A small yet colorful part of the iTunes Store will be history by year's end. According to an internal Apple email obtained by Metro, Apple will stop taking iTunes LP submissions this month. Apple confirmed the plans to The Verge, signaling the impending end of the paid multimedia album experience on iTunes.
The leaked email reportedly said, "Apple will no longer accept new submissions of iTunes LPs after March 2018,” and “existing LPs will be deprecated from the store during the remainder of 2018. Customers who have previously purchased an album containing an iTunes LP will still be able to download the additional content using iTunes Match."
According to the Verge's report, customers who purchased LPs will continue to have access to them and will be able to download previous and new LP purchases via iTunes. Customers won't see any newly added LPs available to buy in the iTunes Store after this month.
Apple began offering its own interpretation of the LP in 2009 on the iTunes Store. A take on the traditional "long play" meaning of LP, iTunes' LPs bundled albums with art, lyrics, videos, bonus tracks, and other extra materials that fans of the artist would enjoy. While the format has been around for nearly a decade, only a fraction of albums available on iTunes are LPs. The medium failed to gain much traction over the years, and that may be partly due to the fact that LPs aren't optimized for iPhone and iPad.
Since the LP was never a huge part of iTunes' business, its death says little about the overall state of iTunes. Apple's Q1 2018 earnings show that its Services division, which includes iTunes, the App Store, Apple Music, and other services, generated just over $8.4 billion in revenue, representing an 18 percent year-over-year increase. Undoubtedly, iTunes is here to stay, but Apple is also interested in the future of music consumption. Apple Music has taken more of the spotlight—and more time and money from Apple—in recent years as music consumption continues to move from paid downloads to streaming subscription services.
Listing image by Dan Goodin
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