PRESS RELEASE 05 May 2004

iTunes Music Store Sells 3.3 Million Songs in One Week

Users Post Over 20,000 iMixes in First Week

CUPERTINO, California - May 5th, 2004
Apple today announced that music fans have purchased and downloaded a record setting 3.3 million songs from its third generation iTunes Music Store since its launch one week ago. Highlighting the popularity of its innovative new features, iTunes users have already published more than 20,000 iMixes, and those iMixes have been rated by fellow iTunes users over 50,000 times. In addition to the 3.3 million purchased songs, iTunes users have downloaded more than 500,000 free songs from popular artists including Foo Fighters, Avril Lavigne, Courtney Love, Annie Lennox, Jane's Addiction, Counting Crows, Renee Fleming and Nelly Furtado during Apple's week-long “Free Song of the Day” anniversary promotion.

“Our third generation iTunes Music Store just blows away any other online music service”, said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. “With over 700,000 songs and innovative features like iMix, it's the easiest to use and most fun to use online music store in the world”.

The iTunes Music Store has revolutionised the music industry with its 99 cents-per-song pricing, free previews, one-click purchasing and downloading and groundbreaking personal use rights. In its first year, music fans have purchased more than 70 million songs, making it the number one online music service in the world with more than 70 percent market share of legal downloads for singles and albums.

The third generation iTunes Music Store features the industry's largest online music catalogue of over 700,000 songs from all five major music companies and over 450 independent music labels, as well as groundbreaking new features including:
  • “iMix”, a new way for users to publish playlists of their favourite songs on the iTunes Music Store for other users to preview, rate and purchase. iMix creates a virtual iTunes community, enabling users to discover new music recommended by fellow music fans and rate the iMixes published by other iTunes users;
  • “Party Shuffle”, a new playlist that automatically chooses songs from a user's music library, displays just-played and upcoming songs, and allows users to easily add, delete and rearrange the upcoming songs on the fly. Party Shuffle is the ultimate DJ at any gathering, and a great way for users to get reacquainted with their personal music library;
  • Radio Charts from more than 1,000 radio stations, enabling users to easily find and buy the top songs played on local radio stations in major US markets and buy directly from the charts with just one click;
  • A new Music Video section featuring more music videos than ever, and a new Movie Trailer section with the most popular movie trailers on the Internet and links to buy songs from the soundtrack or audiobooks related to the movie;
  • The rights to play songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store, including songs previously purchased, on up to five personal computers, two more than before;
  • The ability to create and print stunning CD case inserts for albums or compilation discs, combining album art and track lists using professionally designed templates. For compilation CDs, iTunes will automatically generate a mosaic of album covers based on the chosen songs; and
  • Automatic WMA to AAC conversion, enabling Windows users to automatically create iTunes versions of their songs encoded in unprotected WMA. Converting an entire music library into iTunes and syncing it onto iPod is now extremely easy.
The iTunes Music Store continues to lead the industry with exclusive tracks from more than 150 artists and offers dozens of out-of-print recordings from Motown Records and the exclusive digital music catalogue of Walt Disney Records, including soundtracks from Disney's classic animated films and Disney/Pixar's computer-animated films. The iTunes Music Store also includes more than 5,000 audiobooks, online gift certificates, Apple's patent-pending “Allowance” feature which lets parents automatically deposit funds into their kids' iTunes Music Store account every month, Celebrity Playlists, iTunes Essentials and Billboard Charts.
Purchase and download of songs from the iTunes Music Store for Mac or Windows requires a valid credit card with a US billing address.
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