Goodbye iTunes, hello new apps!
James Martin / CNET
This story is part of Apple event, our full coverage of the latest news from Apple’s head office.
After being neglected by some of its users (guilty!), Apple Music will finally replace iTunes in the new MacOS Catalina update this fall. This will result in Apple Music, Apple Podcasts and Apple TV ($ 179 at Apple) split into separate apps that control your music. Apple sketched out a few details at its annual WWDC event this year.
While three new apps seem complex, Apple has hinted that it is killing iTunes to keep apps fast and focused on what you want to do. Here’s exactly what’s happening to your iTunes music collection, but the bottom line is that iCloud syncs all of your music, videos, and podcasts across all of your Apple devices.
Apple has a vision of how you will use Apple Music, Apple TV and Apple Podcasts. Here’s what we know about how your Mac will organize all of your media.
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Look at this:
Say goodbye to iTunes
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The Apple Music app is the workhorse of your songs
The new Music app will be your source for listening to songs and watching music videos. The app, which shares a name with the Apple Music service in general, will work on all of your Apple devices so you can listen to music from any of them.
The Music app hosts Apple’s subscription music service, Apple Music (we told you it was confusing). You can use the Music app without subscribing to Apple Music, but paying the price of $ 10 per month will unlock a lot more features. The paid service offers 50 million songs (unchanged), offers recommendations and your own library for storing music.
Apple Music a service, which has been around since 2015, will mainly be used for music in its new app (obviously). This is where the music in your iTunes library will live, but you won’t be using the app to sync your new devices – you’ll be using the Finder for that. In addition, if you subscribe to iTunes Match, a service that gives you access to all your music (like imported CDs), you will also keep these benefits. The Music app has already integrated Match.
Apple Music is a subscription service that you can use on all of your Apple devices.
Apple
With the new update, you will be able to access your Apple Music service and Music app on your Apple TV and follow the lyrics on the screen.
On iTunes, you paid to own individual songs or albums. The Music app has a store where you can buy individual songs, but its bread and butter are subscriptions, similar to Spotify. This is what gives you access to these millions of songs and to Match.
You can try Apple Music for three months before making a decision. After that, subscriptions cost $ 5 per month for students, $ 10 per month for individuals and $ 15 per month for family groups of up to six people.
Apple Podcast is a specialist
As the name suggests, Apple Podcast is dedicated to podcast format, not music tracks at all. The app offers more than 700,000 recorded TV and radio shows that you can watch, listen to and subscribe to for free.
Podcasts are generally broadcast in episodes. You will be notified when new episodes are available once you have subscribed. You can also add podcasts to your library and listen for free offline.
Currently, you can listen to podcasts on your iPhone ($ 900 at Best Buy), iPad ($ 460 at QVC) and iPod. And if you go home and want to finish listening to the podcast inside, you can pick up where you left off on any of your devices (iPhone, iPad, iPod and Mac).
Once the MacOS update has started, you can listen to podcasts on your Mac. Until then, you need to listen via iTunes, which will remain active until MacOS Catalina is updated this fall.
All of your shows and movies will live in the Apple TV app.
James Martin / CNET
Apple TV app is your home for movies and tv shows
Movies and TV shows will migrate from iTunes to the Apple TV app, which is currently available on your iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV device, but comes to Mac with the Catalina update.
The Apple TV app will stream your favorite TV shows and movies from services like Hulu and Prime Video, and you can also buy and rent movies and shows from here.
Apple will also add a new subscription service to the app called Apple TV Plus, which sees the brand working with Hollywood stars to create original content to fight Netflix. What we still don’t know is how much this subscription will cost or the exact launch date – we only know it will be this fall. In addition, Netflix will not be part of Apple’s streaming service, according to Netflix CEO Reed Hastings.
As with Apple Music and Apple Podcasts, you will be able to watch on any device using the Apple TV app. The Apple TV box will support multi-user profiles for family groups.
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