Back in the day, you uploaded all your own media. you didn't have access to hundreds of thousands of streaming options across music, podcasts, and movies. Having a single app to upload your media and sync to your MP3 player was optimal.
Now that everything is streaming, and accessible on mobile without a need to sync to a local source, the benefits of media type unity is much weaker. It's easier to have individual apps that provide access points to each type of media library and optimized for that type of media.
But,
There are still those of us (such as myself) that prefer the local media sourcing, using iPods, etc, and that would love a unified app without any store. Just a window into my personal media library and the ability to sync it to a handheld device. Though the options for handheld devices these days are both slim and expensive...
One thing I miss with the move to mobile and cloud-first is that you used to be able to organize your phone apps on a desktop which I did every 6-12 months to clean them up. I find that's a real pain on an iPhone. I guess I can just remember names and search but I liked a more organized layout over 4 or 5 screens by general category.
Back in the day, you uploaded all your own media. you didn't have access to hundreds of thousands of streaming options across music, podcasts, and movies. Having a single app to upload your media and sync to your MP3 player was optimal.
Now that everything is streaming, and accessible on mobile without a need to sync to a local source, the benefits of media type unity is much weaker. It's easier to have individual apps that provide access points to each type of media library and optimized for that type of media.
But,
There are still those of us (such as myself) that prefer the local media sourcing, using iPods, etc, and that would love a unified app without any store. Just a window into my personal media library and the ability to sync it to a handheld device. Though the options for handheld devices these days are both slim and expensive...