On the 28th of April 2013, Apple will celebrate 10 years of iTunes. Since the humble beginnings of this online music concept, iTunes has blossomed into the first successful commercial online music store with its 99cents a song deal. Its success was intrinsically linked to the then new Apple iPod. Today it remains the biggest online music store, a full 10 years later.
The Onion news took a bit of a satirical view on the 10 years of iTunes:
- Nov. 4, 2002: The iTunes Store is first conceived of when the revolutionary idea “œI would like more money“ strikes Apple CEO Steve Jobs out of the blue.
- Apr. 28, 2003: The iTunes Store launches with the Bay Area band Steve and the Jobtones as its featured artist.
- Jan. 5, 2004: iTunes briefly adds new and used automotive parts to its store.
- Aug. 28, 2007: Error 21.432.6578.4 is fixed with latest update.
- June 25, 2009: iTunes mourns Michael Jackson‘s death by making millions of dollars in sales of his music.
- Nov. 7, 2009: The surviving Beatles arrive at the studio to record all their songs for iTunes.
- Nov. 7, 2009: The Beatles leave the studio 10 minutes later having been informed how mp3s work.
- July 18, 2010: Dad starts to get the hang of it.
Apple iTunes initially started out with just 200, 000 songs. Today we see new players in the market including Amazon and Google “” and of late, Twitter too (see article). Here‘s a cool infographic showing how the Google and Amazon online music services compare to Apple iTunes as of two months ago.
