Apple Announces iTunes 3

Apple today announced iTunes 3, a major upgrade to its award-winning digital music software for the Mac featuring Smart Playlists, a revolutionary new way to listen to your music. iTunes 3 adds dozens of new features, including Sound Check for consistent volume playback and support for audio programming from Audible.com. iTunes*, with more than 14 million copies distributed since its introduction, is available as a free download to all Mac OS X customers and will be included with Apple's ground-breaking iPod digital music player.

Smart Playlists are playlists that automatically and dynamically updatetheir songs based on simple rules set by the user. For example, a user canspecify that a Smart Playlist contain every song by a given artist, and whennew songs by that artist are added to iTunes' music library, they willautomatically appear in this playlist. Or a user can specify that a SmartPlaylist should contain their 25 most-listened-to songs, which will be dynamically selected based on the up-to-the-minute play counts for all the songs in their iTunes library.

“iTunes 3 with Smart Playlists is a major leap forward in the digital musicrevolution”, said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. “iTunes 3 and iPod provide the easiest to use and most advanced digital music experience available, and are setting the pace for the industry”.

With its elegant user interface, iTunes was the first “digital jukebox” application to take the complexity out of managing digital music, making it fast and easy to encode MP3s, create playlists, burn custom CDs and store an entire digital music collection on a Mac. iTunes seamlessly integrates with iPod, allowing Mac users to easily transfer their entire digital musiccollection onto their iPod in less than 10 seconds per CD.

In iTunes 3, Smart Playlists make it easy for customers to automaticallycreate mixes of their favourite songs from their music library based on anycriteria they choose — artist, genre, play count, release date and more.These mixes can dynamically change and grow as the user's music librarygrows. Smart Playlists work with iTunes' new song rating feature so thatusers can identify their favourite music and have it automatically added toa Smart Playlist for playback on their Mac or their iPod.

With support for Audible content, iTunes 3 allows Mac users to access abroad range of audio programming over the Internet. Through Audible.com,customers can choose from over 4,500 audiobooks and 14,000 other audioprograms, including national best sellers, classics and daily highlightsfrom The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. With iTunes 3 and iPod,Mac users have the flexibility to listen to Audible content whenever andwherever they want. Both iTunes 3 and iPod also support Sound Check, whichautomatically adjusts the volume of songs for a more consistent listeningexperience.

Pricing & Availability
iTunes 3 requires Mac OS X version 10.1.4 or later and is availableimmediately as a free download from https://www.apple.com/uk/itunes/.

* iTunes software may be used to reproduce materials. It is licensed tousers only for reproduction of non-copyrighted materials, materials in whichyou own the copyright, or materials you are authorised or legally permittedto reproduce.

Press Contacts:
Apple UK and Ireland Public Relations
Email: media.uk@apple.com
Phone: (020) 8218 1440