Apple iTunes still exists

You can still buy music from the iTunes Store, believe it or not. Apple iTunes still exists, but not the way it used to. For the Apple faithful, iTunes holds legendary status as the once-predominant digital storefront for organizing and playing music files.

At the peak of iTunes’ heyday, it held roughly 63% of the US paid digital download market. Ironically, the emergence of subscription services (Apple Music, Spotify, etc.) kick-started iTunes’ fall from grace. It certainly didn’t help that iTunes slowly grew into a severely bloated, overly complicated amalgamation of necessary tools buried in a tab-heavy interface.

ITunes didn’t necessarily disappear so much as scatter, with various remnants dispersing into separate apps. Music went to the Music app, movies to Apple TV, and podcasts to Apple Podcasts. More importantly, device syncing no longer takes place within the twisted webwork of pre-Mojave iTunes.