APPLE PUSHES iTUNES ASIDE FOR STREAMING

Apple is breaking up the band. The company will separate the music, TV and podcasts now found within the iTunes ecosystem and launch a new Apple Music app for Mac and Windows in the fall, thereby pushing iTunes to the back burner.

Apple CEO Tim Cook and other company execs spelled out changes in Apple products today at its Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose.

SVP of Software Engineering Craig Federighi positioned iTunes as a bloated and outdated. “iTunes started completely focused,” he said, before joking, “how about calendar in iTunes? How about mail in iTunes?”

The three new apps are expected to go live in September when of OS X 10.15, aka Catalina, is scheduled to go live. iTunes software will not exist within Catalina.

Among the advancements are the ability to use Siri to stream live radio stations from iHeartRadio, TuneIn and Radio.com and the inclusion of lyrics on devices when a song plays. The new Apple Music app will support all of the features Apple Music, library management and smart playlists.

The iTunes Store app for iOS will continue to sell to music downloads as well as movies and TV shows.