apple has been investing less and less in iTunes and it seems pretty clear that it’s an afterthought these days. It also seems clear that, even though the company has denied plans to get rid of music downloads, that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t plan to do so — only that it’s denying it.
Personally, I think it would be a shame to get rid of the option for those who want it. Even though there are more Wi-Fi hotspots than ever, and a lot of people have unlimited data plans on their phones, there are still benefits to actually being able to pay a one-off cost for music and owning it. $9.99 is a reasonable price to pay monthly if you’re looking for unlimited content, but do you want to have to pay that in perpetuity to be able to access your songs?
It’s a different way of thinking about ownership, sure — but not necessarily the best one. It’s also true that not everyone has access to the internet all the time, and that while streaming companies are offering more and more options for listening offline, it’s not always an ideal solution.
Photo: Apple
Killian: Unless you burn CDs, I’m not sure there are any real benefits to buying music anymore. Yes, you can listen to it offline, but Apple Music — and just about any other streaming service — gives users the ability to store tracks, albums, and even full playlists locally so that they can still enjoy them when they’re away from Wi-Fi or a decent data connection.
The only other advantage to purchasing music is that it sometimes comes with additional content, like digital booklets or exclusive videos. But Apple could easily make that available to Apple Music subscribers if it wanted to.
As for the $9.99 fee every month, it’s not really as bad as it sounds. That’s less than the cost of most albums on iTunes, and it gives you access to tens of millions of songs that you can play as much as you like.
It can’t be cheap to operate iTunes in so many markets, and if sales keep on falling like they are, it won’t be long before it’s no longer worth it. And Apple has never really been known to hold onto products and services that are on their last legs; it lets them go when they’re no longer raking in significant profits.
Luke: I think a large part of it is the psychology of owning something versus renting it. You’re quite right about the blurring of lines between streaming and downloading, and it’s quite possible to stream music you’ve bought on iTunes, for example. But I think a lot of people enjoy the fact that they can buy an album and keep listening to it without having to pay a monthly fee. Particularly older customers, or ones who have spent years accumulating playlists and don’t necessarily want to have to keep paying to access a lot of music they’re not going to necessarily listen to.
$9.99 a month isn’t much, certainly, but it’s still an amount that you’re going to have to keep paying permanently to continue listening to your favorite songs. Personally I like having both options there.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Killian: I certainly don’t disagree with you, but again, I think Apple can change that mindset.
You keep mentioning the recurring $9.99 fee, but if you buy at least one album a month, you’re already saving money. And the great thing about streaming is, if you listen to an album that wasn’t as good as you were hoping it would be, you’ve lost nothing. Or if a deluxe version is released three months later, you can enjoy the extra tracks without paying a penny extra.
Yes, both options are nice, but so was having a VHS player when DVDs first took off. That’s still not enough to keep an iTunes music store running when the future is streaming.
Luke: But, provided you had a DVD-R, there was no qualitative difference between a VCR and a DVD. This comparison is far more like going to the theater versus owning a DVD in terms of the permanence of the experience. I also think that a lot of people don’t buy one new album per month. At a certain age a lot of people are happy with the music they’ve got, and don’t necessarily want to be forced to keep paying a recurring fee to listen to it. Do I think Apple will keep trying to push people to subscribe to Apple Music, while focusing less and less on iTunes downloads? Almost certainly yes. Am I yet convinced that paid streaming services are, in every way, superior to downloading individual songs? I’m not so sure. And particularly not at a time when, as we argued last week, Apple still has yet to perfect Apple Music.
But maybe I’m wrong. Is downloading music a thing of the past? Would you be happy to pack in your collection of owned music for a $9.99 per month rental agreement? Let us know in the comments below. And have a good weekend.
Friday Night Fights is a series of weekly death matches between two no-mercy brawlers who will fight to the death — or at least agree to disagree — about which is better: Apple or Google, iOS or Android?
Killian Bell is a freelance writer based in the U.K. He has an interest in all things tech and also covers Android over at CultofAndroid.com. You can follow him on Twitter via @killianbell.
26 responses to “Should Apple kill off iTunes music downloads? [Friday Night Fights]”
Even if I buy an album a month for $10, I can listen to it as many times as I want, forever, without paying another cent. If new tracks come out, I can purchase those separately as well, I don’t need the full album a second time.
But you could listen to 50 albums a month for $9.99.
The problem with that is that you have to somewhere you have a good connection for it to work well and you might have to listen to music that you have no interest in at all. I like having music on iPhone that I want and not have to waste precious time to find the one song that I want.
I hope that Apple keeps letting people buy their songs and not force an all subscription service because I have ZERO interest in such a service.
There are many months when I don’t spend $0.01 buying music, but I’ll be paying $10 anyway?
I listen to my music on the train, on the bus, and at work. There is no Wi-Fi in any of those places. I would run through an ordinary data plan within days if I had to stream all the music and content I normally listen to.
Why not just store it offline when connected to Wi-Fi at home, then listen to it without data on the go?
I thought the whole point of the article was Apple might be planning on killing off letting people download and just making people stream music.
I tend to belong to the camp that would prefer to “own” vs “rent”. Even though music is a part of my daily life, having listened to terrestrial radio for almost 4 decades has really ingrained the idea of having the luxury of being able to listen to music without having to pay a perpetual fee since the radio stations (as well as streaming providers like Spotify and Pandora) are able to provide a service and make money off of advertisements. While I am not averse to paying for convenience, there are some factors at play that would make streaming on the go prohibitive – namely lack of unlimited data. In addition, while Apple Music may offer the ability to downlod content for offline listening, then you get into the whole can of worms of storage space limitations. It would not be unreasonable for an active listener to use around 8 GB of storage for a decently sized collection, and we all know that storage space still comes at a premium price. So when you add all of these factors, it just makes being locked into a recurring fee unattractive.
Jon,
Own/Share. I guess that’s the basic topic on this article.
I’m of the ‘old’ generation. Buying Vinyl. Experienced the rise and fall of the CD etc. etc.
One of the points a lot of people are forgetting is the quality of the streams/downloads nowadays.
Being an “Audiofile” I still listen (and buy) Vinyl for example. Recently did some comparing Vinyl/CD/HD Audio/Download/Streaming. Not that everybody is having the equipment to really hear the differences. But me and my kids have agreed on one thing: Vinyl is much better as the rest!!
Thanks for your reply Philip – I, like you, love to hear music reproduced faithfully to the original recording which is why I’ve invested thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours assembling my audio system (Rotel receiver / B&W speakers). That’s not to say that I’m a snob or anything, but the few of life’s simple pleasures, such as a good cup of coffee, are best enjoyed when they are of a higher quality. Does that mean I’m above using Apple ear buds or drinking gas station coffee – of course not. But when given the choice I definitely prefer something better. I too share your opinion of vinyl, and appreciate the fidelity of analog recordings!
Killian, your arguments are really first world. And if Apple argues anything like that, which I’m sure they do, it explains why they are unable to break into the third world the way Google does. A few points to ponder:
$9.99 may be almost nothing if you’re in the USA, but it costs A LOT MORE here due to our poor exchange rate. Still, in our country we have more mobile phones than landlines, and more smartphones than feature phones. But people are really careful when it comes to ongoing expenses. They’d rather pay to have an album dowloaded, an listen to it again and again offline, than pay monthly to have access through super expensive data to a wide variety of music (which is really first world music, so the true variety is not as big here). We don’t really have much free Wi-Fi spots, but even more important, our country has VAST EXPANSES OF AREA WITHOUT WI-FI OR EVEN MOBILE PROVIDER ACCESS, but where people with smartphones work and really want their music. Sure you can argue to download where you have access to listen later, but that becomes awfully much like downloading an album, for which you pay only once, and it’s not really appealing to use it like that, having to remember to download what you might feel like listening to and which could be all wrong.
With these points to consider, I hope music downloads stay for at least another 7-10 years.
Well, it’s stated already before: Apple Music gives you the possibility (As does Spotify…) to download songs locally for off-line listening. So you can listen to the songs over and over again, whenever you want…..
Understood, but as explained, at an ongoing cost which most here cannot afford…
I’ll try to explain in a different way.
Imagine the Apple Music library had only 5% of the music (to represent local music, and I’m being liberal here).
Now imagine having to pay $150 per month to access this (at our sad exchange rate).
Next, imagine no free Wi-Fi spots, but internet access costing about $90pm for a 2Mbps line (!) and 100GB of data.
All of a sudden, a streaming service (even with download to listen later) makes less sense.
Ironically, Google gets this and is taking over the market here, while Apple seems to be totally oblivious as to why.
UZ,
Your explanation is sound. We in the western ‘world’ are almost all connected at fair rates!
So, because internet is necessary nowadays (E-Mail: Who use the fax still? Messaging: Kids don’t call anymore! Banking: Almost nothing can be done anymore by post!), we are not having any limits here anymore to the amount of data downloaded….
The point of the article is that Apple might be killing off downloads from iTunes altogether.
Agree with this and I was thinking how arrogant it was, to assume everyone has broadband internet. I am in central México, and have to pay by the GB for cellular internet access. I don’t watch video online and couldn’t stream music, even if I wanted to.
Apple Music doesn’t work on iPod Shuffle or Nano – I can only transfer music I actually own. I don’t want to take a big IOS device out jogging. I really wish Apple would update the firmware to allow downloads from Apple music to these devices. Even if they had to make these downloads self-expire I would understand and accept that.
I do think Apple is working on this, or at least they should!
I agree with the arguments above, but for me the #1 problem of not owning the music is that you don’t own the music. I’m a happy Spotify customer, but I can’t tell you how many times a song or album I want to listen to is grayed out and no longer available. As an avid music collector for many years, being at the mercy of the streaming contracts with the record labels sounds horrifying. Just for example, how is the next generation going to discover most of Prince’s music? Even Tidal doesn’t have half of it. So now it’s pretty much lost forever.
Why should anyone care about iTunes; it’s not like Google or Amazon or WalMart are going to stop selling music. iTunes should not matter to anyone when it comes to buying music. Apple will do whatever they want but you don’t need them.
I’m out. I use downloaded music in the car and when teaching yoga, I’m on airplane mode and don’t have inters access to stream it. I’m out.
I have my entire music collection on my devices so when I am offline it is all available. Important for long plane flights. Current model works fine. Stream or download. If Apple stops downloads I may end up leaving the Apple universe. As it is, I can’t stand iTunes but still stay with Apple due to past history with them. I think their next phone model will be critical in determining whether they are still a leader in design or also-rans.
I am with Luke on this… I haven’t purchased a new album this year. I only enjoy my music when I am on my bike. If I am going to stream music I use Pandora.
Apple continuously adds and DELETES Apple Music songs. Several the tracks Apple Music Songs that I added to my music are now marked “No Longer Available”.
I’m one of those old-fashioned people who doesn’t listen to anything made after 1980, and very little after 1975. I’ve bought a select number of albums over the years, but not that many. I’m the type to listen to the same songs over and over again and have no interest in today’s music. So streaming is the worst possible model for me. I want my few dozen albums that I’ll listen to over and over again and maybe buy some oldie but goodie, or maybe a soundtrack from a Broadway musical once or twice a year.
If Apple were to kill music downloads, I’d have no alternative but to buy from elsewhere. I have less than no interest in streaming music.