Apple isn’t acting subtle about the (rumored) looming death of iTunes

Is iTunes about to go away? Probably. Apple hasn’t confirmed the unsupported claim, but it’s definitely acting like a company that’s about the let the sun set on an 18-year-old brand.

The Facebook and Instagram pages for iTunes have gone through some noticeable changes in recent days, as an ever-watchful Reddit noticed on Saturday (h/t MacRumors). Content has been removed and social footprints have been migrated to other accounts.

On Facebook, the official iTunes page is now an empty shell of its former self, with no posts or other content of any kind. A cached version of the page shows that as of May 31, there were still posts, photos, and videos, as well as almost 30 million likes and followers.

As of June 2, all of those posts are gone and the page only has around 13,000 likes/followers. It looks like the iTunes page data migrated over to the Apple TV Facebook page — including it April 2009 creation date — though it’s hard to tell when that happened exactly. 

Google’s most recent cache of the Apple TV page is from June 1, and the only ones listed on the Wayback Machine are from June 2. I don’t keep a close eye on Apple’s Facebook doings, but the latter evidence especially suggests that the Apple TV page is brand new.

Over on Instagram, Apple’s iTunes profile is looking like a dead account as well. All posts have been removed and the profile info amounts to a text ad for Apple TV+. The iTunes Twitter account hasn’t been touched, though the most recent post is from May 25 and the three most recent posts were all re-tweets of the Apple TV account.

It’s expected that Apple will announce the end of iTunes very soon, and possibly (likely?) as soon as the kickoff presentation at the company’s Worldwide Developers’ Conference, which kicks off on Monday with a 1:00 p.m. ET keynote.