The iTunes Store is a digital media store operated by Apple Inc. It opened on April 28, 2003, as a result of Steve Jobs' push to open a digital marketplace for music. , iTunes offered 60 million songs, 2.2 million apps, 25,000 TV shows, and 65,000 films. When it opened, it was the only legal digital catalog of music to offer songs from all five major record labels.
The iTunes Store is available on most Apple devices, including the Mac (inside the Music app), the iPhone, the iPad, the iPod touch, and the Apple TV, as well as on Windows (inside iTunes). Video purchases from the iTunes Store are viewable on the Apple TV app on Roku and Amazon Fire TV devices and certain smart televisions. Unlike other Apple media services such as Apple Music or Apple TV+, there is no web-based interface for the iTunes Store with the exception of limited iTunes Preview pages; the desktop application has to be installed to browse the store.
While initially a dominant player in digital media, by the mid-2010s, streaming media services were generating more revenue than the buy-to-own model used by the iTunes Store. Apple now operates its own subscription-based streaming music service, Apple Music, alongside the iTunes Store.
History
Steve Jobs saw the opportunity to open a digital marketplace for music due to the rising popularity of easily downloadable tracks. In 2002, Jobs made an agreement with the five major record labels to offer their content through iTunes. The iTunes Music Store (later iTunes Store) was introduced by Jobs at a special Apple music event in April 2003. Music could be purchased in the iTunes application, and purchases were playable in iTunes or on the iPod. The store was initially available to Mac computers, and was later expanded to Microsoft Windows in October 2003 when iTunes for Windows was launched.
In April 2008, the iTunes Store was the largest music vendor in the United States, and in February 2010, it was the largest music vendor in the world. The iTunes Store's revenues in the first quarter of 2011 totaled nearly US$1.4 billion. By May 28, 2014, the store had sold 35 billion songs worldwide.
In 2016, it was reported that music streaming services had overtaken digital downloads in sales. It was reported that iTunes-style digital download sales had dropped 24% as streaming continued to increase.
In April 2018, the iTunes app was added to the Microsoft Windows 10 app store. Beginning in the spring of 2019, the iTunes app became available on Samsung Smart TVs.
In October 2019, with the release of macOS Catalina, iTunes was split into separate Music, TV, and Podcasts apps. Apple's storefront for movies and television shows moved inside the TV app. Any music in users' iTunes library would transfer to the Music app, which would still offer access to the iTunes Store.
Features and restrictions
Pricing model
History
Following the introduction of the iTunes Store, individual songs were all sold for the same price, though Apple introduced multiple prices in 2007. Music in the store is in the Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) format, which is the MPEG-4-specified successor to MP3. Originally, songs were only available with DRM and were encoded at . At the January 2009 Macworld Expo, Apple announced that all iTunes music would be made available without DRM, and encoded at the higher-quality rate of . Previously, this model, known as "iTunes Plus", had been available only for music from EMI and some independent labels. Users can sample songs by listening to previews, ninety seconds in length, or thirty seconds for short tracks.
In addition, the iTunes Store offers apps, which are applications used for various purposes (games, productivity, news, etc.) that are compatible with the iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad, although some apps are specifically for the iPhone or iPad only. Some apps cost money (called "Paid Apps") and some are free (called "Free Apps"). Developers can decide which prices they want to charge for apps, from a pre-set list of pricing tiers, from free to several hundred dollars. When someone downloads an App, 70 percent of the purchase goes to the developer(s), and 30 percent goes to Apple.