Apple Celebrates iTunes 10th Anniversary With Timeline
To celebrate the 10th anniversary of iTunes, Apple has put together an entertaining multimedia timeline of the digital music store.
The iTunes’ formal birthday isn’t until Sunday, but the timeline, which is called “A Decade of iTunes,” is online now in the music section of the store.
The timeline marks the period from the time iTunes was first launched on April 28 2003 right up to the release of Justin Timberlake’s new album on March 19 this year. Peppered along with the milestones are the best selling song and album on the day of the milestone (for e.g. on 10 May 2005 when the iTunes store was officially launched in European countries like Denmarak, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland, ‘Speed of Sound’ from Coldplay’s X & Y was the best selling song, while Morcheeba’s ‘The Antidote’ was the best selling album).
“The sky was falling, and iTunes provided a place where we were going to monetize music and in theory stem the tide of piracy. So, it was certainly a solution for the time,” said Michael McDonald, who co-founded ATO Records with Dave Matthews and whose Mick Management roster includes John Mayer and Ray LaMontagne.
The iTunes music store became much more than a solution; it changed how we consume music and access entertainment. It’s not only music’s biggest retailer, it also dominates the digital video market, capturing 67 percent of the TV show sale market and 65 percent of the movie sale market, according to information company NPD group. Its apps are the most profitable, it has expanded to books and magazines, and it is now available in 119 countries. This week, iTunes posted a record $2.4 billion in revenue in first-quarter earnings.
The app store now reaches 90 percent of the world’s population, Oppenheimer said, and is available in 155 countries. There are now over 850,000 iOS apps in the store, 350,000 of which are tailored for iPad.
As of the second fiscal quarter of 2013, iTunes now offers 35 million songs in 119 countries, 60,000 movies in 109 countries and 1.7 million iBook titles.
Apple also said that payouts to app developers has reached $9 billion since the App Store initiative launched in 2008, and the company is currently meting out some $1 billion per quarter to app makers.
[LATimes]
