ITunes Music Store

The iTunes Music Store (iTMS) is an online music service run by Apple Computer with its iTunes application. Introduced on April 28, 2003, the store, which uses DRM restrictions, has since been a dominant online music service and has proven the viability of online music sales.

Market share and milestones

• 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, iTunes 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 December 15, 2003 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 March 15, 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. http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2004/mar/15itunes.html
• On April 28, 2004, the iTunes Music Store marked its one year anniversary with 70 million songs sold, the clear dominance in the paid online music market and the slight profit. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/29/technology/29apple.html The store also offers hundreds of movie trailers and music videos, in an attempt to boost soundtrack sales. In the conference, Steve Jobs reiterated that the subscription service is still not the interest of customers and reported that only 5 million of the 100 million songs offered in the Pepsi give-away campaign were redeemed, which he blamed on technical problems in Pepsi distribution.
• According to an Apple Press Release http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2004/aug/10itms.html released on August 10, 2004, the iTunes Music Store is the first store to have a catalog of more than one million songs. Also, the iTunes Music Store at that point maintained an over 70 % marketshare of legal music downloads.
• On January 24 2005 the iTunes Music Store sold a quarter of a billion songs worldwide.
• As of March 2, 2005, the iTunes Music Store had surpassed 300 million songs sold. http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/mar/02itms.html
• On May 10, 2005 Apple announced to have sold over 400 million songs.
• On July 5, 2005 Apple announced that the countdown to half a billion songs had begun.
• On July 17, 2005 Apple announced to have sold 500 million songs. Amy Greer of Lafayette, Indiana, USA, bought the 500 millionth song, Mississippi Girl by Faith Hill.