Apple Music VS iTunes: Why Apple Music Survives?

A battle began since the day Apple Music was released. Before 2015, everything is about iTunes, but after Apple Music was born, iTunes was generally losing its ground. And now that you all know, iTunes was abandoned by Apple on the latest update. For some new users, they haven't figure out the differences between Apple Music and iTunes and iTunes is replaced by Apple Music. So today's passage will give a look back on the differences between Apple Music and iTunes and more importantly, we will discuss why Apple Music survives rather than iTunes.

Differences between iTunes Music and Apple Music

Both developed by Apple Inc., iTunes has a longer history than Apple Music. iTunes was announced in 2001 while Apple Music was launched in 2015. As a multipurpose application, iTunes functioning as an online store that you can buy digital media content in, a media library that you allowed to organize and manage your media content, and a media player that you can play your media content in. In addition, iTunes is a powerful mobile devices management application that allows you to back up and sync your purchased content between iDevices and your computer. Also, when your iDevices run into some glitches, iTunes can help to fix the problem.

Apple Music, by contrast, is basically a streaming service. Similar to Spotify, Google Play or Pandora, You pay a monthly flat fee and you can listen to all the songs on Apple Music. FYI, Apple Music cannot work as a media player to stream media content external to it.

Media Content Scope

As you can see from the home page of iTunes and Apple Music, as a comprehensive one-stop digital media store, iTunes boasts of a much wider media content scope than Apple Music. You can find music, movies, TV shows, music videos, podcasts and audiobooks on iTunes. Apple Music, focus on music literally, also began to expand into video in 2016.

Cost and Charging Method

Apple Music charges for the monthly membership. After the three-month free trial of Apple Music ends, individual Plan subscription will cost you $9.99 per month, Family Plan will cost $14.99 per month, and there is also a College Student Plan, which only takes $4.99 per month but you have to be a student and will have to subscribe the plan for 4 years.

iTunes, however, charges only when you purchase media content from the store. And it adopoted the pay-as-you-go pricing mode, so you need to pay separately for different media content. You can choose to pay for a whole album or individual songs. Different price for different content. Other functions we mentioned above are free to use.

Digital Right

In the case of iTunes, you have the ownership over every piece of music you bought. You can download the songs and even burn them to CDs as you want. As for Apple Music, if you subscribe, you can get access to a massive catalog of over 40 million songs but you merely have the membership to stream and listen to them on Apple Music. Downloading songs from Apple Music for offline playback is allowed, but once you stop paying for the subscription, those downloaded songs will no longer playable on your device. You may ask, then what about streaming them online? Sorry to tell you that Apple is not as generous as Spotify, you can only listen to very few songs on Apple Music if you don't have the membership.

File Formats

According to what has been discussed above, it's not so hard to guess that since we have different rights for the media content on iTunes and Apple Music, these content are encrypted in different file formats. Sure it is. Apple decided to drop DRM from iTunes music library but for Apple Music songs, they are still in DRM-ed M4P format. Music, video, and audiobook files on the iTunes store are in M4P, M4V, and M4B format respectively. To stream iTunes M4P, M4V, and M4B files, you must authorize your computer using Apple iTunes and there are up to five computers can be authorized with the same account.

If you are interested in the file formats developed by Apple Inc., Please chesk this:

Apple Audio Formats: Differences among M4A, M4B, M4P and M4R

Why Apple Music Beats iTunes

Early in 2015 when Apple Music was newly launched, there are many people wondering whether Apple Music will replace iTunes. Obviously, now the question was answered and yes, iTunes is stepping down from the stage of history. But why exactly iTunes got beaten by Apple Music? Let me express my opinions.

iTunes Own Problem

First of all, iTunes has its own problem. iTunes was given too many tasks and it grew bigger and slower over the years. Despite how versatile it is, a fast and efficient app is what users always asking for.

Explosion of Media Content

Second, the explosion of media content makes it unlikely for us to buy every song, movie, or tv series we are interested in. That's why we said the streaming services is the trend. Due to the quick development of media and entertainment industries, there are too many contents been created everyday. Paying for the right to access millions of songs anytime and anywhere sounds more sensible than paying for collecting and storing songs or albums one by one.

Advanced Mobile Data Technology

We are now using our phones more than our computers because you can finish almost everything with your phone, let alone listening to music on it. Thanks to the WiFi and advanced mobile data technology, we get the faster network service at the lower price than ever, which means that you can access to Apple Music songs as fast and convenient as you've already downloaded them offline. This is another reason why people happy enough with Apple Music.

The Final Thought

I truly believe that the mobile data technology will boost the development of streaming services in a deeper way. But I also believe that once we become too depend on all of these, we will be panic and freak out when the electricity or network is cut off. It's impossible to access to our content under this circumstance.

On the other hand, streaming services also create a false image that they help you save your money. If subscribe to Apple Music, Netflix, Hulu, and other streaming services at the same time, then you will have to pay more than you actually consume. That's why People use ViWizard Audio Converter. It can help you convert Apple Music to common formats, and then you can stream the music to any devices without network or paying too much.