It's Been 22 Years Since Apple Launched the iTunes Store

[Hallouminati]

The iTunes store it such a strange one. It is one of the few Apple products that I believe has gone backwards with pretty much every iteration. The original was simple, effective and clean, and now we have this bloated product that is a pain to navigate and displays so little on the screen, especially on a mobile. If there was a decent alternative I'd certainly use it.

As many times as I tell it what much I like (Rock) it still insists on displaying stuff I dislike, such as RnB, Rap etc, near the top of the home page, products I don't use (Radio shows unrelated to my tastes), etc

 

[mannyvel]

The great thing about iTunes is iTunes Match updated all my weird mp3s to relatively better quality and legal mp3s. I still subscribe to match for reasons unknown to me.

 

[Chungry]

I still miss SoundJam. The skins people created were amazing. And then Apple butchered the creative side when they bought it.

Audion had good skins too

 

[norbinhouston]

Man, time flies. Seems like yesterday.

 

[bigglow]

I remember many mocking Apple for their commercial digital distribution model.

It help it approach $4 trillion market cap.

 

[ProVideo]

The thing I don't like about digital is I can't sell it if I don't want it anymore and if I die all those digital purchases die with me. It would make more sense if the digital copies didn't cost the same as the physical versions. In the case of video games the digital versions usually cost more than the physical versions.

 

[tonywalker23]

My oldest songs, December 2003. Am pretty sure that these first ones were from the iTunes Pepsi caps promo: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2003/10/16Apple-and-Pepsi-to-Give-Away-100-Million-Free-Songs/

 

[mzeb]

So many Pepsi caps collected. That was the coolest promotion to get me hooked on the store and it absolutely sold both cola and songs. And I’m a coke drinker 🤣

 

[Naraxus]

This literally saved music industry. Without iTunes, Napster would’ve devoured the industry.

Partially true. For the artists it's gotten worse. For the record lables it's been good.

 

[JosephAW]

Still have most of those original purchases but some of the content is no longer available especially the audiobooks.

iTunes could handle hundreds of playlists and GB of music and custom album artwork quickly.

Since Catalina the Music app has been a disaster, every time a change is made in a playlist you have to quit the music app and let the beach ball spin and hopefully it would save the changes and then you would have to go back in and work on the next playlist and keep repeating this process, if you try to change dozens of playlist the app will crash.
You think by 2025 Apple would’ve gotten the Music app stable and working well but apparently that’s the lease of Apple’s priority.

 

[svish]

Lot has changed since its launch and now almost everything is a subscription service. Nice to see that it still exists in some form.

 

[MacAddict1978]

Apple cheapened it by turning the iTunes experience for music into a generic streaming service, where Apple Music itself is a bit of an annoyance.

They took away the sense of 'having' an album. Of having your own collection, curated neatly. Coverflow showing album covers.

They should've kept the best bits of iTunes - they could have made it feel as if we actually owned or were at least _collecting_ music even if it was all provided through a subscription service. It'd make it more sticky.

When Apple bought Beats - who already had a music streaming service and App, they killed their own and just reskinned and renamed Beats music. Apple Music today is still pretty much that same crappy Beats Music app, and after ages of doing nothing with it, that last "refresh" was lipstick on a pig.

I agree with you. iTunes became bloated as they shoehorned everything and the kitchen sink into it (movie rentals/purchases, pods) but I wish they would have kept some of that look and feel. Cover Flow... tags and labels, feeling like you have a music library.

I don't use Apple music because it just sucks and I prefer Spotify, but Spotify shouldn't be the superior music experience by a mile. Apple fell far in this space.

 

[HighwaySnowman]

I remember, and had one of the first iPods, second version IIRC, still have it. tremendous times…. until they started shoving U2 down our throats…. then they crossed a line!

And now i will give Apple advice, and if they make a killing just send me a few million: AI “remastered” high res audio for audiophiles. we can do better balancing and fill out thin tones, or things not quite done right the first time. Based on the amount of Beatles re-releases remasters they really sucked.

Why do so many people whine about U2?

It was free. You can delete it if you don't want it. It wasn't a bad album, not U2's best but not bad. If the idiots had just shut up about it, they'd have done more of that, and I do not and will not ever be able to comprehend why getting some free music bothered so many idiots.

SO STUPID. Enjoy it or delete it. As for me, it was really cool that Apple did that, and the fools whining about it ruined it, we never got anything nice like that again.

 

[roland.g]

iTunes and Movies/TV store is a hot mess on the Mac. Apple doesn't want you to find it. Like everything else the push it to subscription based streaming.

 

[HighwaySnowman]

I remember giving up Limewire to legally purchase music. And I still have a lot of music when they did the deal with Pepsi for free music.

I gave up Limewire for bittorrent, and still happily fly the good flag today.

 

[HighwaySnowman]

This literally saved music industry. Without iTunes, Napster would’ve devoured the industry.

So sad. The industry should have died.

The anointed few still get rich. The rest still struggle. Popular music still sucks.

If you care about music, give money to the actual artists. Stop feeding the machine.

 

[DunedinD]

I get the slow-news-day posts but sheeeesh

Today in Apple News, it’s 7,420 days since the original iPod shuffle was announced. Holy s**t, time flies.

 

[muasachi]

I still don't get why they had to move Movies out of from iTunes Store app.
And it's so weird that they still keep iTunes Store app on tvOS, but ask users to go to Apple TV app instead.

 

[d4cloo]

I miss the times before social media and smart phones, chilling with my iPod Nano, listening to my own curated library of music. Something about that era….

 

[d4cloo]

I still have and maintain my original iTunes library from 2003. I have so much music, and don’t listen to much new music, so I continue to use my iTunes library. If I need a new song, I try to rip it from a CD, or I’ll buy an Apple Digital Master version on iTunes.

I didn’t purchase music from Apple until they increased the bitrate in the later years. I didn’t want to pay for music that was only 128kbps.

Hopefully I have all the music I need, because I feel like the iTunes Store will go away soon.

And you have a much better licensing agreement with these songs too. You can’t transfer songs purchased through Apple to another user and you can even lose them when changing territories. This is why I never buy films on Apple TV.

 

[JamesMay82]

this article makes me feel old!

It’s such a shame they don’t focus on the store anymore. My biggest wish is that they sold lossless tracks. I mean it can’t be difficult to implement while they have the files to stream.

I’ve never been a fan of streaming as I find it interferes with the existing musics artwork every time I’ve tried it. Plus there too many gaps.. I’m a fan of movie soundtracks and I’ll find that certain albums will have songs greyed out as not available and then you have to search for the song on the main artists original album

 

[MacFarmer]

I loved the iTunes store and iPod ecosystem. Such a nice harmony. I still do. I still use my many iPods. Some of them upgraded with SSDs other with new batteries. Too bad iTunes store now is destroyed by Apple Music. And the mac music app is just terrible...

 

[macbookj0e]

Still prefer to own my music with higher bitrate sound. Streaming quality is often s*** and then cuts out with bad signal.

 

[racerhomie]

I still use the iTunes Music Store & Tones Store. I use it to buy singles that I really like. I use Spotify for streaming

 

[Ctrlos]

iTunes used to get some flack for being 'bloated' but I have yet to find any alternative as good at organising a monstrous digital media collection. Its a sad state of affairs when kids these days are more likely to know what a CD is than an MP3!