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posted by martyb on Friday June 14 2019, @07:53AM   Printer-friendly
from the shoulda-created-a-meta-app-called-iMedia dept.

Wharton marketing professor Peter Fader and sociology professor and director of the Center for Theory at the University of Texas at Arlington David Arditi recently speculated on the implications of Apple's announcement that Itunes will be shut down:

During its Worldwide Developers Conference this week in San Jose, California, Apple announced iTunes will no longer exist as a digital jukebox but will be reformed into three separate apps for music, television and podcasts. While the change has been a long time coming — sales of digital music downloads have dropped for six straight years, according to the Recording Industry Association of America — it marks a significant shift in the company's business model and in the kind of consumer behavior that Apple helped shape when it first opened the digital store in 2001. Music lovers were no longer bound to the full purchase of an album that was packaged and sold by a record label; they were free to buy single songs for 99 cents, which ushered in a new era of pick-and-choose consumption.

[...] Apple will continue to sell downloadable music through its iTunes store (located in its Apple Music app), but the repackaging of apps is a recognition that consumers are streaming content more than buying it. Music will be on one app, TV on another, and podcasts on another.

The professors aren't so sure that's a winning strategy. They described themselves as typical consumers who want all their content in one place.

"[Apple was] getting a lot of reports that people thought that iTunes was really clunky, so they wanted to find this way to streamline it, which was to break it into different apps, which seems kind of counterintuitive," Arditi said. "Now, instead of having one app for all these different things, you're going to have three, four, five apps to access different types of media."

Added Fader: "I had the same initial reaction, which is, 'This is not streamlining.'"

Originally spotted on The Eponymous Pickle.


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by SpockLogic on Friday June 14 2019, @11:34AM (6 children)

    by SpockLogic (2762) on Friday June 14 2019, @11:34AM (#855481)

    Bring back Sound Jam.

    Oh, and get off my lawn ....

    --
    Overreacting is one thing, sticking your head up your ass hoping the problem goes away is another - edIII
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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 14 2019, @01:03PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 14 2019, @01:03PM (#855519)

    I miss my Winamp 3 on my PII 400.

    Get off *my* lawn.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 14 2019, @01:46PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 14 2019, @01:46PM (#855534)

      You can still download it. ISO for the old Windowa versions are available.

      • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 14 2019, @06:56PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 14 2019, @06:56PM (#855697)

        One is aware, nadi.

        But thank you. Although I already have those ISOs, and could spin up a VM if I desired.

        I was merely one-upping GP.

        I still use Winamp, and it works better (as it always did) than any version of iTunes ever did.

        And yes, I did attempt to use iTunes, but it was much more difficult to use and loved nothing better than to frequently phone home about my *personal* music collection, which contains none of the crappy quality stuff Apple sold^W licensed. What's more, I didn't desire or require the iTunes database, as I use a directory structure to organize my music.

        That's because I'm old and actually bought LPs and then CDs. 'Round about 1997, I started ripping them all (if anyone is interested, CDex [cdex.mu] works nicely for that) and have added to my collection over the years.

        Besides, my PII 400 finally gave up the ghost a couple years ago (after more than 20 years of service), although it spent its last 12 years or so as my firewall rather than my desktop.

    • (Score: 2) by kazzie on Friday June 14 2019, @01:48PM (1 child)

      by kazzie (5309) Subscriber Badge on Friday June 14 2019, @01:48PM (#855535)

      Winamp 2 running on a 486 was more fun. Running the Winamp Visualisation Studio fullscreen at a 1600x1200 resolution gave an absurd frame rate, but let me take well-timed screenshots to make funky abstract wallpapers.

      Before you get of my lawn, could you mow it for me?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 14 2019, @07:01PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 14 2019, @07:01PM (#855698)

        Winamp 2 running on a 486 was more fun. Running the Winamp Visualisation Studio fullscreen at a 1600x1200 resolution gave an absurd frame rate, but let me take well-timed screenshots to make funky abstract wallpapers.

        Sweet! Yeah, Winamp visualzations were pretty cool. I do that (minus the wallpaper) with Mythtv [mythtv.org] on my 50" HDTV these days.

        I declare kazzie the grumpiest and oldest! All hail kazzie!

        Before you get of my lawn, could you mow it for me?

        Only if I can use the riding mower. My back is killing me!

    • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday June 17 2019, @06:58AM

      by Reziac (2489) on Monday June 17 2019, @06:58AM (#856518) Homepage

      Still using WinAmp 2.92... 16 years old last week and still can't beat it. Just does the damn job as simply as possible, and otherwise stays out of my way.

      --
      And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.