The Early Days of iTunes
Before iTune there was MP3 player software called SoundJam MP. This software was developed and distributed by Casady and Green and written by Jeff Robbin, Bill Kincaid, and Dave Heller. In 200O Apple made a deal with the developers and publisher to buy SoundJam MP. SoundJam lasted a for a little while after the deal was made but it soon became the foundation of iTunes. Itunes version one was formally launched in January of 2001. The idea was to have a place where people could download digital music on demand. When Apple first launched iTunes it had already signed deals with major record labels, which had signed to make their music available on the iTunes store. 18 hours after the services first went lives, it had already sold 275,000 tracks. Soon the media began to promote it which aided in iTunes' great success. iTunes continued to add more to their services such as music videos, movies, TV shows, and apps. This lead to iTunes becoming even more popular and successful.
Global Launches
In the beginning, the iTunes store was only available in the U.S. However, in 2004 a series of European launches occurred. The iTunes store was launched in France, Germany, United Kingdom, Belgium, Italy, Austria, Greece, Finland, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain, and the Netherlands. People in Canada had to wait until December 3rd, 2004 before iTunes was available to them. Global launches continued in successive years. Now iTunes is accessible all over the world.
DRM Controversy
DRM stands for digital rights management. DRM is a set of access control technologies that are used to restrict the use of proprietary hardware and copyrighted things. They try to control the use, modification, and distribution of copyrighted things, as well as systems within devices that enforce these policies. Apple developed its own digital rights management technology, called Fairplay, which was only compatible with the iPod, iPhone, and a few other digital music players. For many people, the restriction that the DRM places on any purchased media, including video, is very frustrating and annoying. Now, however, Apple sells most of its songs without DRM protection, although it varies by country.
iTunes Achievement
Since it releases iTunes has had many great achievements. In the first year alone it sold 70 million songs. In 2005, after music videos were first introduced, it sold 1 million music videos in the first five days. By 2006 one billion songs had been downloaded and a gain of 88% of the legal music download market share (U.S) had been gained. Then in 2007, the iTunes store became the most popular place to download movies from. In 2008, Apple announced that they had become the second largest retailer of digital music in the U.S. The app market also become very popular and by 2011 15 billion apps had been downloaded from iTunes. These are just a few of iTunes' numerous accomplishments since its start in 2001.
https://www.lifewire.com/history-of-itunes-versions-1999247
https://www.lifewire.com/itunes-store-history-2438593
https://www.bing.com/search?q=what+is+DRM&pc=MOZI&form=MOZLBR
This post was really informative about the history of one of the most used apps we have today. I also wonder, how do you think the development of iTunes was influenced by its contemporary competitors? For example, as we learned in class, the conflict between Apple and Microsoft gave birth to the innovative spirit of Apple. Did a similar competitive model influence iTunes as well?
ReplyDeleteI like that you talked about past devices like the MP3 and also the new set of rules that Apple made. I thought this post was interesting and I liked learning about how iTunes was created.
ReplyDeleteI found it interesting that Apple tried to create their own DRM system. Does this mean other companies generally used the same one? Regardless, I really enjoyed reading your post.
ReplyDeleteThis was a really cool post! We only touched a bit on the walkman, so learning about the old MP3 software and how iTunes had it's foundation in sound jam was nice to learn about. I used to use iTunes all the time, so it's interesting to learn how it actually came to be.
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