Where Does Your Music Go After iTunes Shuts Down?
After Apple announced that they will be culling iTunes from the upcoming MacOS Catalina operating system, what left many users hanging is the uncertainty of what will happen to their iTunes libraries?
Since launching in 2001, iTunes became 1 central hub for iOS users in terms of getting access to and organising their media library. With this, of course, came Apple’s enormous online music store which allowed users to purchase a plethora of music tracks and full albums. As we can image, many users have ended up purchasing and compiling very large collections of digital music over the last 16 years (the iTunes Store launched 2 years after iTunes), and so this sudden rush of uncertainty of exactly what will happen to this content once iTunes is no longer around is totally understandable.
Luckily, it seems that the future isn’t quite as grim as some may have thought. Apple went ahead and posted a clarification regarding this matter on a support page detailing what users can expect to happen with the music and movie collection, as well as how they will deal with iTunes Gift Cards and current credit balances on users’ iTunes accounts.
Essentially iTunes is basically just getting split up into different apps, so all that really happens is that your content will get moved to the respective new apps.
- Music that you’ve imported or purchased will be in the new Apple Music app.
- Music playlists and smart playlists that you’ve created in iTunes will be in the new Apple Music app.
- The iTunes Store will still be available to buy music on Mac, iOS, PC, and Apple TV.
- iTunes Gift Cards and iTunes credits will be maintained and can be used with the new apps and the App Store.
- iPhone, iPad, and iPod backup, restore, and syncing will move to Finder.
- Movies and TV shows that you purchased or rented from iTunes will be in the new Apple TV app.
- Use the Apple TV app for Mac for future movie and TV purchases or rentals.
- Podcasts that you subscribed to or added to iTunes will now be in the new Apple Podcasts app.
- Audiobooks that you purchased from iTunes will now be in the updated Apple Books app.
- Use the Apple Books app for Mac for future audiobook purchases.
So, there you have it, all is well that ends well and it certainly is nice to get some confirmation that your iTunes library certainly won’t get lost into the abyss when MacOS Catalina comes around.
