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The iTunes brand is no longer. Nearly two decades after introducing the world to the hybrid digital store-library, Apple announced Monday at its global developer conference that it would close the iTunes software this fall and replace it with three standalone programs for music, television and podcasts. While the essential features will remain largely untouched – the ability to buy songs, for example, remains and only migrates to the new "Music" app – the disappearance of the iTunes brand marks the closing of the music. a particular era in the history of the industry. Below you will find some of the most iconic moments of the digital download era ushered in by iTunes.
2003: A revolution begins with a dizzying and colorful fanfare
In the early 2000s, Steve Jobs did not just give birth to an online music store – he offered fans a durable and user-friendly way to pay for albums instead of hacking them over the Internet. To promote the store, he used big names such as Bob Dylan to help make this project a success. ITunes Music Store has served as both a jukebox, discovery center and record store (without the judging clerks watching you behind the counter). Time iTunes was praised in 2003 as "the coolest invention" of the year, and the software – alongside its hardware counterpart, the iPod – would reinvigorate the music industry in decline in the Internet era without law, although the profits could never be compared to those of gold mine of the record store era.
In its first week alone, iTunes sold 1 million downloads and replaced Walmart and Best Buy as the best music retailer. Apple's beautiful and ubiquitous "silhouette" announcements have helped solidify the new product line in fans' minds.
2004: Green Day tries to save music with iTunes and Pepsi
All promotions did not work. At the 2004 Super Bowl, Apple collaborated with Pepsi for an anti-piracy ad featuring a costly, widely publicized and now infamous "I Fought the Law" Green Day cover-up for its total failure. The ad featured teenagers who had apparently been prosecuted for illegal downloading – and who had helped announce that Apple and Pepsi would give 100 million iTunes songs for free. What aggravated the poor reception was that the Pepsi flasks containing the song exchange codes were not distributed as widely as they were supposed to be, which led to only 5 million songs claimed. out of 100 million. "We had hoped the exchanges would have been higher," admitted Katie Cotton, Apple's vice president of communications at the time.
2010: iTunes Ping is a bad nightmare
While iTunes users have long complained about saturated software, the case of iTunes, Apple's short-lived social network, was a case where they were heard and listened to. Apple launched Ping in 2010 to help iTunes users share their favorite artists and music, but this has spawned more ridicule than adoration. "The customer voted and said," This is not something I want to put a lot of energy on, "acknowledged Apple CEO Tim Cook in 2012.
2011: the Beatles finally on board
In 2011, Apple and iTunes won their biggest win to date: the Beatles catalog. After holding all their records for years, the band agreed to distribute their music via the iTunes Store with a direct royalty stream to their record company and publisher – an agreement that, according to industry sources , is one of the most lucrative in the history of music. The adoption by the Beatles of iTunes took place at about the same time as other companies such as Led Zeppelin, Kid Rock, Metallica and AC / DC, and this indicated to the music lovers that the commercial model of the iTunes was here to stay. (At least until the next iteration, the Spotify streaming platform has arrived.)
2014: U2 imposes his album on the world
One day in 2014, half a billion music fans woke up and inexplicably found a U2 album in their library. Via "free download obligatory", Apple has delivered the new record of the Irish rock band Songs of Innocence to every iTunes subscriber at the time – a move that seemed beneficial to both parties because U2 was from the beginning a champion of the iTunes Music Store. "We wanted to reach as many people as possible," said Guy Oseary, head of U2. Rolling stone. Jimmy Iovine explained the idea behind the gimmick: "There is not a lot of rock in the climate, so what the band was trying to do was defy gravity. And whatever tools you can use to do it, you should use them.
But iTunes users were less than happy. Some, like the writers of wired, condemned the gift as "worse than spam" and for a brief moment, U2 seemed to be the most hated group in America. After a week, Apple gave instructions to iTunes users to explain how to delete the album, starting with the passive-aggressive line: Songs of Innocence deleted from your iTunes music library and iTunes purchases, you can choose to delete it. ")
A month later: Bono apologizes for forcing U2's album on the world
"Oops," said Bono himself, less than a month later, during a question-and-answer session on Facebook, in response to a question about the mandatory download. "I'm sorry about that, I had this great idea and we got carried away with ourselves." Artists are inclined to this kind of thing: [a] a drop of megalomania, a touch of generosity, a surge of self-promotion and a deep fear that those songs in which we have invested our lives in recent years are not heard. There is a lot of noise outside. I guess we were a little noisy ourselves to make it happen.
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