Paul Resnikoff, reporting for Digital Music News:
Apple is now preparing to completely terminate music download offerings on the iTunes Store, with an aggressive, two-year termination timetable actively being considered and gaining favor. According to sources to Digital Music News with close and active business relationships with Apple, discussions are now focused “not on if, but when” music downloads should be retired for good.
I did some digging on a few Apple rumor sites — MacRumors, AppleInsider, and 9 to 5 Mac — to see how accurate Digital Music News’ reporting has been on companies’ future plans. I was only able to find three instances of original reporting from the site. The published rumors pertained to Spotify and Apple, but none of these stories were proven true.
- Digital Music News claimed that a Michael Jackson album would not be available on iTunes. AppleInsider reported that this rumor was inaccurate.
- Digital Music News claimed that some albums on Spotify would not be available to users of the service’s free tier. An “early 2016” rollout was suggested, but as of today, this rumor has yet to materialize.
- According to MacRumors, Digital Music News “erroneously suggested” that Apple was paying less — only 58% — to music labels than other streaming services. It was later revealed that Apple was actually paying more — 71.5%.
I’ll believe it once I see another, more reputable publication corroborate this report.
Update: Brendan Klinkenberg and John Paczkowski, reporting for BuzzFeed News:
Apple has no plans to stop selling music downloads from iTunes in the next few years.
“This is not true,” Apple spokesperson Tom Neumayr told to BuzzFeed News, rebutting to a Digital Music News report claiming the company “is now preparing to completely terminate music download offerings on the iTunes Store” in two years — or possibly “the next 3-4 years.”
Just as I suspected. I guess we can add this rumor to the list of Digital Music News’ inaccurate reports.
