PRESS RELEASE
May 5, 2003
iTunes Music Store Sells Over One Million Songs in First Week
MARKHAM, Ontario—May 5, 2003—Apple® today announced that its revolutionaryiTunes® Music Store sold over one million songs during its first week. Overhalf of the songs were purchased as albums, dispelling concerns that sellingmusic on a per-track basis will destroy album sales. In addition, over halfof the 200,000 songs offered on the iTunes Music Store were purchased atleast once, demonstrating the breadth of musical tastes served by Apple'sgroundbreaking online store. Apple also reported that over one millioncopies of iTunes 4 have been downloaded, and that it has received orders forover 110,000 new third-generation iPods since their introduction a week ago,with music lovers snapping up more than 20,000 of them from stores in theU.S. this weekend.
“In less than one week we've broken every record and become the largestonline music company in the world,” said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. “Apple hascreated the first complete solution for the digital music age—you canpurchase your favorite music online at the iTunes Music Store, mix yourfavorite tracks into playlists with iTunes, and take your entire musiccollection with you everywhere with the super-slim new iPods.”
“Hitting one million songs in less than a week was totally unexpected,” saidRoger Ames, Warner Music Group's chairman and CEO. “Apple has shown musicfans, artists and the music industry as a whole that there really is asuccessful and easy way of legally distributing music over the Internet.”
“Our internal measure of success was having the iTunes Music Store sell onemillion songs in the first month. To do this in one week is an over-the-topsuccess,” said Doug Morris, Universal Music Group's CEO. “Apple definitelygot it right with the iTunes Music Store.”
Apple also announced that tomorrow, May 6, the iTunes Music Store will beadding over 3,200 new tracks, including major new album releases such asJack Johnson's “On and On,” Andrea Bocelli's “Tosca” and Fleetwood Mac's“Say You Will,” as well as pre-release tracks from upcoming albums byartists David Sanborn, The RH Factor, John Scofield, Jesse Harris and LizzWright. Also to be added tomorrow are additional albums from the Eagles,Michelle Branch's album “The Spirit Room,” and new Featured Artist pages forColdplay, including an exclusive track and music video, and AlanisMorissette, with her catalog of music.
The iTunes Music Store* features over 200,000 songs from major musiccompanies including BMG, EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal, andWarner and lets customers quickly find, purchase and download the music theywant for just 99 cents per song. The iTunes Music Store offersgroundbreaking personal use rights that allow users to burn songs onto anunlimited number of CDs for personal use, listen to songs on an unlimitednumber of iPods, play songs on up to three Macintosh® computers, and usesongs in other applications on the Mac®, including iPhoto™, iMovie™ and iDVD™.
Music lovers can easily find the hits they love and discover gems they'venever heard before by listening to free 30-second high-quality previews ofany song in the store, then purchase and download their favorite songs orcomplete albums in pristine digital quality with just one click. Users canexplore music in an entirely new way by easily searching the entire musicstore to instantly locate any song by title, artist or album, or browse theentire collection of songs by genre, artist and album. The iTunes MusicStore is fully integrated into iTunes 4, the fourth major release of Apple'spopular digital music jukebox software, allowing users to purchase,download, organize and listen to their music using just one application.
- *Purchasing songs from the iTunes Music Store is only available in the U.S.
- © 2003 Apple Computer, Inc. All rights reserved.Apple, the Apple logo, Mac,Mac OS, Macintosh, iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD and iPod are eitherregistered trademarks or trademarks of Apple. Other company and productnames may be trademarks of their respective owners.