Believe it or not, iTunes is 10 years old. This Sunday marks the ten year anniversary of the iTunes Store’s launch, and Apple has started the celebrations early with a special micro site that opens in iTunes itself.
Technically the very first version of iTunes launched in 2001, but it wasn’t until April 28th 2003 that the iTunes Store launched, giving birth to the MP3, music downloading and a new era of music consumption. From version 4.0 back then we’ve come to version 11 today, and a lot has happened in between.
If you’ve only joined the iTunes era recently then we’d strongly recommend checking out Apple’s history of the iTunes Store by following the link at the bottom of the page. It opens up in iTunes on your PC or Mac and allows you pick any year during the software’s ten year existence to see what milestones were reached during that time. You’ll also be able to see the top ten downloaded songs of the year, which has given us some amazing throwbacks – who would have thought that in 2003 there were just 200,000 songs and ‘Stacy’s Mom’ by Fountains of Wayne was in the top 10 downloaded songs of the year.
The iTunes Store of course revolutionised the way in which we consume music, shifting from physical CDs to digital downloads and mobile devices to play them on. These days digital music and downloading is a multi-billion dollar industry with everyone competing to offer cheaper downloads.
iTunes has gone from offering music to renting movies, selling apps, podcasts, books and TV shows. There are now more than 26 million songs available alone, with many more movies and other downloadable files.
iTunes Decade Minisite – link