Sam Oliver
Apple on Wednesday rolled out a new feature on its iTunes Store to celebrate "A Decade of iTunes," offering customers a history lesson of the company's now-dominant digital download destination.
The new addition to the iTunes Store includes an interactive timeline that allows visitors to see how iTunes — as well as popular music — has evolved over the last ten years. The feature kicks off by recalling April 28, 2003, when the iTunes Music Store launched with 200,000 songs, and the third-generation iPod was unveiled.
Back on its launch day, the top-selling song on iTunes was "Stuck in a Moment" by U2, while the most popular album was "Sea Change" by Beck. More than a million songs, priced at 99 cents apiece, were downloaded in the first week.
By clicking through on a year-by-year basis, customers can view the top selling iTunes album for each, and also view numerous individual milestones. These items are related to songs purchased, new countries where the iTunes Store launched, and major product launches such as new iPods.
The most recent milestone was hit on March 19, when the Justin Timberlake album "The 20/20 Experience" set a new worldwide record for album sales in its first week.
This Sunday will mark 10 years to the date that the iTunes Store opened. The company announced in its quarterly earnings report on Tuesday that the iTunes Store had a record quarter with $4 billion in revenues.
While it originally launched as music-only, video has become a major component of Apple's store. New data released this week by the NPD Group found that iTunes currently accounts for 67 percent of online television episode downloads, as well as 65 percent of movies purchased.
Beyond music and video, the iTunes Store also encompasses applications, e-books, and subscriptions to digital publications.
AppleInsider Staff
Chip Loder
Christine McKee
Malcolm Owen
William Gallagher
Andrew Orr
14 Comments
Given recent events for Apple stock this would be a very welcome milestone
I wonder if this is mild foreplay for the iRadio (or whatever it will be called) service/feature from iTunes, etc.
How about celebrating with better pricing?
90% of the time, I can still get a Physical CD Mailed To Me From Amazon, for less than albums on the iTunes store.
[quote name="AppleZilla" url="/t/157161/apple-celebrates-a-decade-of-itunes-with-year-by-year-milestones#post_2316205"]How about celebrating with better pricing? 90% of the time, I can still get a Physical CD Mailed To Me From Amazon, for less than albums on the iTunes store. [/quote] Or fixing the multiple ID problem. Over 10 years many of us bought content over a few different IDs and getting that content back is a PITA, especially when you get warnings like this when you try to download content from another ID: "If you download past purchases with your Apple ID, you cannot auto-download or download past purchases with a different Apple ID for 90 days." I have to wait 3 months before I can get my current Apple ID working properly with auto-downloads if I want to access previously purchased content on another ID? That's almost setup to prevent me from accessing my purchased content... Sigh... 10 years and it still doesn't "just work".
Or fixing the multiple ID problem.
Talk to the record companies about that.
Thanks for trying to blame Apple for something out of their hands.