iTunes Store Turns 10 184
An anonymous reader writes
"On April 28, 2003, Apple launched the iTunes Music Store. In their original press release, they called it 'revolutionary,' in typical PR fashion. As the service reaches its 10th anniversary, it seems they were actually correct. From The Verge: 'At launch, it was Mac-only and offered a relatively tiny catalog: 200,000 songs (it currently has 26 million). But it did have the support of the major record labels of the day: Universal, EMI, Warner, Sony, and BMG. The partnerships were key to helping Apple take control of music distribution — without the songs, the iPod was a nicely designed but empty box. ... Jobs certainly had his challenges. Vidich said he's the one who suggested that iTunes charge 99 cents per track and he remembers Jobs nearly hugged him. At the time, Sony Music execs wanted to charge more than $3 a track, according to Vidich. No doubt a $3 song price would have tied an anchor around iTunes' neck, stifling growth. 99 cents, on the other hand, was below the sub-$1 psychological barrier — and has continued to be an important price point for not only music but the wide swath of 99-cent iOS apps in the store. ... Apple bet that the majority of consumers wouldn't have an issue with its lock-in tactics, and it bet correctly.'"
Question (Score:3, Insightful)
I thought software was supposed to improve with time?
Re:Thank god the iPod is dead (Score:5, Insightful)
For all the tales of horror with iTunes, I guess I'm the only happy user.
Re:Question (Score:2, Insightful)
I thought software was supposed to improve with time?
"Improve with time" means "make more profit for the corporation". It has done that.
What, you didn't think "improvement" meant "give you a better user experience", did you?
Re:BFD (Score:4, Insightful)
And I've never installed Linux on a home machine (though I have been looking into it, to be fair). Clearly it's unimportant too? Or are we only excluding things that you've not used?
The iTunes Store is currently the largest digital music distribution service available in terms of downloads, and as of last year, digital sales numbers passed those of physical media. That you're not using a service does not mean it's not noteworthy. Considering it was the first big service of this sort and set the stage for all of the ones that followed, looking back on the last 10 years of it seems to make sense.
Re:All of worlds music just for $26 million (Score:5, Insightful)
What's even neater is that you'd be dead of old age before you could listen to all of it. (Feel free to run the numbers, I did. I assumed a 3 minute track, life expectancy of 100, that you started listening at birth, and that you don't need to sleep.) You still can't get through it all.)
Actually I'm not sure if that's neat or not... more sad really.
You missed the point (Score:2, Insightful)
The important part of all of this is that iTunes is the means by which the industry transformed our purchasing method form possession to renting music.
When you die the rights to that music dies with you.
Re:Thank god the iPod is dead (Score:5, Insightful)
Speaking as an Apple fan, I agree entirely that it needs to die in a fire already.
That said, this story is about the iTunes Store, which just turned 10 and is actually pretty decent, not the iTunes software, which is over 12 years old at this point. iOS devices haven't required the iTunes software to do updates or sync for a few years now, and they've been capable of making purchases from the iTunes Store without having to use the software since the very beginning.
But when it comes to complaining about the iTunes software, I'm right there with you complaining about it. On Windows it's buggy, bloated, unfriendly towards users, and has a history of bad behavior (e.g. the auto-installing Safari thing). On Mac, it's inconsistent with other UI paradigms, poorly structured, and breaks from the usual UNIX and Mac way of making separate tools for each task.
In contrast, the iTunes Store, while not the easiest thing to navigate, does have a number of extremely nice features going for it, beyond just helping to pave the way for later entrants in the field. Besides which, it remains the largest digital music platform, and with digital music sales finally passing physical sales as of 2012, it makes sense to look back on the history first big digital music store that is currently the biggest music store period.
The real story (Score:5, Insightful)
The real revolution was that Apple became a big enough player with the iPod to force the hand of the big 5 of the RIAA to actually offer their music online in digital form for what many people deemed a fair enough price to not pirate. It seems commonplace now in 2013 enough to forget, but in the mid 2000s there were very options for consumers to get their music online, and one could argue this was one of the bigger reasons for online piracy. We see echoes of this still today as the news reported last week that the HBO show Game of Thrones is one of the biggest pirated shows online, and some would argue this is because of consumer's perceived lack of options for watching it online. Apple challenged the old distribution model and won, that's what the story is.
Re:See less and Less itunes (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not quite that easy. Apple seems to want to keep iTunes as part of its platform lock and doesn't have an iTunes app for Android. If they were interested in actually selling content rather than locking in users you'd think they'd have one.
Re:I'm Sexy :) (Score:4, Insightful)
That is "Just Broken", on a Android you don't need a third party program :). Having to remember such a complicated hierarchy of directories...and still use a third party program is a disgrace. iOS is so complicated.
Remembering directories is for Android users. There's no user file handling involved whatsoever in the Amazon/Apple process. Amazon's store downloads it to that directory. iTunes picks it up from that directory. That's implementation. User doesn't have to know that any more than they have to know HTML to read a web page.
Re: Lock in Tactics? (Score:4, Insightful)
When iTunes music had DRM, most computers had CD-RW's.
For the past 5 years, all iTunes music has been sold as unencrypted AAC files that can be played on any phone.
Before anyone else posts, AAC is not an Apple format, was standardised years before the iPod was introduced, and is one of the required supported formats for Android.
Re:The real story (Score:5, Insightful)
ORLY? When did Apple get a monopoly on music distribution - did the buy out Sony and BMG when no one was looking? How long have you been unable to buy the same music at similar prices at similar stores? When did Apple revert back to protected-AAC formats, preventing you from playing iTMS-purchased tracks on non-Apple devices?
Or maybe you're using that word, "monopoly", and it doesn't mean whatever it is you think it means. Consider switching to decaf hatorade....
Re: The real story (Score:2, Insightful)
The thing is that monopoly is not one precise thing it is shades of gray - if it were one succinct definition you wouldn't be moving those goalposts to rationalize how all the other monopolies I've cited fit different requirements. The only difference is you are picking and choosing your requirements to fit what you can't dispute. Hell, you even got standard oil wrong to begin with, then you went and read the article I linked to and now you have another set of goal posts to apply there.
That's the problem with being such a literalist, you can't make the real world fit your literal viewpoint so you have to make exceptions. But once you start picking and choosing your exceptions your whole literalist based argument falls apart.