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iTunes Music Store Turns 20 Today: 'Just 99 Cents Per Song'

I went to a very prominent high school in California and I was selling a Lose Yourself on a CD for $1 around school, a week later itunes any song for 99c came out, Apple got the idea from me as I sold it to one of apple employees sons.
 
WOW!!! I feel Older. but I remember it's launch like it was yesterday. funny how Apple was 1st in so many things and other companies nowadays don't even knowledge them. Thank you Steve Jobs and R.I.P.
 
I've bought hundreds of bucks worth of songs on iTunes over the years. There's no discount for long-term customers to use the streaming service, and 10 bucks per month is WAY more than I spend on songs. I think 2-3 good songs come out per year? The only music I'm still discovering for myself these days is several decades old. The more I add to my collection, the less I depend on monthly fees.

Importantly, my wife can listen to these PURCHASED songs on her iPod. That same iPod doesn't support temporary streaming platforms like Apple Music.
 
Xand&Roby said:
Partly true, but that was the moment when the web, as a parallel world, died. I miss being able to find music and movies with a simple click, a query on a search engine. Not for the media itself but for what it represented.

When Napster (and other phenomena that came from below) died, the commercial internet was born, the internet of corporations, which is then today's internet.
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Yeah, I don't disagree. I loved the "stick it to the man" aspect of Napster-- music companies in particular were clinging to an old world view and their response to the rise of the internet was so heavy handed it was easy to root for the pirates.

But for all the thrill of watching the internet give a brief edge to David over Goliath, we can't think that was going to make the world a better place. Saying "it's ok for a mother to steal bread to feed a starving child" can't be the excuse for legalizing theft. And while corporations tend to drain the flavor from everything, all the seedy players and hustlers that dominate the unregulated economies don't necessarily come with moral compasses either.

Lawless rebellions are helpful in overturning an outdated status quo, but only until a new social contract can be established-- and iTunes Music Store was the grounds for that new social contract.

Frankly, I think it was the later iterations that really delivered-- when the DRM was removed and the audio quality was restored. That's really when the two sides came to realize that music had value and customers can be trusted. I've always thought a dollar a song was too high, it made for a marketable round number. The higher prices for DRM free I think was just the compromise that needed to happen so the music industry though they got something in the deal.
 
I have not taken the bite of buying songs or subscribing to Apple Music. iTunes and Music are just players for me, and it could be better. I have put my CD music collection in my Mac & iPhone. I have 7,754 songs in my iPhone. Some of thees songs are over an hour long as I like to be able to hear an album in it's entirety without Music screwing it up. Music takes up 44.99 GB on my phone and 67.07 GB on my Mac. My music is bought and paid for.
 
Back when you could navigate your music with ease. Loved iTunes and my iPod Nano. Maybe because I am now 20 yers older, but Apple music GUI and unintuitive method of navigation puts me in a rage.
 
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halfmac said:
Napster is not dead - It is YouTube! You can find any type of music there.
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YouTube has nothing to do with Napster: it is owned by one of the fiercest companies on the web; it is a very poor platform; born as a joke and updated worse (I remember it when it was born..); it lives because many users are there to be kept to say nonsense, as long as they make views. From a badly made amateur video platform it became a nonsense social done worse, but high-yielding for advertising.
YouTube is comparable to Napster as a pair of handcuffs and a pack of cops drunk on freedom. Not that Napster was freedom, I'm not so naive, but there's a sidereal distance between the two platforms.
 
Analog Kid said:
Yeah, I don't disagree. I loved the "stick it to the man" aspect of Napster-- music companies in particular were clinging to an old world view and their response to the rise of the internet was so heavy handed it was easy to root for the pirates.

But for all the thrill of watching the internet give a brief edge to David over Goliath, we can't think that was going to make the world a better place. Saying "it's ok for a mother to steal bread to feed a starving child" can't be the excuse for legalizing theft. And while corporations tend to drain the flavor from everything, all the seedy players and hustlers that dominate the unregulated economies don't necessarily come with moral compasses either.

Lawless rebellions are helpful in overturning an outdated status quo, but only until a new social contract can be established-- and iTunes Music Store was the grounds for that new social contract.

Frankly, I think it was the later iterations that really delivered-- when the DRM was removed and the audio quality was restored. That's really when the two sides came to realize that music had value and customers can be trusted. I've always thought a dollar a song was too high, it made for a marketable round number. The higher prices for DRM free I think was just the compromise that needed to happen so the music industry though they got something in the deal.
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In general, I quite agree, but I tend to prefer continuous attacks on the status quo than the status quo itself, especially when the ‘new social contract’ is drawn up between two parties that do not really represent those at stake (the users) but one of them arrogates to the right to represent one, for its own benefit. It is a very commercial way of resolving disputes, and it has never tended to lead too far from wars. It is no coincidence that the truce has lasted for twenty years, thanks also to subscription streaming like Spotify, which, again, represents a very new way (when it was born) to circumvent the old social contract of the iTunes Store making music a continuous flow of news that last the time of a click, for a fee.
Again, users have a marginal role, moving from one self-proclaimed sales representative to another, without a real institutional representative.
Chaos serves systems to renew themselves, there was a time when on the web, one of the most hierarchical and military structures that have ever existed in human history, chaos served to generate the new, for better or for worse. Today simply the web is an old, dead, conquered territory, nothing really chaotic passes from there (but it's normal, it's not the right platform at all). I never expected the world to become a better place, but I still disagree on why that mother has to steal to feed her child, despite overeducing food. It's not a matter of legalising theft, it's a matter of putting a limit on trade, or opening it up completely, if you really believe in the market.
 
"The store provided convenient access to songs on an à-la-carte basis at a time when pirating music was rampant via peer-to-peer file sharing programs such as LimeWire and KaZaA."

I read this and instantly thought of Don't Download This Song, by Weird Al.

"Like Morpheus or Grokster, or LimeWire or KaZaA..."
 
I still buy my music. I’ll never convert over to streaming. It screws over the artists… unless you’re someone like Taylor Swift with millions of streams per day. Recently been using Bandcamp because I can download lossless, they have Bandcamp Friday where almost all the money you spend goes directly toward the artist, and the best part: iTunes doesn’t keep changing the genres and removing my downloads and also cluttering up the music app on Apple Watch. Sure it’s convenient to have my purchases right in the music app and stuff, but I’ll take having more control over my music any day.
Thank Gaia for Bandcamp!
 
I do remember that first year where Pepsi ran a bottle cap promotion for a chance at a free song. I would tilt the bottles slightly so that you could see the printing under the cap. If it was a winning code, there was only one line of text. if it was a losing cap, there was multiple lines of text. So if you saw minimal text, it was a winner.

I got so many winners that first year. haha
 
I based our first website on the itunes design. I'd taught myself the basics of Photoshop a year earlier when making the figures for my Masters thesis in Medical Biophysics. Fast forward one year and I'm not going into medicine but, instead, starting an accessory business with my highschool pal.

Cheers :)
Jamie

EDIT: Peep that 820x620 resolution!!

Website 1 - 2006.jpg
 
lazyrighteye said:
I leverage Apple Music for discovery and I get out to see a ton of live music. The combo has greatly expanded my sonic spectrum. When I purchase music, it’s on vinyl. I really like the ability to steam [almost] anything or Shazam a song I hear out and about. Then, only purchase what really speaks to me. It’s the best of both worlds - my physical collection is curated while still enjoying discovery and growth.

Happy birthday iTunes!
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Tapes, CDs, Vinyl... impossible to beat the feeling of holding an album in your hands
 
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