What Happens When iTunes Ends? Here’s Where Your Movies Are Going

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iTunes Is Officially Shutting Down; What’s Coming in Its Place?

By Gregory Lawrence

Published Oct 7, 2019

Apple's making moves to streamline how you get your media.

On October 7, 2019, Apple released their latest, accidentally Step Brothers-referencing operating system: Catalina. The OS features several revolutionary functions, including Catalyst, which lets developers write their own apps, and support for PS4 and Xbox One controllers. It also destroys iTunes, the app that ran the digital media organizing game since 2001.

Wait, what? Why are they eliminating one of their most iconic programs? What will come in its place? How will we organize our ripped-from-YouTube Chris Gaines mp3s?!

Not unexpectedly, Apple’s Catalina OS will now be focusing all of its music efforts into Apple Music, its Spotify-competing music streaming service. For those of you with hefty iTunes libraries taking up gigs of space, don’t fear. Catalina will transport your downloaded catalog into Apple Music for you, turning the app into an all-in-one place for streaming and downloaded music. And they’ll even still offer an “iTunes Store” linked up to Apple Music for you to keep downloading to your analog-version-of-digital-living heart’s content.

oscars-host-step-brothers — Image via Sony Pictures

iTunes-using podcast fans -- don’t get confused. Your audio files of Marc Maron asking everyone “Who are your guys?” will now live solely in its own app called, simply, Apple Podcasts. If you’re already using Apple Podcasts on your iOS devices, it will now be able to talk to the Catalina version with ease, instead of the awkward criss-cross between Apple Podcasts and the podcasts section of iTunes. That seems like an improvement, right? If not, there’s countless tech podcasts you can listen to who will complain about it.

Finally, every downloaded or rented movie or TV show from iTunes will now live in a brand-spankin’ new Mac version of Apple TV. If you already have Apple TV on your iOS devices (which you should, because Apple forces you to have it), this will, again, link up everything in one handy-dandy place. And one Apple TV + starts cooking, all of that platforms streaming content, plus your downloaded content from iTunes will all be available on your actual televisions, desktop computers, iOS devices, and probably your washer and dryer by the end of this sentence. Oh wait, that’s a Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping joke. Which you can now rent on iTunes and watch in one of your several Apple TV apps.