ITunes Stores
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 The iTunes Store, as seen in iTunes 12.2, running in Windows 8
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| Opened | April 28, 2003 |
|---|---|
| Platforms | macOS, iOS, Windows, tvOS |
| Format | Unprotected AAC (.m4a) @ 256 kbit/s (music), protected AAC (.m4p) @ 35 64 and 128 kbit/s (audiobooks), unprotected MPEG-4 Video (.m4v) (music videos), protected MPEG-4 Video (.m4v) (other video) |
| Restrictions | (Protected) Music: streaming to five computers every 24 hours, unlimited CDs (seven with an unchanged playlist), unlimited iPods and iPhones. |
| Catalogue | 37,000,000+ songs worldwide, 1,000,000+ podcasts (US), 40,000+ music videos (US), 3,000+ TV shows (US), 20,000+ audiobooks (US), 45,000+ movies (US), 1,000,000+ App Store apps |
| Preview | 30–90 seconds (music, TV, videos, audiobooks, movies) available for free |
| Streaming | Yes (for purchased movies and TV shows). Streaming for music via Apple Music. |
| iTunes Music Store Protocol (itms://) | |
| Availability | See Internationalization |
| Website |
www |
The iTunes Store is a software-based online digital media store operated by Apple Inc. that opened on April 28, 2003, as a result of Steve Job's push to open a digital marketplace for music. As of January 2017, iTunes offered over 35 - 40 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. As of June 2013, iTunes Store possessed 575 million active user accounts, and served over 315 million mobile devices, including Apple Watches, iPods, iPhones, Apple TV and iPads.
Before iTunes Store, most of the online music market consisted of downloads through websites like Napster and illegal downloads.Steve Jobs saw the opportunity to open a digital marketplace for music upon 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. iTunes Store was introduced by Jobs at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference in April 2003. At first, it was only available on Mac computers and the iPod, being expanded to Microsoft Windows in October 2003.
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. 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 sales continued to increase.
Following the introduction of 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 128 kbit/s. 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 256 kbit/s. 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.
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