Apple has reported that music fans purchased and downloaded 1.5 million songs from its iTunes Music Store during the same period that Napster reported selling 300,000 songs during its first week of operation. More than 17 million songs have been purchased and downloaded from the iTunes Music Store since it launched in April 2003. According to Nielsen SoundScan, the iTunes Music Store had more than 80 per cent market share of legally purchased downloads last week.
During Napster's first week of operation, the iTunes Music Store sold five times as many songs as Napster did-1.5 million versus 300,000, said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. The unbeatable combination of iPod and iTunes offers music lovers a seamless experience for buying, managing and listening to their digital music collections anywhere.
The iTunes Music Store offers Windows users the same online music store as Mac users with the same music catalog of more than 400,000 songs, the same gold standard personal use rights and the same 99 cents-per-song pricing. The second generation iTunes Music Store launched October 16 includes: online gift certificates for family and friends; Apple's innovative and patent-pending online Allowance feature which allows parents to automatically deposit funds into their kids' iTunes Music Store account every month; more than 5,000 audiobooks which can be purchased with one click and listened to on a Mac or Windows computer as well as on iPods; Celebrity Playlists; and new exclusive tracks from more than 60 artists. The iTunes Music Store offers music from all five major music companies and over 200 independent music labels.
Follow the download tab above to download Apple's iTunes software for Mac and PC.