APPLE DUMPING DOWNLOAD BUSINESS? NOT SO FAST

Not surprisingly, the media jumped on a provocative report Wednesday from Digital Music News stating that Apple planned to stop selling downloads either within two years or “the next three or four years.” More surprisingly, said report inspired a comment from tight-lipped Apple.

"Not true," Apple rep Tom Neumayr told re/code’s Peter Kafka, who added that Neumayr made it clear he was responding to both timelines.

Kafka then pointed out that Drake's Views sold a million in its first week—during which it was available exclusively at iTunes and Apple Music—and that “both Apple and the music labels it works with don't have any incentive to push downloads off a cliff.”

“And it's easy to see Apple's insistence on servicing the download market in the clumsy approach it took when it debuted its Apple Music streaming service last year, which tried—unsuccessfully—to stitch together its old iTunes store with the new streaming service,” he wrote.

Apple is expected to separate iTunes, including the libraries of users, and Apple Music, which obviously don’t play well together, in its upcoming revamp of the streaming service.