ITunes Music Store

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The United Kingdom iTunes Music Store.

The iTunes Music Store is an online music service run by Apple Computer through its iTunes application. Opened on April 28, 2003, the Store proved the viability of online music sales. As of February 2006, the Store had sold over 1 billion songs, or more than 80% of worldwide online digital music sales. Downloaded files come with restrictions on their use, enforced by FairPlay, Apple's version of digital rights management.

Contents

1 Features and restrictions
2 Background
3 Catalog content

3.1 Video

3.1.1 Television shows currently available

4 Market share and milestones
5 Internationalization
6 File format
7 Digital rights management
8 Promotions
9 Other platforms
10 Criticism
11 See also
12 Notes and references
13 External links

Features and restrictions

Pricing: One set price for songs (actual price varies by the user's country; e.g., 99¢ in the U.S., $1.69 in Australia, €0.99 in the EU or 79 pence in the UK, with the exception of the Japanese store, which sells songs for either ¥150 or ¥200). Most albums cost $9.99 in the US. Volume discounts of up to 20% are available for purchases of more than 25,000 songs (10,000 for educational institutions).
Platform(s): Any operating system or device supported by iTunes; Mac OS X (not Mac OS Classic), Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, and some mobile phones.
Downloading: Yes.
Burning/Copying: Yes.
Streaming: 30-second previews can be streamed; purchased songs cannot.
Format: Protected AAC music (extension: .m4p, not the regular AAC extension .m4a) at 128 kbit/s, Audible audiobooks at 32 kbit/s.
Digital restrictions: Streaming to five computers every 24 hours, unlimited CDs (seven with an unchanged playlist), unlimited iPods. (Formerly: three – then five – computers per 24 hours; and 10 unchanged playlist burns.)
Preview: 30 seconds.
Trial: N/A
Protocol: iTunes Music Store Protocol (itms://) for opening the iTunes application and the requested store page to buy music. Example: itms://ax.phobos.apple.com.edgesuite.net/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum. itms:// is not a real protocol, but refers to HTTP URLs that need to open in iTunes.
Catalog: More than 2,900,000 songs (includes audio books), 60,000 podcasts, 9000 music videos, 150+ television programs; (originally iTMS contained about 200,000 files).
Features: Allowance, Just for you, Celebrity Playlists, gift certificates and gift cards, iMix (user-submitted playlists), Podcasts, Billboard charts, radio charts, advanced search, music videos, short films, television shows, and movie trailers.
Availability: To buy files through iTMS, a users must have a pre-paid card, e.g. an iTunes gift card, or use a credit card with a billing address in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Republic of Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, or the United States. Other people can download podcasts and previews only.
Customer Support: Apple provides no customer support for the iTunes Music Store over the phone (Slate attempted to uncover one). All customer service inquiries are done over the web.

Background

Debuting on April 28, 2003, the iTunes Music Store was the first online music store to gain widespread media attention. Apple's store allows the user to purchase songs and transfer them easily to the iPod through iTunes. The iPod remains one of the few digital music players (besides some Motorola cell phones) that are intended to work with the iTunes Music Store, although some other digital music players will work with iTunes.

The store began after Apple signed deals with the five major record labels at the time, EMI, Universal, Warner Bros, Sony Music Entertainment and BMG (the latter two would later merge to form Sony BMG). Music by more than 600 independent label artists was added later, the first being Moby on July 29, 2003.

The total offering includes more than 2,000,000 songs, including exclusive tracks from more than 20 artists, including Bob Dylan, U2, Eminem, Sheryl Crow and Sting. Each song can be downloaded for 99 US cents. Free 30-second previews are available of every song. Most albums are priced at 9.99 US dollars, although some longer-than-average albums cost more, and others less. The user can transfer downloaded songs to an unlimited number of iPods, and burn compact discs from playlists up to seven times.

Catalog content

Currently, new songs are added each Tuesday. Apple also releases a 'Single of the Week' and usually a 'Discovery Download,' on Tuesdays, which are available for free for one week. It allows the purchase of albums on pre-order status, beginning with X&Y by Coldplay.

The iTunes Music Store also includes over 9,000 audio books, encoded at 32 kbit/s. 90 second previews are offered for every book. These books are provided by Audible. This is the same format available if you signed up directly with Audible and chose the "iPod" format, the main difference being that it is not necessary to sign up for a subscription to get audiobooks as is the case with Audible. A small discount is still provided by getting the Audiobooks through the iTMS, but on a selective basis by Apple in comparison to an "always on member discount" if one has an Audible subscription.

The iTunes Music Store lacks music from some popular bands, such as The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Metallica, Garth Brooks, Linkin Park, Tool, and Radiohead. Led Zeppelin and Radiohead are not included due to a belief (by the bands) that their songs should not be available outside of albums, (though there is an "album-only" option available on some albums on iTunes prohibiting the download of individual tracks), while The Beatles' record company Apple Records is currently in a legal battle with Apple Computer over the name "Apple." (On May 8, 2006, a ruling was declared in favor of Apple Computer, but Apple Records has said they will appeal the ruling. See also: Apple Corps v. Apple Computer.) There are, however, biographies within the Music Store for both Led ZeppelinThe Led Zeppelin biography on the iTunes Music Store is available [here]. and The Beatles.The Beatles biography on the iTunes Music Store is available [here].

As of August 2005, the Japanese store offers no songs from Sony Music Entertainment. However, some musicians like Motoharu Sano are trying to sign with Apple independently. On September 6, 2005, Sony announced that it plans to sell songs through the iTMS but did not give a specific date. Similarly, the Australian store didn't offer any songs from Sony BMG until January 17, 2006, when Sony and Apple finally reached an agreement.

In 2004, CDBaby (an online music store which features more than 100,000 independent artists) signed a deal with Apple and managed to get every artist who sells albums there (of those who wanted digital music distribution) on iTunes.

As of December 2005 the iTunes Music Store includes more than 3,000 videos and 2 million songs.

Video

In October 2005, Apple announced the latest iPod would be capable of playing video files, which would be sold online through iTunes. These videos included 2000 music videos and episodes of popular television programs. Working a deal with Disney to be the first supplier of TV shows, the first shows available included all the episodes of Lost and Desperate Housewives with each episode becoming available the day following its original airing on broadcast TV. Several short animated films by Pixar are also available.

The selling of videos on iTunes sparked considerable debate as to whether there was a paying audience for programming available for free on TV. As MP3 Newswire pointed out, users are not so much paying for the TV programs themselves. Instead they are really paying for a service that offers the convenience of someone else digitizing free broadcast episodes for them for their portable device, each episode in commercial-free form, and a convenient place to select and download individual shows. Through an updated version of QuickTime Pro, users can create their own videos for the iPod, including digitized versions of programs recorded on their VCR if they wish to take the time and effort and save the cost. As of November 2005, 3 out of the top 5 podcasts in the Dutch iTunes Music Store were VODcasts.

Television shows currently available

Sleeper Cell
Soapography
South of Nowhere
South Park
SpongeBob SquarePants
Sports Century
SportsCenter Ads
Stacked
Stella
Strangers With Candy
Streetball
The Suite Life of Zack & Cody
Super Robot Monkey Team Hyper Force Go!
Surface
Survivor
Texas Hardtails
That's So Raven
Tom Brokaw Reports
The Tonight Show With Jay Leno
TNA iMPACT!
Top Chef
Unan1mous
Unique Whips
U.S. of ANT
Viva La Bam
Weeds
Wildboyz
Wildfire
Wonder Showzen
World's Best
X Games
Xtreme 4x4
The X's
Zoey 101

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 5 days. 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 (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.
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. 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 a subscription service is still not the interest of customers and reported that only 5 million of the 100 million songs offered in the Pepsi giveaway campaign were redeemed, which he blamed on technical problems in Pepsi distribution.
According to an Apple Press Release 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% market share of legal music downloads.
On September 1, 2004 the iTunes Music Store had surpassed 125 million songs sold.
On October 14, 2004 the iTunes Music Store had surpassed 150 million songs sold.http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2004/oct/14itunes.html
On December 16, 2004 the iTunes Music Store had surpassed 200 million songs sold. Ryan Alekman of Belchertown, Massachusetts, USA, bought the 200 millionth song, which was one of the tracks on U2's digital box set "The Complete U2".
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.
On May 10, 2005 Apple announced that it had sold over 400 million songs.
On July 5, 2005 Apple announced that the countdown to half a billion songs had begun.
On July 18, 2005 Apple announced that it had sold 500 million songs. Amy Greer of Lafayette, Indiana, USA, bought the 500 millionth song, "Mississippi Girl" by Faith Hill.
On October 31, 2005 Apple announced that iTunes Music Store customers had purchased and downloaded 1 million videos since the launch of video support on October 12, 2005.
On December 6, 2005 Apple announced that iTunes Music Store customers had purchased and downloaded over 3 million videos.
On January 10, 2006 Apple announced that the iTunes Music Store had sold 850 million songs and 8 million videos.
On February 23, 2006 Apple announced that the iTunes Music Store had sold 1 billion songs and 15 million videos. The billionth song was “Speed of Sound” by Coldplay, purchased by Alex Ostrovsky of West Bloomfield, Michigan.

Internationalization

Originally only Mac OS X users who had credit cards with a U.S. billing address could buy songs with the service, but Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple, announced plans to support both Windows and non-American users. The Windows version of iTunes and support for the Windows platform from the iTunes Music Store were announced on October 16, 2003, with immediate availability. Beginning in 2004, the service has become available in a number of countries outside the U.S.:

On 15 June 2004, the iTunes Music Store was launched in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Songs were priced at 99c (€0.99) for France and Germany, and 79 pence (£0.79) for the United Kingdom. According to an Apple Press Release, the European iTunes Music Stores sold a combined total of 800,000 songs in one week, with 450,000 of those songs sold in the UK.
On 26 October 2004 nine countries were added to the iTunes Music Store in a large EU store expansion: Austria, Belgium, Finland, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain. This extended availability to all countries in the Eurozone except for the Republic of Ireland, where the iTMS became available on 6 January 2005. These countries also pay €0.99 for songs, and all these stores share the same catalog and are available only in English. The French, German, American, and British stores are localized for their respective countries and have different catalogs. On 3 December 2004 the British Office of Fair Trading referred the iTunes Music Store to the European Commission because it prevents consumers in one EU country from buying music from stores in other EU countries, in violation of EU free-trade legislation; the immediate cause of the referral was because the €0.99 price charged in the Eurozone equates to 68 pence in sterling, rather than the 79 pence actually charged there.
The iTunes Music Store was launched in Canada on December 3, 2004; Canadian customers pay $0.99 CAD per song.
On 10 May 2005, the iTunes Music Store "went live" for Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Denmark, after about two weeks of speculation about these countries (and Australia) receiving the store.
Apple officially launched the iTunes Music Store in Japan on 4 August 2005, with 1 million songs available; 90% of songs are priced at 150 yen. In the next four days the store had sold one million songs–the pace faster than that of the U.S. store. This opening to the world's second largest music market, where iPod controls about 30% market share, came after a long delay. In addition, Apple failed to have one set price for singles. Pundits have speculated that this may indicate the introduction of new price structure to the rest of the stores in future, in favor of record labels who would like to see higher prices for new songs.
The iTunes Music Store was launched in Australia on 25 October 2005. Individual songs are priced at AUD$1.69 per track, album prices vary but are generally priced at $16.99. The recent release of video-capable iPods also saw the store launch with music videos and short films by Pixar available for $3.39 each, although TV episodes are not currently available. Stores in the Coles Myer retail chain sell iTunes Music Cards in denominations of $20, $50 and $100. Access was inadvertently given to some people in New Zealand, too. Failed negotiations with the Sony BMG label (which had delayed the launch of the Australian iTMS significantly) meant that none of that label's artists were available at the time of launch. Sony music was later added starting on January 17, 2006.

File format

Songs are encoded using FairPlay-encrypted 128 kbit/s AAC streams in an mp4 wrapper, using the .m4p extension. In practice, the sound quality is roughly comparable to songs encoded at 160 kbit/s (CBR) using Fraunhofer MP3 or 160 kbit/s using Microsoft's Windows Media Audio WMA format.^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]}

While licenses to the AAC compression and the mp4 file format are readily available, Apple has not agreed to license their proprietary FairPlay encryption scheme to other hardware manufacturers until recently, so only Apple's iPod was able to play AAC files encrypted with Apple's FairPlay technology, apart from computers with iTunes or Quicktime installed. On September 7 2005 Motorola and Apple announced the Motorola ROKR E1, which comes with built in iTunes software and can also play songs from the iTMS. About two months later the second cell phone with iTunes, the Motorola RAZR V3i, was announced. The Motorola SLVR L7, released in early 2006, became the second actual phone available on the commercial market to support songs encoded by iTunes or purchased on the iTMS.

Digital rights management

A white fifth-generation iPod with earphones. Only iPods and selected Motorola players are licensed to play music from the iTunes Music Store

The Motorola SLVR L7, the latest mobile phone with iTunes

Apple's FairPlay Digital rights management (DRM) is integrated into iTunes, which manages songs purchased from iTunes Music Store. Users are not allowed unlimited CD burns of playlists, or to play the songs on more than five computers within 24 hours. However, they are allowed to copy the songs to an unlimited number of iPods.

With the introduction of iTunes 4.5, Apple raised the number of machines allowed to use purchased music from 3 to 5. They also cut the number of times a user can burn CDs of the same playlist from 10 to 7. This adjustment was the result of the renegotiation Apple had with major labels.

Apple FairPlay technology is far from unbreakable. PyMusique has been written to remove it and allow the files to be used without technological restriction. More simply, a user can convert protected files to unprotected MP3 format by burning them to an audio CD, then ripping them back to iTunes. (Some audio quality is lost in this transcoding from one lossy format to another.)

Competitors accuse Apple of using iPod, the iTunes Music Store, and "FairPlay" (Apple's DRM-protected implementation of the AAC open standard) to establish a vertical monopoly to lock iPod users into using the iTunes Music Store exclusively (and vice versa). This "lock" has two aspects:

Apple has maintained tight control of its FairPlay encryption. Other online music stores cannot sell music files encoded with FairPlay, and competing devices from companies such as Creative Labs and iRiver cannot play such files. This means that consumers who want to listen to songs downloaded from the iTunes Music Store must either have an iPod or convert the files to an open format.
The iPod does not play files encoded in Microsoft's WMA format or RealNetwork's Helix-protected format. iPod owners who want to play music in these formats must circumvent the files' DRM.

In July 2004, RealNetworks debuted an application named Harmony, which converted files purchased from RealNetworks' RealRhapsody service into a FairPlay-compatible format that an iPod could play. In response, Apple accused RealNetworks of "adopt[ing] the tactics and ethics of a hacker to break into the iPod." and released a firmware upgrade that rendered fourth-generation iPods and iPod mini incapable of playing such files. RealNetworks has vowed to develop another workaround.

On January 3 2005, an iTunes online music store customer sued Apple, alleging the company broke US antitrust laws by freezing out competitors.

In 2006, a controversy erupted about a French draft law aimed at reinforcing the protection of works of art against "piracy", or illegal copying; some clauses of the law could possibly be used to request Apple to provide information about its FairPlay system to manufacturers of competitor players. Apple and associated lobbying groups protested the draft law, going as far as to suggest that it condoned "state-sponsored piracy". Some US commentators claimed that the law was a protectionistic measure against the iPod.

On June 7 2006 the Norwegian Consumer Ombudsman, Bjørn Erik Thon, stated that the ITMS violates Norwegian law. The contract conditions were vague and "clearly unbalanced to disfavor the customer". The retroactive changes to the DRM conditions and the incompatability with other music players are the major points of concern.

Promotions

On Super Bowl Sunday, February 1, 2004, Apple launched a promotion with Pepsi in which they gave away 100 million songs, through tokens on selected soft drink bottle caps. Unfortunately for Apple, Pepsi failed to properly distribute the bottles to major metropolitan areas until only weeks before the promotion ended, despite a one-month extension of the deadline by Apple. The promotion, however, was repeated beginning January 31, 2005, with 200 million songs available, and an iPod mini given away every hour.

On July 1, 2004, Apple announced that, starting with the sale of the 95 millionth song, an iPod would be given away to the buyer of each 100 thousandth song, for a total of 50 iPods. The buyer of the 100 millionth song would receive a PowerBook, iPod, and $10,000 gift certificate to the iTunes Music Store.

Ten days later, on July 11, Apple announced that 100 million songs had been sold through the iTunes Music Store. The 100 millionth song was titled "Somersault (Dangermouse Remix)" by Zero 7, purchased by Kevin Britten of Hays, Kansas. He then received a phone call from Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who offered his congratulations, as well as a 40GB 3rd Generation iPod laser-engraved with a message of thanks.

Inspired by Pepsi's marketing success with iTunes giveaways, Coca-Cola partnered with 7-Eleven to give away a free iTunes song with every 32 oz. Slurpee frozen beverage until July 31, 2005. Songs could be redeemed until August 31, 2005 by entering a code printed on the Slurpee cup into the iTunes Music Store application. Coca-Cola did this in spite of having its own music store, myCokeMusic.com, that competes with the iTunes Music Store in Europe.

On July 5 2005 Apple announced that they were counting down to half a billion songs. The buyer of every 100 thousandth song up to 500 million would receive an iPod mini and a 50-song gift card. The grand prize for the person who downloads the 500 millionth song was 10 iPods of their choice, a 10,000-song gift card, 10 50-song gift cards and 4 tickets to the Coldplay world tour. Twelve days later, on July 17, Apple announced that 500 million songs had been sold through the iTunes Music Store. The 500 millionth song, purchased by Amy Greer of Lafayette, Indiana, was "Mississippi Girl" by Faith Hill.

On July 28 2005, Apple and Gap announced a promotion to award iTunes music downloads to Gap customers who tried on a pair of Gap jeans. From August 8 to August 31 2005, each customer who tried on any pair of Gap jeans could receive a free download of their favorite song from the iTunes Music Store.

On February 7, 2006, Apple announced that they were counting down to the billionth song download and began a promotion similar to the previous 500 million countdown. Whoever downloaded the billionth song would receive a 20-inch iMac, 10 60GB iPods, and a $10,000 iTunes Music Card. The billionth song was purchased on February 22, 2006 by Alex Ostrovsky of West Bloomfield, Michigan. The purchased song was "Speed of Sound" as part of Coldplay's X&Y album.

Other platforms

Although iTunes is only supported on a limited range of operating systems and devices, users of other platforms have been able to buy music from the iTunes Music Store by a variety of methods. iTunes is known to run passably well using the Wine (software) compatibility layer, but this method only works with x86 PCs. This has spurred the development of alternative programs to access the iTunes Music Store, notably PyMusique and its successor SharpMusique. Apple has not been particularly welcoming of such developments, in March 2005 forcing users to upgrade their versions of iTunes in order to shut out an early version of PyMusique from the system.

Criticism

The iTunes Music Store has been criticized by groups such as Downhill Battle, who claim that the business model of the iTunes Music Store perpetuates the exploitation of artists and consumers. iTunes iSbogus calls the iTunes Music Store a "Facelift for a corrupt industry."

Notes and references

External links

[Apple: iTunes Music Store]
[iTunes music request form]
[iTunes Music Store top 10 charts by country]
[Script Searches iTMS for Cover Art]
[Wired News: Apple Launches Paid Music Service]
[Time Magazine: Coolest Inventions of 2003, Apple Music Store]
[Fortune Magazine: iTunes Music Store named Product of the Year 2003]
[2004 Interactive Media Design Review Winner]
[Hymn Project, converting ITunes music files into mp3 files]
[iTunes Prices Too High] — February 24, 2005 MP3 Newswire commentary on record industry's desire to force a raise in iTunes pricing.
[iTunes Download statistics] — a page that tracks iTMS downloads.

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