iTUNES - A DECADE OF MUSIC HISTORY

iTUNES – A DECADE OF MUSIC HISTORY

Is iTunes really 10 years old? It doesn’t seem like it. It feels like is been around since the 90’s owing to the fact that it has changed the way we buy music and also made music history as the first site to allow music to be downloaded digitally.

With iTunes been the number 1 largest music retailer in the world with its business having an income of $4.1bn {£2.6bn} last year. Let’s rewind and see how they got here.

• April 28 2003- iTunes is launched after years of developing hardware and software and being brave by getting the 5 big music companies to partner with them even after what Hunter S. Thompson’s famous quote about the music industry, that said “The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs”.


• Then just a week of being out in the US the iTunes store sold over 1m songs.


• September 2003- songs downloads hit the 10 million mark.


• 16 October 2003- iTunes available on windows.


• March 2004- 5 million song is downloaded on iTunes


• June 2004 iTunes launched in the UK with 450,000 tracks downloaded in the first week.


• July 2004- Kevin Britten, downloader of 100 millionth iTunes songs wins a PowerBook, iPod and a voucher for 10,000 more tunes.


• August 2004- over a 100 million songs available in the store


• April 17 2005- its sales and downloads were combined in the official  Top 40 for the first time with Amarillo by Tony Christie featuring Peter Kay at No.1


• April 2006- Crazy by Gnarls Barkley was the first song on the top U.K charts on downloads alone.


• Now April 2013 it has grown from only having 200,000 songs in the catalogue to 35 million


• It has 15,000 songs downloaded every minute and it reached its 25 billion songs benign downloaded this February.


• Available now in 119 countries with more than 435 million registered users (this makes it one of the world’s five largest holders of credit card details.)

Great work iTunes, its been ten years of undiluted sound. Let the music play on.

iTUNES - A DECADE OF MUSIC HISTORY