Every Apple user used to know iTunes and couldn’t avoid the service. Today, however, iTunes has almost disappeared from the scene. But why?
At the end of the 1990s, pirates hijacked the internet – music pirates. Songs and entire albums migrate in digital form to music fans’ hard drives via various platforms and file-sharing networks – free of charge and illegally. Napster, Gnutella and Co. cause swollen carotid arteries within the music industry. However, the record labels also have no suitable, legal business model to offer. Instead, the music bosses send out lawyers and sue the mostly young music pirates with lawsuits. However, the wave of illegal downloads is not abating. Until the imaginative Apple boss Steve Jobs revolutionized the music business with iTunes.
With the MP3 came the music pirates
In the history of the Internet, it has often been users who have anticipated certain developments through their behavior. This certainly applies to the music pirates as well. The question still arises: Why did people all over the world start distributing and downloading music illegally?
Technical developments have played their part. The record has now been replaced by the digital CD. In addition, there is a digital format, MP3, which reduces the size of music files without significant loss of quality. Sharing music is now much easier, even with slow internet connections.
The industry supports the trend with MP3 players and CD burners. Before CDs existed, people copied songs onto compact cassettes. In the meantime, you can put together your own CDs with your favorite tracks just as easily using a burner. Thanks to the MP3 format, many more songs fit on a CD than on a music cassette.
The idea of iTunes is born
The music industry does not like this development at all. CD sales are declining around the world because people prefer to download their favorite music for free over the Internet.
The record label’s own subscription models are on the verge of insignificance. Reason: The high subscription prices and the relatively manageable range. Why should anyone take out a subscription for a few selected artists when millions of songs are freely available online?
Apple’s Steve Jobs also recognizes the problem. The company is keeping a very close eye on what is happening there. While Apple doesn’t know the music business, it knows exactly what people want in the digital world.
Apple initially reacted defensively to the growing demand for MP3s. The company does not offer any special software. The company’s own Quicktime player couldn’t keep up with programs that were popular at the time, such as Winamp or Real Player. To save time and money, Apple bought the rights to the MP3 software SoundJam MP in 2000. The company gets the developers on board right away.
Apple starts a revolution in three steps
A year later, the first version of the new Apple music software iTunes appears. The program is still very similar to SoundJam MP in appearance. The computer manufacturer has taken the first step.
However, Apple boss Steve Jobs doesn’t just copy popular formats, he always makes them a little bit better. That’s why the ingenious visionary has long had the next step in the back of his mind. Because Steve Jobs is pursuing the goal of bringing the music pirates back into legality.
Apple is therefore busy working on iTunes and at the end of 2001 presents another thing: the iPod. The small MP3 player, the size of a deck of cards, can hold 1,000 songs – an unimaginably large number at the time. For comparison: a mere 20 songs fit on a 60-minute compact cassette.
With iTunes, Apple now has music software that is now quite passable, with which an iPod can be filled quickly and easily. Listening to music is now possible everywhere and never ends with 1000 songs.
Apple has taken two steps. The third will change the world forever. On April 28, 2003, the company presented version 4.0 of iTunes – actually not particularly spectacular. But the new version includes the iTunes Music Store, the first digital record store. A single costs 99 cents there, a whole album 9.99 US dollars – not free, but completely legal. How did Steve Jobs do it?
Also read: Apple stops production of the iPod after 21 years
iTunes offers an acceptable deal
The boss of a computer company, of all people, is able to do what the record labels themselves have not been able to do for years – to set up a completely new distribution channel for music. Steve Jobs signs contracts with what were then the five largest US labels, BMG, EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal and Warner. Just 200,000 songs are available in the new iTunes Music Store on opening day. But the demand is immense.
A week after opening, a million songs have already been sold. It took a year through the record label subscription channels to come up with such a number. Apple, on the other hand, sells 100 million songs within a year. The music industry’s initial skepticism is gradually dissipating.
iTunes now also works on Windows computers. This enables Apple to win more and more record labels for iTunes. Above all, the company gets the subject of music downloads out of the dirty corner. Because Steve Jobs had recognized that people want to exchange and copy music as easily as possible. If the offer is right, they also pay money for it.
iTunes is also changing the listening habits of music fans. Because now you no longer have to buy a whole album, you only buy what you like. As a music fan, it’s debatable whether that’s actually an improvement. Because of course the record labels also react to this and produce assembly line music that always works according to the same pattern.
The payment of the artists was also much more lavish than in today’s streaming age. Because two-thirds of the income goes to the record labels.
Streaming ends the iTunes model
Speaking of streaming: Steve Jobs correctly recognized back then that people want to own music. With ever faster Internet connections, however, this attitude is also changing. From the 2010s in particular, more and more streaming services were established, which lured in with cheap monthly subscriptions.
Apple continues to rely on its own iTunes Store and on selling songs. It was not until 2015 that the company presented its own subscription model, Apple Music. At this point, however, the competition for Spotify or Deezer is already miles away.
Spotify in particular puts a lot of energy into improving the algorithms. Therefore, Spotify listeners are recommended songs that harmonize much better with their own taste in music.
In 2019, Apple reacted to the changing listening habits of music fans and buried iTunes – at least on Apple computers. In the future, you can listen to and stream music via Apple Music. There is still a digital record store. However, Apple is now also focusing on streaming.
iTunes lives on on Windows computers. If iTunes eventually disappears there too, the software will still be remembered for changing the music business and listening to music forever.