Why Is Your iTunes Music Disappearing?

Is Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) beginning to kill off iTunes? For some users experiencing difficulties in retrieving their downloaded albums, this may be the first sign of what is to come.

Digital Music News, citing industry sources that hold "close and active business relationships with Apple," reported Apple is focusing more on "when" and not "if" it will permanently shut down iTunes and replace it with their streaming music provider.

However, Apple quickly set the record straight and issued a rare denial of the report.

Apple's media executive Tom Neumayr told Digital Music News, "Our response is that it is not true, we are not shutting down iTunes downloads."

Related Link: How Much Trouble Is Apple In?

Is this the end of the story? For those who want to take the company at their own word, then yes. For others who believe that the future of music listening is a streaming platform, then perhaps no.

Meanwhile, users who reported a loss of some of their downloaded albums on iTunes is being attributed to a database error that affects a small number of users who use the most recent version of iTunes 12.3.3.

Shares of Apple were trading higher by around 1 percent Friday morning at $91.18.