Something bad has happened. Last Monday I set up an Apple Music account, and exactly one week later the news came: iTunes is no more. Clearly the last person in the world buying music off iTunes, my departure obviously hit the music player hard. Now split into three separate apps – Apple TV, Apple Music, and Podcasts – will music ever be the same again? (I mean, yes, but I’m being dramatic for the sake of this obituary).

My first Apple product – which replaced my puke-yellow MiniDisc player – was a pink iPod Mini, acquired in 2005. Kitted out with a dull grey screen and noisy mechanism, I filled it with Good Charlotte, Gorillaz, and Eamon’s iconic “Fuck It (I Don’t Want You Back)”; safe to say it never left my side. As my eyes grew weary from the monochrome screen – “it’s not the 1950s, mum” – I upgraded my Mini for a square, pale green iPod Nano, and loved it so much that it’s still nestled in my parents house, somewhere among my swimming badges and angsty teenage diary. Thundering into my mid-teens, my music could no longer be contained within the stringent 8GB walls of my tiny Nano, and I asserted to my parents that someone with such a sophisticated music taste (wafer-thin indie boys plucked straight from the pages of NME) should not be denied the 160GB she needed. That silver iPod Classic remains a prized possession, just last week thrust into the depths of my bedside table drawer in exchange for unlimited streaming.

Over the years as I moved from iPod to iPod, I laboured over my iTunes account: song titles must conform to the same format; album cover images must be high res; featured artists must be written ‘featuring’, not ‘feat.’; when I downloaded a compilation album, I’d meticulously scour the internet to find out which studio album each song was from, then diligently update my iTunes as I sped through the baron countryside on a WiFi-less train. Until last week I still did all of this, though I’d mostly swapped CDs and records for the lazier – but instant – iTunes download. While there will still be CDs and records, and digital downloads won’t go extinct, to me the end of iTunes marks the end of my childhood obsession with collecting music.

Although I’m feeling nostalgic, others definitely won’t mourn the loss of the music player. Here, Dazed staff members reflect on the closure of iTunes, recalling their most embarrassing memories, or explaining why they never used it and don’t give AF that it’s gone.

MARC MACDONALD – COMMUNICATIONS EXECUTIVE

“Never did iPods or iTunes. In high school I was the only one who didn’t. I was all about the Samsung YP-K5 MP3 player – you could slide it out and play music aloud, and it was even featured in a Pussycat Dolls and Fergie music video. I still have it, but it won’t turn on. So I couldn’t give a shit about iTunes ending.”

GUNSELI YALCINKAYA – DIGITAL ASSISTANT, DAZED DIGITAL

“It was love at first listen. I’d downloaded a handful of ABBA tunes ahead of our annual singing competition at school; I was in year seven and remember spending a solid hour listening to those 30 second clips of the band’s back catalogue, before finally settling on what I imagined to be a refined list: “Super Trouper”, “Dancing Queen”, and “Waterloo”. I was out of pocket money. 

Soon enough, I graduated from Anni-Frid Lyngstad to Thom Yorke, begging my dad to let me buy a copy of Radiohead’s Kid A (I’d seen Jonny Greenwood’s mop of hair in a 1995 live recording at London Astoria, and decided it was my life’s calling to emulate, well, him). When he finally caved, presumably from either confusion or intrigue that his 11-year-old daughter wanted nothing more than to listen to some “Morning Bell”, I realised that Kid A probably wasn’t the gateway album I was envisioning. Anyway, I listened to it over and over again, swallowing my shame and stroking my chin, until one album grew into an entire Radiohead selection, flanked by the likes of Muse, Panic at the Disco, and Papa Roach. 

I still listen to Radiohead, but the rest of them remain an untouched relic from my early teenage years. And just like my teenage years, I’m glad iTunes existed, but I’m fucking relieved it’s over.

“Just like my teenage years, I’m glad iTunes existed, but I’m fucking relieved it’s over”

BETH MINGAY – PHOTOGRAPHIC PRODUCER, ANOTHER

“My mum borrowed my phone in Costa to look at iTunes, as she had an iPhone but no clue what she was doing with it. As she began to scroll through my music, she passed the usual rave tracks, odd metal, and things she would not like, then she stopped on this album cover and proceeded to question me at length about how I know “this naked man”, and “why is there a picture of said naked man” on my phone – very loudly and publicly. I don’t think she believes to this day that its a S3RL album cover. She never signed up to Apple Music…”

JESSICA LANGTON – JUNIOR FASHION WRITER, DAZED DIGITAL

“My first memory of iTunes is synonymous with my last memory of LimeWire, which broke my computer near to extinction after I frantically tried to download “Foundations” by Kate Nash and ended up with countless audio clips of Bill Clinton confessing, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman”.

After that I went through many stages of iTunes, including the promise I made to myself as a young teenager that I would download every song ever released on a YouTube converter to create the ultimate iTunes library – I did not succeed. I have also spent hours trying to curate playlists for every mood, or party, or life event, but again I did not succeed. In the end, iTunes has been a terribly organised dumping ground for all the songs which speak to different periods of my life, such as my intense (and borderline insane) obsession with The Kooks.”

HARRY BOWLEY – JUNIOR VIDEO EDITOR, NOWNESS

“I used to only have one album from iTunes on my second generation iPod Mini and it was by Mika. I think iTunes’ Achilles heel was that it was connected to my dad’s account – every time I downloaded a TV show (Desperate Housewives), film (My Own Private Idaho), or album (I Am... Sasha Fierce), he’d see. Perhaps I have it to thank – it certainly made my love for queer titles a more transparent conversation.”

DAISY SCHOFIELD – SOCIAL COMMUNITY EDITOR, DAZED DIGITAL

“I really did feel like the future was upon us when music videos were introduced to the iTunes Store, which you could watch on the fifth-generation iPod Video a while before movies or TV shows. I was given it as a Christmas present in 2007 – a huge upgrade from my second gen pink boi – and immediately downloaded the music video of the festive season, Fergie’s banger, “Fergalicious”. Set in Willy Wonka’s thotty factory, the video starred will.i.am as Willy (obvs), who taught me how to spell delicious, and Fergie as a girl-scout who prefers to bathe in the cakes she’s presumably supposed to be selling to her neighbours. 

Purchasing songs from the iTunes store had been expensive enough (99p a pop), but adding music videos, and later TV shows and movies, racked up a bill I don’t even want to think about now. Eventually, I converted to LimeWire, ignoring stories circulating at school that the FBI could track the software down to your computer and literally come to your house and arrest you. So for me, iTunes died a long time ago: long live LimeWire, forever in our hearts.”

CALLUM ABBOTT – JUNIOR DIGITAL MEDIA DESIGNER

“It was around midnight on a Saturday, and I’d just accidentally clicked a link on Grindr that auto signed me up to their premium subscription. Tragically, my iTunes is still set up on my dad’s account so he got an email telling him I had signed up to a £35 a month subscription. He text me the next morning asking if I really wanted to keep it – I don’t know what’s worse, that my dad thinks I have a Grindr addiction, or that he still pays for my iTunes account at the age of 22. So tragic!”

EMMA DAVIDSON – FASHION FEATURES WRITER, DAZED DIGITAL

Having never had an iPod, owned a PC World own-brand laptop during uni, and joined the iPhone community only in the last couple of years, I have had no interaction with iTunes other than the times I’ve used it on my workplace Mac when transcribing various interviews. It’s for this reason, and the fact I associate it with hearing myself inanely exclaiming ‘amazing!’ after someone offers me a thoughtful and considered answer to my question, that I will not miss it. Although while iTunes might now be obsolete, sadly the need to listen to my monotone voice talking back at me is not – on to the next, I guess, and RIP iTunes.