Eighteen years after it was released, Apple is ready to retire iTunes. Apple is launching a new Apple Music app for Mac, the company announced at its Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose, Calif. today (June 3). Apple will continue to operate iTunes Music Store in the sidebar in the Music app, and the company tells Billboard the iTunes app will continue to exist on Windows.
Apple is breaking apart the features that made iTunes a bloated pain to use for years -- podcasts, TV shows and movies -- and creating new, and hopefully faster, individual apps. The standalone Apple Music app will be joined by a new Podcasts app and a TV app, mirroring Apple’s strategy on its mobile, iOS devices. All three apps will launch in the next version of Mac OS, named “Catalina," which will be released later this fall.
The company is also bringing real-time song lyrics to Apple Music on iOS and Apple TV that will scroll as the song progresses. tvOS will also gain multi-user support, allowing each user in a home to access their Apple Music libraries and preferences with a click. Real-time lyrics will be available in Apple Music in the next versions of iOS and tvOS later this year. Siri is gaining the ability to stream live radio in iOS 13, with 100,000 stations available from iHeartRadio, TuneIn and Radio.com. Users on iOS 13 will also be able to share audio between devices, allowing two people to listen to the same song or audiobook simultaneously.