What if iTunes became the home of entertainment again?

A new approach for the age of subscription services.

Watch Introduction Video

Apple has killed iTunes. It hasn’t been evolving for years and has become totally useless. Now we have a couple of subscription services: Apple Music and Apple TV.

Looks like Apple got in line trying to catch up Spotify, Netflix, etc.

What a shame for the legendary brand that forever changed the way we buy and consume media. Apple probably had weighty reasons to move forward this way, but it fuels global users’ problem we’ve all been taking for granted.

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Content we need is split between different services we use every day. It causes multiplied initialization routine, opening and switching between tabs and windows, confusing navigation, account management, paying for multiple subscriptions, etc. We need music, TV shows and movies. Not services.

I knew Apple as a company that made revolutions solving such users’ pain points and has always been a role model for its competitors. Let’s imagine a utopian world where Apple decides to be above everyone else — like they used to be.

Renewed iTunes could be the perfect app to unite all your mess.

Problems I focused on

Before showing my concepts I’d like to say more about the global and major problems of the desktop media experience I tried to solve below.

• Initialisation routine: open a browser/new tab, enter YouTube/Netflix/etc, find a video, play a video. So much time spent on this bullshit instead of getting things done each time we want to watch or listen to something.
• Have to remember which service the TV show or movie you need is on — is “Westworld” on Netflix or on HBO? Tricky question if you’re not a fan.
• Have to pause audio/video on one tab to play a video/audio on another tab while surfing the internet. And it’s really annoying when you have a few browsers open with a lot of tabs.
• Catching a flight and realizing that you can’t download your favorite TV Show from Netflix on your MacBook.
• Reaching flow-state while working and listening to a podcast on YouTube in picture-in-picture mode and BOOM, you have to collapse your work app to skip the advertising in the browser. Disaster for people who can’t afford or just don’t want to buy premium subscription. User starts to hate YouTube and the advertised product instead of loving and buying it. Inefficient for both users and businesses.
• Account management: remembering passwords of different services, subscribing and unsubscribing separately across different websites. Can you imagine having to install each app on your smartphone separately, instead of opening the AppStore today?
• And yes, we use a web-browser for media in so many cases. We got used to it, but isn’t it weird? It’s like opening your browser to use a calculator.

Here we go

I took Apple Music for macOS app as a base — all starting with a side-menu redesign. Since we have music, videos, movies, TV shows and everything in the renewed iTunes, all sections must be instantly accessible.

Then the magic happens. Meet the “My Services” section in the side-menu below:

Just hover and click “+” to choose third-party services to connect.

Add Service

Here you can see all supporting services to integrate to your iTunes.

As you can see, special plans like “5 in 1” may be created by Apple in partnership with other services to allow the user to instantly get access to the most popular original content in a couple of clicks.

Or you can click on any separate service to see it’s page:

Info, available plans, content, links to web-site and support: everything about the service may be on this page.

Home

After connecting services, all relevant content appears side-by-side within each section (eg. Music, TV Shows or Home). The Home screen is what the user sees when they open the app. It makes content recommendations based on time, place and user preferences. It also recommendeds YouTube videos, TV series you’ve been watching, playlists you usually listen to, etc.

Apple calls similar section “For You”. I renamed it to “Home”, because I believe everything in the renewed iTunes should be for you, not only the one tab 😉

Music

One example of a section: Music. After connecting music services (eg. Spotify, YouTube Music), all relevant content shows side-by-side.

Any saved song of your music library may be played in one click on the right, but let’s not get bogged down in how it may work.

Service

Click any connected service in the side-menu to see its corresponding page. I think Apple should give tools to third-party service providers to customize what they want to show — perhaps even reproducing their own original main page interface.

Compare this with the Netflix’s analogue.

I also don’t think Apple should try and keep the user within the iTunes app. Instead, they should give the user the flexibility to open any service’s website with one click in the side-menu:

Account management

Since all services are connected to the user’s AppleID, they don’t need to login to each service one-by-one on other devices anymore. All the user’s content will be available in a couple of clicks on their Apple TV, iPad or iPhone.

All subscriptions are organized in one place within Account Settings — allowing them to unsubscribe instantly.

Other

Some UX related notes that I thought about while working on this concept:

• Offline mode. It’s critically important to make the content available in all contexts: at home, at work, and in transit. All media in this renewed iTunes concept should have the same — and expected — “Download” button in the player.
• Search. Searching for content by name will show a result along with information on the services that can provide it.
• Notifications. Each show, artist or channel may be marked as a favorite to get notifications about new series, songs, videos, etc. iTunes may include a “Release calendar” so the user can track new content on all their connected services.
• Ads. iTunes should support advertisements from third-party services — these ads should not annoy the user. For example: YouTube video — even in picture-in-picture mode — must have a “Skip Ad” button with a counter.

A voice command “Skip Ad” for Siri may be effective as well.

Outro

I believe the user must be the focus of any company. But today, services are tearing the user apart. Selfish competition can be improved through broad collaboration between companies. People will return a favor with a larger favor ❤️

I don’t have the data and stats available to these types of companies, so this concept and idea may be overly optimistic or even detrimental. Or perhaps Apple or another company is already working on something like this. I relied on a couple of interviews with my friends and my own feeling and experience.

If you have any questions or just want to say hi let’s keep in touch: My website | Instagram | LinkedIn | E-mail

This article would not have been possible without the feedback and encouragement from my amazing friends: Dmitry Romashko, Denis Chikita and Rinat Abdurakhmanov; and my beautiful gf: Ksenia Rusakova. Special thanks to Dexter Yun for the spell-check.