ITunes Music Store
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
The iTunes Music Store (iTMS) is a paid online music service run by Apple Computer, introduced on April 28, 2003 with iTunes 4.
- Pricing: All songs cost 99 cents (USD); most albums cost $9.99 (USD)
- Platform(s): Mac OS X (not Mac OS Classic), Windows 2000 and Windows XP
- Downloading: Yes
- Burning/Copying: Yes
- Streaming: No
- Radio: Yes (built into iTunes)
- Format: AAC @ 128 kbps
- Digital Rights Management: Up to 5 computers, unlimited CDs (7 with an unchanged playlist), unlimited iPods (formerly 3 computers, and 10 unchanged playlist burns)
- Preview: 30 seconds
- Trial: N/A
- Catalog: 700,000 files; includes audio books; originally iTMS contained about 200,000 files
- Features: Allowance, gift certificates
- Global availability: US addressee credit-card holders only
Songs are encoded by Dolby's Advanced Audio Codec, which is part of the MPEG-4 standard and QuickTime 6 and is usually considered superior to MP3 in terms of 128 kbit/s encoding quality.
Originally only Mac OS X users who had credit cards with a U.S. billing address could buy songs with the service, but Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple, announced plans to support both Windows and international users. The Windows version of iTunes, and support for the Windows platform from the iTunes Music Store was announced on October 16th, 2003, with immediate availability.
The iTunes Music Store was the first of now many online music stores to gain widespread media attention, opening up the path for many other services to join the so-called "revolution." Fans and some executives in the music industry say that the Music Store has more attractive characterstics than previous services such as Rhapsody and MusicNet: it allows the user to legally purchase an unlimited number of songs and transfer them to the iPod, and is comparatively simple and easy to use because it is closely integrated into the iPod and iTunes product lines. Currently, the iPod is the only digital music player that works with the iTunes Music Store (however other players work with iTunes), and iTunes Music Store is the only music store available for iPod users.
Apple's FairPlay Digital rights management (DRM) is integrated into iTunes, which manages songs purchased from iTunes Music Store. Compared with other DRM systems, it is less restrictive and visible. Practically, any protection can be stripped. To convert protected files to MP3-format files, the user must burn them on an audio CD and then rip the CD back to iTunes using the MP3 encoder, resulting in slight loss of quality.
The store sold about 275,000 tracks in its first 18 hours and more than 1,000,000 tracks in its first week. When released for Windows, it was downloaded more than 1,000,000 times in the first 3 days and more than 1,000,000 songs were sold in that period. On 15 December, Apple announced that it had sold 25 million songs since the launch in April. In January 2004 at the Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco, Steve Jobs announced (as cited in Sellers, 2004) that an unnamed person had purchased 29,500 USD worth of music.
On January 8th, 2004, Apple and Hewlett-Packard announced a strategic alliance to deliver an HP-branded digital music player based on Apple’s iPod, and Apple’s iTunes digital music jukebox and online music store to HP's customers. As planned, on February 1st, 2004, Apple launched a promotion with Pepsi in which they gave away 100 million songs, through tokens on selected soft drink bottle caps. This might have contributed to Coca-Cola's decision to launch a music store, albeit only in the United Kingdom, as well.
On March 15th, 2004, Apple announced that iTunes Music Store customers had purchased and downloaded 50 million songs from the iTunes Music Store. They also reported that customers were purchasing 2.5 million songs a week which translates to a projected annual run rate of 130 million songs a year. The 50 millionth song was "The Path of Thorns" by Sarah McLachlan.
Currently, several dozens of new songs are added each Tuesday, and beginning with Moby on July 29, 2003, independent artists are now included.
On April 28, 2004, iTunes Music Store marked one year anniversary with 70 millon songs sold, the clear dominance in the paid online music market and the slight profit. [1] To cerebrate this, Apple introduced a new iTunes 4.5, which now allows the user to share files over 5 machines instead of 3 but cut the number the user can burn CDs without changing the playlist from 10 to 7. This adjustment was the result of the renegationation Apple had with major labels. The store also offers hundreads of movie trailers and music videos, the attemp to boost more soundtrack sales. In the conference, Steve Jobs reiterated that the subscription service is still not the interest of customers and reported that only 5 millions songs out of a millon songs in the Pepsi give-away campagin were redeemed, which he blamed for technical problems in distribution.
External links
- Apple: iTunes Music Store
- Wired News: Apple Launches Paid Music Service
- shumans.com: iTunes Music Store usage inconclusive
- Time Magazine: Coolest Inventions of 2003, Apple Music Store
- Fortune Magazine: iTunes Music Store named Product of the Year 2003
- As the Apple Turns - gossip website about Apple and iTunes Music Store
References
- Sellers, Dennis. (2004). Reporter's notebook: keynote observations. Retrieved January 8, 2004 from http://www.macminute.com/2004/01/07/reportersnotebook