April 28, 2003 — Launch of the iTunes Music Store
April 28, 2003
iTunes Music Store was Apple’s digital marketplace for buying music, and it completely changed how people consumed music.
Before iTunes Music Store, the only legal way to buy music was to purchase full albums on CDs or cassette tapes. Even if you needed just one track, you had to buy the entire album. It was expensive and inconvenient, especially as the iPod and similar devices were becoming more popular.
As a result, the typical user journey to listen to a single track from a CD looked like this:
- buy a CD in a physical store and pay for the whole album even if you need just one track
- insert the CD into a computer
- convert the tracks to MP3, making sure the tags and bitrate are correct
- connect the iPod to the computer
- sync the iPod with your library using iTunes
Slow, expensive, inconvenient.
There was an alternative — piracy. Users could download music from services like Napster. The user journey there was simpler:
- download the track from Napster as an MP3 (sometimes slowly, depending on how many people were sharing it)
- connect the iPod to the computer
- sync the iPod with your library using iTunes
Piracy turned out to be easier and more convenient. People who were willing to pay for music had a worse experience than those who didn’t.
This attracted millions of users to Napster and similar platforms. Record labels were losing huge amounts of money, and Apple noticed this early and built iTunes Music Store.
What iTunes Music Store could do
The main feature of iTunes Music Store was convenience. It had to beat Napster at this, and it did.
The user journey looked like this:
- open the iTunes app
- buy the exact track you want for $0.99
- download it quickly from Apple’s servers
- get exactly what you paid for (no viruses, no wrong files like on Napster)
- send the track to your iPod right from the same app
No conversions. No risks.
In its first week, more than 1 million tracks were purchased on iTunes. This showed the industry that users were willing to pay for music — if it was convenient.
How iTunes Music Store changed the industry
In short, iTunes Music Store was a key step toward digital music distribution.
Record labels earned slightly less per purchase because users could now buy individual tracks instead of full albums. But overall, they made more money, since losses from piracy were much higher.
A new metric appeared in industry reports: digital sales. It was more accurate and easier to measure than tracking sales across thousands of physical stores.
Years later, artists no longer wait for CDs to be printed and shipped. They upload releases directly to streaming platforms.
Digital distribution also made it possible for independent artists to enter the market. Pressing CDs required significant investment, while uploading music to digital platforms costs almost nothing. For new artists, recording became the main expense.
iTunes Music Store fundamentally changed the music industry.