Hey guys, it’s Greg with Apple Explained,and today we’re taking a look at the history of iTunes.
But I want to address somethingbefore we begin.
Many of you are recommending different video ideas which I really appreciateso keep them coming, but you should know that there’s a voting poll almost every weekwhere I ask my subscribers which video they’d like to see next.
Here’s the poll for thisvideo, so if you want to vote, make sure you’re subscribed or else the polls won’t showup in your activity feed.
Now, without further ado, let’s begin.
The story of iTunes is full of excitement,disappointment, and even some controversy that all began in 2001.
Now at that time,the iPod didn’t exist and playing music from CDs was standard.
There were MP3 players,but the industry was still in its infancy and wouldn’t explode until a few years afterthe iPod was released.
Most computers were capable of importing songs from CDs and thiscreated a problem with managing those song files effectively.
The most popular desktop music managers wereReal Jukebox, Windows Media Player, and Music Match.
The problem with these applicationswas that they were not only unappealing and complicated, but they throttled things likeencode quality and CD burning speed to encourage users to pay for the software’s pro version.
Apple capitalized on these shortcomings by introducing a free, simple, and powerful digitalmusic jukebox called iTunes.
Now I should mention that iTunes, like Siri,wasn’t made by Apple.
It was developed by Jeff Robbin and Bill Kincaid who had previouslyworked as Apple software engineers for the Copland project but left Apple when the projectwas cancelled.
They went on to create a media player for the Mac in 1998 called SoundJamMP.
The media player caught Apple’s eye and they later acquired SoundJam MP in 2000.
Robbin and Kincaid continued to develop their media player as employees of Apple and simplifiedit's user interface, added the ability to burn CDs, and removed its recording featureand skin support.
It was then branded as iTunes and released to the public in 2001.
iTunes was advertised as “the world’sbest and easiest to use ‘jukebox’ software” and it was only available on the Mac.
SteveJobs said “Apple has done what Apple does best — make complex applications easy, andmake them even more powerful in the process.
iTunes is miles ahead of every other jukeboxapplication, and we hope its dramatically simpler user interface will bring even morepeople into the digital music revolution.”
Reception to iTunes was positive, with criticspraising the ability to turn audio tracks into MP3 files, play Internet radio broadcasts,burn custom CDs, and transfer MP3 files between a Mac and stand-alone music players.
But therewere some complaints about Apple removing features that SoundJam MP used to have.
Thingslike custom skins, additional visualizer plugins, and the ability to record sound from a cassette.
The first update to iTunes came just ninemonths later and included support for the iPod, improvements to CD burning, and a soundequalizer.
Apple referred to this update as iTunes 2 but there wasn’t very much excitementsurrounding its release since the upgrade didn’t introduce any groundbreaking features.
And the same was true for iTunes 3 the following year which featured smart playlists, the “myrating” column, and support for audiobooks purchased from audible.com.
But the real exciting features weren’t includeduntil iTunes 4 in 2003.
A new user interface was added along with the iTunes Music Storewhich was the main contributor to iTunes’ tremendous success.
Now, you may find it oddthat it took four versions of iTunes before Apple included a music store, but that’sbecause creating a legal digital music marketplace had never been done before.
Apple was writingthe book as they went along and initially faced stiff opposition from record labels.
But before we get into that, let’s understand how Apple recognized the need for a musicstore to begin with.
Initially, the main purpose of iTunes was to simply serve as an easy wayto rip songs from CDs, mix them into playlists, and burn those playlists to blank disks.
Thisprocess marked a paradigm shift in the way consumers managed music.
They were becomingmore comfortable with digital song files and listening to those songs on their MP3 playersor iTunes.
No longer were consumers using CDs to store and listen to their music.
Therole of CDs, then, was to simply transport music from the record store to your computer.
Because after the songs were imported to iTunes, the CD no longer had much of a purpose. This behavior contributed to the growing needfor a digital music marketplace.
After all, it’d be much easier to purchase digitalmusic directly to your computer and save time you would’ve spent driving to a record storeand then importing all your songs at home.
Consumers were also annoyed that buying songsindividually wasn’t possible.
Some solutions to this problem did surface, but they weren’tnecessarily legal.
File sharing applications like Napster and LimeWire became quite popularin the early 2000’s since they allowed users to download individual MP3 files directlyto their computer.
But because these services were illegal, the music industry retaliatedby trying to shut them down and they were successful, but it took many years.
Throughout this time, digital music downloadsdeveloped a bad reputation since it became synonymous with piracy.
In 2006 “Weird Al”Yankovic even released a parody single titled “Don’t Download This Song.”
Who’stitle may seem confusing since downloading songs today with Spotify and Apple Music isperfectly legal.
But these legal music downloading services weren’t available 15 years ago.
Steve Jobs had an interesting quote about piracy that summed up the situation quitewell, he said “We believe that 80% of the people stealing stuff don’t want to be,there’s just no legal alternative.
So we said, ‘Let’s create a legal alternativeto this.’
Everybody wins.
Music companies win.
The artists win.
Apple wins.
And theuser wins, because he gets a better service and doesn’t have to be a thief.”
But the idea of a digital music marketplacewasn’t popular with music executives at the time.
And their concerns weren’t necessarilyunfounded: They worried about profit margins.
would anyone buy $15 albums if they couldjust spend a few dollars handpicking their favorite songs.
They worried about piracy.
How would they prevent digital song files from being illegally resold and distributed?But most of all they worried about losing control of the retail music marketplace.
Ifeveryone buys music from the iTunes store than that gives Apple an unprecedented amountof bargaining power over the record labels.
Power the record executives weren’t willingto give up.
But Steve Jobs knew digital sales was theonly way forward for the music industry and he was successful in persuading labels toat least give it a try.
This was partly because of Apple's limited role in the computer industry:Labels saw the Macintosh market—which represented less than 5 percent of the total U.S. computermarket--as a small, relatively safe way to experiment with Jobs' ideas.
The iTunes Music Store offered 200,000 songsat its time of release and allowed customers to quickly find, purchase and download thosesongs for just 99 cents each, without subscription fees.
And customers could burn their songsonto an unlimited number of CDs for personal use, listen to songs on an unlimited numberof iPods, play songs on up to three Mac computers, and use songs in applications on the Mac likeiMovie and iDVD.
iTunes was widely used among Mac users butit didn’t explode in popularity until it was released for Windows in October 2003.
In just three and a half days after it’s release, iTunes for Windows was downloadedover a million times and secured iTunes position as the number one digital music marketplacein the world.
Digital music sales eventually exceeded CDs but it’s important to pointout that overall music sales began to decline in 2004 and it was due to one factor in particular:The shift from digital music purchases to streaming services like Pandora and YouTubewho offered free music streaming with varying feature restrictions and ads that could beremoved with a monthly subscription.
iTunes remained successful during this transitionalperiod and received annual updates, but Apple saw the writing on the wall and tried competingwith streaming services like Pandora by introducing iTunes Radio in 2013.
It experienced mildsuccess but was never able to dominate its competition like the iTunes Music Store had.
To make matters worse, a Swedish company called Spotify brought their music streaming serviceto the US in 2011 and was gaining incredible traction with consumers.
Spotify offered ondemand music streaming in addition to radio services and it was supported by ads whichmade the service free.
Although users could pay a $9.99 monthly subscription fee to removeads and other restrictions.
As popularity of Spotify exploded, it markedanother paradigm shift in the way consumers managed their music.
Buying songs digitallyand syncing them to various devices became antiquated since consumers could simply downloadan app and stream any song they’d like from any device.
Other music streaming serviceswere created to compete with Spotify like Tidal and Beats Music, but these serviceswere only able to put a small dent in Spotify’s on-demand music streaming marketshare.
In2014 Apple acquired Beats Electronics in a $3 billion deal, and brought on its executivesJimmy Iovine and Dr.
Dre to help develop Apple’s own music streaming service called Apple Musicwhich was released in 2015.
Apple Music was integrated with iTunes 12,a controversial decision since iTunes was already quite bloated and resource-heavy evenwithout the addition of Apple Music. Many users felt that, because iTunes needed tobe trimmed down, establishing Apple Music as a separate app would be a smarter choice.
But Apple felt differently baked Apple Musicright into iTunes.
Apple promoted the service heavily with various ad campaigns to get itoff to a strong start.
Reception to Apple Music was mixed, many criticized the userinterface for being messy and unintuitive, while others praised it’s quality playlistcuration.
In iOS 10, the Music app received an updated user interface with less clutter,improved navigation, and a larger emphasis on users' libraries, but issues with the servicepersisted.
One of Apple Music's features is something called iTunes Match, which allowsyou to upload existing music you already own to your iCloud Music Library so you can sharethose songs with your other devices.
Unfortunately this featured caused significant issues forsome users, like duplicate songs, missing tracks, and synchronization problems.
Therewere also reports of user-uploaded music being replaced by versions locked with digital rightsmanagement, an issue Apple later fixed.
Despite these hiccups, Apple Music experiencedrapid growth after its launch, passing the milestone of 10 million subscribers afterjust six months and 40 million as of April 2018.
Today, Apple Music is Spotify’s biggestcompetitor.
And because Apple Music is gaining subscribers at a faster rate than Spotify,it’s set to surpass Spotify for the number one spot in summer 2018.
Now even though streaming is the most popularway to listen to music, Apple continues to sell music from the iTunes Store, althoughsales have been declining since 2012.
Rumors have been circulating about whether or notApple will close the iTunes Store in the near future.
And although Apple hasn’t made anyofficial announcements on the subject, an anonymous source close to Apple said, “keepingthe iTunes Store running forever isn’t really on the table anymore.
They plan on ridingthe iTunes Music Store out for the next 3-4 years, maybe longer. If Jobs was alive, hewould have killed it.”
The end of the iTunes Music Store may be inevitable,but I don’t see it happening anytime soon.
After all, the iTunes Store offers more thanjust music and as long as customers are buying, it wouldn’t make much sense to shut it down.
But what do you guys think? Should Apple endthe iTunes Music Store in order to focus their energy on Apple Music? Or is there still agood reason to keep the declining digital media marketplace alive? Let me know whatyou think.
And if you want to vote for next week’s video topic, don’t forget to subscribe.
Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next time.
But I want to address somethingbefore we begin.
Many of you are recommending different video ideas which I really appreciateso keep them coming, but you should know that there’s a voting poll almost every weekwhere I ask my subscribers which video they’d like to see next.
Here’s the poll for thisvideo, so if you want to vote, make sure you’re subscribed or else the polls won’t showup in your activity feed.
Now, without further ado, let’s begin.
The story of iTunes is full of excitement,disappointment, and even some controversy that all began in 2001.
Now at that time,the iPod didn’t exist and playing music from CDs was standard.
There were MP3 players,but the industry was still in its infancy and wouldn’t explode until a few years afterthe iPod was released.
Most computers were capable of importing songs from CDs and thiscreated a problem with managing those song files effectively.
The most popular desktop music managers wereReal Jukebox, Windows Media Player, and Music Match.
The problem with these applicationswas that they were not only unappealing and complicated, but they throttled things likeencode quality and CD burning speed to encourage users to pay for the software’s pro version.
Apple capitalized on these shortcomings by introducing a free, simple, and powerful digitalmusic jukebox called iTunes.
Now I should mention that iTunes, like Siri,wasn’t made by Apple.
It was developed by Jeff Robbin and Bill Kincaid who had previouslyworked as Apple software engineers for the Copland project but left Apple when the projectwas cancelled.
They went on to create a media player for the Mac in 1998 called SoundJamMP.
The media player caught Apple’s eye and they later acquired SoundJam MP in 2000.
Robbin and Kincaid continued to develop their media player as employees of Apple and simplifiedit's user interface, added the ability to burn CDs, and removed its recording featureand skin support.
It was then branded as iTunes and released to the public in 2001.
iTunes was advertised as “the world’sbest and easiest to use ‘jukebox’ software” and it was only available on the Mac.
SteveJobs said “Apple has done what Apple does best — make complex applications easy, andmake them even more powerful in the process.
iTunes is miles ahead of every other jukeboxapplication, and we hope its dramatically simpler user interface will bring even morepeople into the digital music revolution.”
Reception to iTunes was positive, with criticspraising the ability to turn audio tracks into MP3 files, play Internet radio broadcasts,burn custom CDs, and transfer MP3 files between a Mac and stand-alone music players.
But therewere some complaints about Apple removing features that SoundJam MP used to have.
Thingslike custom skins, additional visualizer plugins, and the ability to record sound from a cassette.
The first update to iTunes came just ninemonths later and included support for the iPod, improvements to CD burning, and a soundequalizer.
Apple referred to this update as iTunes 2 but there wasn’t very much excitementsurrounding its release since the upgrade didn’t introduce any groundbreaking features.
And the same was true for iTunes 3 the following year which featured smart playlists, the “myrating” column, and support for audiobooks purchased from audible.com.
But the real exciting features weren’t includeduntil iTunes 4 in 2003.
A new user interface was added along with the iTunes Music Storewhich was the main contributor to iTunes’ tremendous success.
Now, you may find it oddthat it took four versions of iTunes before Apple included a music store, but that’sbecause creating a legal digital music marketplace had never been done before.
Apple was writingthe book as they went along and initially faced stiff opposition from record labels.
But before we get into that, let’s understand how Apple recognized the need for a musicstore to begin with.
Initially, the main purpose of iTunes was to simply serve as an easy wayto rip songs from CDs, mix them into playlists, and burn those playlists to blank disks.
Thisprocess marked a paradigm shift in the way consumers managed music.
They were becomingmore comfortable with digital song files and listening to those songs on their MP3 playersor iTunes.
No longer were consumers using CDs to store and listen to their music.
Therole of CDs, then, was to simply transport music from the record store to your computer.
Because after the songs were imported to iTunes, the CD no longer had much of a purpose. This behavior contributed to the growing needfor a digital music marketplace.
After all, it’d be much easier to purchase digitalmusic directly to your computer and save time you would’ve spent driving to a record storeand then importing all your songs at home.
Consumers were also annoyed that buying songsindividually wasn’t possible.
Some solutions to this problem did surface, but they weren’tnecessarily legal.
File sharing applications like Napster and LimeWire became quite popularin the early 2000’s since they allowed users to download individual MP3 files directlyto their computer.
But because these services were illegal, the music industry retaliatedby trying to shut them down and they were successful, but it took many years.
Throughout this time, digital music downloadsdeveloped a bad reputation since it became synonymous with piracy.
In 2006 “Weird Al”Yankovic even released a parody single titled “Don’t Download This Song.”
Who’stitle may seem confusing since downloading songs today with Spotify and Apple Music isperfectly legal.
But these legal music downloading services weren’t available 15 years ago.
Steve Jobs had an interesting quote about piracy that summed up the situation quitewell, he said “We believe that 80% of the people stealing stuff don’t want to be,there’s just no legal alternative.
So we said, ‘Let’s create a legal alternativeto this.’
Everybody wins.
Music companies win.
The artists win.
Apple wins.
And theuser wins, because he gets a better service and doesn’t have to be a thief.”
But the idea of a digital music marketplacewasn’t popular with music executives at the time.
And their concerns weren’t necessarilyunfounded: They worried about profit margins.
would anyone buy $15 albums if they couldjust spend a few dollars handpicking their favorite songs.
They worried about piracy.
How would they prevent digital song files from being illegally resold and distributed?But most of all they worried about losing control of the retail music marketplace.
Ifeveryone buys music from the iTunes store than that gives Apple an unprecedented amountof bargaining power over the record labels.
Power the record executives weren’t willingto give up.
But Steve Jobs knew digital sales was theonly way forward for the music industry and he was successful in persuading labels toat least give it a try.
This was partly because of Apple's limited role in the computer industry:Labels saw the Macintosh market—which represented less than 5 percent of the total U.S. computermarket--as a small, relatively safe way to experiment with Jobs' ideas.
The iTunes Music Store offered 200,000 songsat its time of release and allowed customers to quickly find, purchase and download thosesongs for just 99 cents each, without subscription fees.
And customers could burn their songsonto an unlimited number of CDs for personal use, listen to songs on an unlimited numberof iPods, play songs on up to three Mac computers, and use songs in applications on the Mac likeiMovie and iDVD.
iTunes was widely used among Mac users butit didn’t explode in popularity until it was released for Windows in October 2003.
In just three and a half days after it’s release, iTunes for Windows was downloadedover a million times and secured iTunes position as the number one digital music marketplacein the world.
Digital music sales eventually exceeded CDs but it’s important to pointout that overall music sales began to decline in 2004 and it was due to one factor in particular:The shift from digital music purchases to streaming services like Pandora and YouTubewho offered free music streaming with varying feature restrictions and ads that could beremoved with a monthly subscription.
iTunes remained successful during this transitionalperiod and received annual updates, but Apple saw the writing on the wall and tried competingwith streaming services like Pandora by introducing iTunes Radio in 2013.
It experienced mildsuccess but was never able to dominate its competition like the iTunes Music Store had.
To make matters worse, a Swedish company called Spotify brought their music streaming serviceto the US in 2011 and was gaining incredible traction with consumers.
Spotify offered ondemand music streaming in addition to radio services and it was supported by ads whichmade the service free.
Although users could pay a $9.99 monthly subscription fee to removeads and other restrictions.
As popularity of Spotify exploded, it markedanother paradigm shift in the way consumers managed their music.
Buying songs digitallyand syncing them to various devices became antiquated since consumers could simply downloadan app and stream any song they’d like from any device.
Other music streaming serviceswere created to compete with Spotify like Tidal and Beats Music, but these serviceswere only able to put a small dent in Spotify’s on-demand music streaming marketshare.
In2014 Apple acquired Beats Electronics in a $3 billion deal, and brought on its executivesJimmy Iovine and Dr.
Dre to help develop Apple’s own music streaming service called Apple Musicwhich was released in 2015.
Apple Music was integrated with iTunes 12,a controversial decision since iTunes was already quite bloated and resource-heavy evenwithout the addition of Apple Music. Many users felt that, because iTunes needed tobe trimmed down, establishing Apple Music as a separate app would be a smarter choice.
But Apple felt differently baked Apple Musicright into iTunes.
Apple promoted the service heavily with various ad campaigns to get itoff to a strong start.
Reception to Apple Music was mixed, many criticized the userinterface for being messy and unintuitive, while others praised it’s quality playlistcuration.
In iOS 10, the Music app received an updated user interface with less clutter,improved navigation, and a larger emphasis on users' libraries, but issues with the servicepersisted.
One of Apple Music's features is something called iTunes Match, which allowsyou to upload existing music you already own to your iCloud Music Library so you can sharethose songs with your other devices.
Unfortunately this featured caused significant issues forsome users, like duplicate songs, missing tracks, and synchronization problems.
Therewere also reports of user-uploaded music being replaced by versions locked with digital rightsmanagement, an issue Apple later fixed.
Despite these hiccups, Apple Music experiencedrapid growth after its launch, passing the milestone of 10 million subscribers afterjust six months and 40 million as of April 2018.
Today, Apple Music is Spotify’s biggestcompetitor.
And because Apple Music is gaining subscribers at a faster rate than Spotify,it’s set to surpass Spotify for the number one spot in summer 2018.
Now even though streaming is the most popularway to listen to music, Apple continues to sell music from the iTunes Store, althoughsales have been declining since 2012.
Rumors have been circulating about whether or notApple will close the iTunes Store in the near future.
And although Apple hasn’t made anyofficial announcements on the subject, an anonymous source close to Apple said, “keepingthe iTunes Store running forever isn’t really on the table anymore.
They plan on ridingthe iTunes Music Store out for the next 3-4 years, maybe longer. If Jobs was alive, hewould have killed it.”
The end of the iTunes Music Store may be inevitable,but I don’t see it happening anytime soon.
After all, the iTunes Store offers more thanjust music and as long as customers are buying, it wouldn’t make much sense to shut it down.
But what do you guys think? Should Apple endthe iTunes Music Store in order to focus their energy on Apple Music? Or is there still agood reason to keep the declining digital media marketplace alive? Let me know whatyou think.
And if you want to vote for next week’s video topic, don’t forget to subscribe.
Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next time.
0 Comments