“In less than one week we’ve broken every record and become the largest on-line music company in the world,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO.
He continued:
“Apple has created the first complete solution for the digital music age — you can purchase your favorite music on-line at the iTunes Music Store, mix your favorite tracks into playlists with iTunes, and take your entire music collection with you everywhere with the super-slim new iPods.”
The record labels that signed-up to the venture were equally delighted. Roger Ames, Warner Music Group’s chairman and CEO said: “Apple has shown music fans, artists and the music industry as a whole that there really is a successful and easy way of legally distributing music over the internet.”
The easy-to-use nature of the system, including the Amazon.com-patented “one-click” shopping procedure, is a factor in its apparent success.
Another is the more relaxed nature of the copyright agreements negotiated between Apple and the major record labels. While Digital Rights Management is incorporated to limit what users can do with the downloads (they are not in MP3 format), users are allowed to copy songs to CDs for personal use, listen to songs on Apple iPods and play songs on up to three Mac computers.
As yet the system is only available in the US, and only for Apple Mac users, although it should be available for PC use by the year-end. Currently, around 200,000 tracks are available.
