No, Apple isn’t killing iTunes on Monday

Rene Ritchie for iMore:

Apple isn’t killing iTunes on Monday. Tim Cook isn’t coming to your house and deleting all the music and movies you’ve bought and downloaded over the years. There will be no Thanos snap live on stage. No decimation around the world. None of that is true or real in any true or real way.
So, why are there so many headlines saying iTunes is ending and the age of digital downloads is over? Because, apparently, writers can’t read, fact checkers can’t check facts, and editors are too busy baiting clicks and not busy enough thinking about the needless stress and anxiety they’re causing the audience that relies on their reporting.
Yes, the iTunes app for Mac is likely going to be replace by new Music, TV, and Podcasts apps. Deprecated might even be a better word, at least in the macOS 10.15 beta released to developers on Monday. But that has nothing to do with the iTunes store, potential rebranding to Music Store or whatever aside, or the downloads any of us have in our existing libraries… Even if Apple announces the new apps on Monday, they won’t be released to the general public until this fall and it will likely be years until the existing version of iTunes finally stops running on future versions of macOS.

MacDailyNews Take: Yes, as we wrote after Steve Troughton-Smith leaked the news on Twitter back in April, iTunes will linger, likely for many years, it’s slow death will make life easier for users. Obviously, we’ve long believed that breaking apart iTunes into individual apps is an excellent idea:
Apple, especially under Steve Jobs, has shown a great and admirable willingness to cannibalize themselves. They obliterated their iPod business with the iPhone, for one example. But, when it comes to iTunes, they seem paralyzed by fear of change. Apple paralyzed by fear is not a pretty thing and it doesn’t yield pretty things. It yields hot messes like iTunes. iTunes screams to be broken up into separate, streamlined apps. It’s been screaming that for years. — MacDailyNews Take, July 17, 2015