The Apple CEO harbored a vision in of an online music store hosted by Apple that would be easy to use, complete in selection and reliable in performance. These factors, Jobs thought, would be enough to convince customers to pay for something they could otherwise obtain for free illegally. The store, then, would enable record labels to compete with pirates rather than pursue a futile attempt to destroy them.
But in order for online music to work, Jobs believed his store would have to allow customers to purchase music in a completely different way: a la carte. Convincing labels was hardly easy. Nobody really ever sold a song.
And we walked in, and we said, 'We want to sell songs a la carte. We want to sell albums, too, but we want to sell songs individually. Jobs started his talks with the big players first: Warner Music and Universal. Apple flew the firms' teams up to Cupertino, California. In a boardroom at One Infinite Loop, Jobs proceeded to present his plan. Users can easily search the entire music store to instantly locate any song by title, artist or album, or browse the entire collection of songs by genre, artist and album.
Users can listen to a free second high-quality preview of any song in the store, then purchase and download their favorite songs or complete albums in pristine digital quality with just one click. The iTunes Music Store also features exclusive tracks from over 20 artists, including Bob Dylan, U2, Eminem, Sheryl Crow and Sting, as well as special music videos from several of these artists which users can watch for free.
In addition, the iTunes Music Store highlights new releases, staff favorites and up-and-coming artists, and delivers a compelling variety of music from many genres and time periods, ranging from Rock and Hip Hop to Jazz and Classical.
All music on the iTunes Music Store is encoded in the industry-standard AAC audio format at kilobits per second which enables smaller files and faster download times while rivaling CD-quality sound superior to the quality of MP3 files at the same size.
On January 9, , Apple launches iTunes, a media player that revolutionized the way people consumed digital media. In , Apple re-hired them and their partner, Dave Heller, to work on a similar player that would come standard with Apple computers. The first version of iTunes debuted early the next year, on the cusp of a new era in digital entertainment.
Along with the iPod, the MP3 player Apple released later in , iTunes revolutionized the music industry, providing consumers with a simple, portable way of listening to a large library of music.
Sleek and focused on a simplified user experience, iTunes made it easy for users to burn CDs and to manage digital music files.
Seeing that music was easier to access than ever, but that record labels were losing money due to internet piracy, Jobs made a deal with the five major record labels to sell their content via iTunes. The fact that it was above-board and profitable for the music industry, combined with the cultural cache of its companion product, the iPod, made iTunes an unqualified success.
Artists recorded exclusive singles and released albums early on iTunes, and the iTunes Music Festival was a popular annual attraction from until Responding to this shift, Apple launched Apple Music, which was compatible with but separate from iTunes, in On June 3, , Apple announced iTunes would not be included in the latest version of its Mac operating system.
Though the age of pay-per-song downloads may have ended, there is no question that iTunes had a major impact on music. The program turned what was more or less a black market into a vital organ of the music industry, and its crisp, user-friendly format changed the way people consume digital audio and video content.
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