It is a Christmas miracle for Apple! (Or simply good advertising and marketing.) Photograph: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
December 15, 2003: Virtually eight months after launching the iTunes Music Retailer, Apple celebrates its 25 millionth obtain.
The track in query? Appropriately sufficient for this time of yr, a Frank Sinatra cowl* of the Christmas traditional “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!”
iTunes: Essentially the most profitable on-line music retailer
“With over 25 million songs purchased and downloaded to date, the iTunes Music Store is hands-down the most successful online music store,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs stated in a press release on the time. “Music fans are buying and downloading almost 1.5 million songs per week from the iTunes Music Store, which is a rate of 75 million songs per year.”
Jobs’ forecasts proved extremely correct. By the next July, Apple bought its 100 millionth track, Zero 7’s “Somersault (Dangermouse remix),” bought by Kevin Britten from Hays, Kansas.
Right now, iTunes has bought billions and billions of songs, though downloads have been eclipsed by streaming providers like Apple Music and Spotify.
iTunes Music Retailer in 2003
The iTunes Music Retailer circa 2003 supplied what appears as we speak a relatively paltry music catalog “of more than 400,000 songs,” priced at 99 cents every. These got here from all 5 main document labels and greater than 200 unbiased labels.
Apple additionally celebrated promoting greater than $1 million price of iTunes on-line reward certificates and top-up allowances since introducing them a few months earlier in October.
What was your first iTunes track obtain? Depart your feedback under.
* On the threat of being persnickety, Apple’s press launch claims that the “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” obtain was a model by Frank Sinatra. Whereas Sinatra did document a Might 1950 model of the track, which appeared on the 2002 Christmas With the Rat Pack album, the much more well-known model was sung by Sinatra buddy and stablemate Dean Martin. Undecided if Apple made a mistake right here!
