Makes sense of the recent (very overdue) announcement of a new 256gb iPod Touch. I’ll get one of those to replace my trusty 160gb Classic that I have wired up in the car. It will probably be better in general as iTunes is clunky and it takes ages to sync when you have a lot of stuff in it. The only thing I don’t like is that presumably anything that is not in Apple Music will be impossible to get onto an iPod (or iPhone). At the moment I can rip from a CD and then sync it onto my Classic but I assume that won’t be possible any more.
It gets quite convoluted quite quickly doesn’t it.
I had Apple Music for the 3 month trial and on the desktop it just stuck all your own (locally stored) albums in iTunes together with any you saved from the streaming element. That was one thing I didn’t like about it as it all got messy quickly.
I don’t recall how it handled it on your phone/ipod if there was no match to your local file on streaming but I know Apple did offer at one point a separate paid service to store all your local music in the cloud that then synced.
I’d prefer not to spend the money too, but I’m just glad the option is there. I have been wondering what I would do when iTunes got shut down (which has been rumoured for a while) or my Classic went kaput. The phone’s not a great option for me in the car because my car stereo doesn’t have Bluetooth and it’s a pain plugging and unplugging it all the time - I want a large capacity music player I can leave plugged in. The new touch will have the advantage of automatically syncing and also be able to store downloads from Apple Music whereas with the Classic you are restricted to stuff you actually own.
That’s iTunes Match, which still exists (for now). It’s not foolproof but it just about does the job. Pretty much anything you have stored on your main computer will sync across all your devices. You do have to pay for it but it’s only 99p a month.
If it goes as well it’s not a big problem for anything that is available on Apple Music - you can just add it to your account and download it to any device that you use offline. As I said above, I don’t know what the position will be with stuff that is not available on Apple Music - presumably that will disappear if iTunes goes.
Yes. I suppose £400 is not that much if it lasts for years (like my Classic has). What worries me slightly is that they will make it obsolete with iOS updates (which the Classic was immune from). I’ve had my phone for 5 years now and am quite happy to keep it but I’m sure they are about to make that obsolete.
This isn’t quite as apocalyptic as some of the reporting currently states. There’ll be a new app called Music that replicates pretty much all the existing iTunes functionality, including managing devices like really old iPods, so no worries there.
It’s not clear if this is the end of per-track download purchases though. I wouldn’t be surprised if that goes completely.
Have fond memories of going to the iTunes when I was a kid, logging on with my mates scrolling through the locally saved files before my Widows PC crashed. We’d often pop into Burger King next door afterwards.
The anticipation of a new update was always the best. Sure you’ve got your streaming services but you can’t hold and physically own them in the same way you couldn’t with iTunes. Oh the smell of a new version.
Well, I guess there’s no point in getting nostalgic over a standalone media player, media library, Internet radio broadcaster, and management application. History tells us that in years to come artists will collaborate to bring us new and rare material yearly on a designated iTunes Day. Rachel Stamp will release a limited edition 128kbps demo which will fetch £23 on whatever the equivalent of eBay is then.
