The way we listen to music changed forever when Apple launched iTunes in 2001

Throughout the 20th century, the dominant method of music distribution changed many times, from just live performances to records, cassette tapes, CDs and MP3 players. But the most dramatic change in the industry occurred on this day in January 2001, when Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced the launch of iTunes.

People had been burning CDs on computers for a while, but the programs they used to store these digital music files caused problems for music lovers. RealJukebox, Windows Media Player and MusicMatch all limited fast burning and high quality playback for paying members.

That’s why Apple decided to release a simple, powerful and free digital music jukebox; a decision that changed music listening and the music industry forever.

iTunes was not born at Apple. It is derived from a digital MP3 player, SoundJam, created in the late 1990s by two former Apple employees, Bill Kincaid and Jeff Robbin. After the player caught the attention of Apple officials, they rehired Kincaid and Robbin, as well as their employee Dave Heller, to create similar software for their own computers. The result was iTunes, which Apple advertised as “the world’s best and easiest-to-use ‘jukebox’ software.”

History of iTunes

“Apple has done what Apple does best: make complex applications simple and make them even more powerful in the process,” Jobs said in a January 9, 2001 message: press release. “ITunes is miles ahead of all other jukebox applications, and we hope the dramatically simpler user interface will bring even more people into the digital music revolution.”

iTunes users would be able to import and play an unlimited number of MP3 tracks, organize their digital music collection, create custom CDs and, most notably, “view a visual representation of the music being played, which is synchronized to the beat of music” – not a music video, but rather an era-appropriate, pulsating computer graphic.

Less than six months after iTunes launched, Apple announced the supervisor of the program: the iPoda portable device that allows iTunes to be controlled from your pocket.

With the program and device installed, Apple initiated the third part of its takeover of the music market: selling songs. On April 28, 2003, the company launched the iTunes Music Store, an online music supermarket where users can legally purchase digital music for 99 cents per song.

Before the iTunes Store, people had to buy entire albums or shortened singles from a physical store. They couldn’t buy individual digital songs unless they stole them. And many did. Thanks to easily burnable CDs and the spread of shareable MP3s, record companies lost money to digital piracy in the early years. As a record executive from that time told the Guardianfile sharing was “a crisis of enormous proportions” for the industry.

Jobs took advantage of the turmoil to create a groundbreaking partnership, striking deals with five major record labels that allowed Apple to sell their music on iTunes. The move allowed record companies to start making money from digital music, and it launched iTunes and the iPod into the stratosphere.

Once available on Windows computers, the iTunes Store, the first legal digital marketplace, became the most widely used digital music manager in the world. Over time, the store expanded its selection to include TV show episodes and full-length movies, which customers watched on increasingly larger versions of the iPod. Numbers eventually rose in price from 99 cents to $1.29.

iTunes no longer rules the digital music market and iPods have turned into smartphones. Ultimately, the program proved to be a gateway to streamers – subscription-based music distribution services – as Pandora and Spotify became its main competitors. In 2019, iTunes was included in Apple’s own music streaming program, Apple Music. But the store’s legacy continues in today’s form of digital music, and the iTunes Store is still there for those who want to buy their favorite piece of music by the digital piece.