iTunes down: Apple Music, App Store and more break during VMA announcement

Services don’t seem to have been able to handle the exclusive reveal

Many of Apple’s cloud services are being hit by problems, likely around the huge interest in the company’s exclusive reveal of nominees for the Video Music Awards.

Beats 1, the Apple Music radio station, was given the exclusive to announce who was nominated for MTV’s VMAs. But many couldn’t hear it because the station was down, along with the rest of Apple Music.

The App store, Apple Music, Apple TV, iTunes cloud services, the iTunes store, iTunes U, the Mac App Store and OS X Software Updates were all hit by problems, according to the Apple status page. All of the rest of the company’s online services — including all of the personal iCloud storage tools — seemed to be working.

Issues seemed to begin around 2.30pm UK time. They were continuing as this report was published.

The problems didn’t seem to hit all users, and varied according to where people were.

There’s no certainty that the problems were related to the VMAs, though the two events coincided.