The Death of iTunes?

Well not quiet. Soaked to the skin I opened my Macbook on the train home. Glasses misted up I opened iTunes, by mistake. So what you might ask? Well, its the first time in months, I’ve not used iTunes 9, I don’t use iTunes at all. This shocked me as for so long it has been my go to audio playing device. But then Spotify came along and shook my sonic world. Bandcamp and Spotify along with Digital radio (BBC radio 6 really) are now my main and pretty much only music consumption methods. And it looks like Apple understand this. Many of their new products, for example Apple TV are set up for or only for streaming. This move coupled with web 3.0 theorists has led to a decline on non streaming or cloud based services. Even my word-processing and spreadsheets are based ‘in the cloud’ via google docs.

My Macbook pro is an ageing machine, but aside form recording/mixing I rarely use 10% of its power. May be this is why the cheap affordable light notebooks have caught on and the iPad is actually an exciting device despite its limited power and capacity.

So the death of iTunes is a little extreme, Apple are clever and clearly capable of identifying market trends and emerging markets, however for me right this minute I can’t imagine using much in the future.

Here’s some great music from She Makes War (aka Laura Kidd) that is available from Bandcamp, I hope you enjoy it.