PRESS RELEASE
June 23, 2003
iTunes Music Store Hits Five Million Downloads
Apple to Ship One Millionth iPod This Week
WWDC 2003, San Francisco—June 23, 2003—Apple® today announced that musicfans have downloaded over five million songs from the iTunes® Music Storesince its launch eight weeks ago today. In addition, over 46 percent of thesongs have been purchased as albums, and over 80 percent of the over 200,000songs available on the online store have been purchased at least once. Applealso announced that it will ship its one millionth iPod™ this week. Appleintroduced the third generation of its ultra-portable digital music playerin April, and it has become a huge hit with music lovers worldwide.
“The iTunes Music Store is changing the way people buy music,” said SteveJobs, Apple's CEO. “Selling five million songs in the first eight weeks hasfar surpassed our expectations, and clearly illustrates that many customersare hungry for a legal way to acquire their music online.”
“The iTunes Music Store has defined what it means for people to have musicinstantly—and legally—at their fingertips,” said Doug Morris, UniversalMusic Group's CEO. “The iTunes Music Store is pushing us into the future ofhow music is produced and consumed.”
“Apple has shown the music industry, artists and consumers that there is asuccessful and easy way of legally distributing and obtaining music over theInternet,” said Roger Ames, Warner Music Group's chairman and CEO. “Everyonein our industry is looking for a solution and Apple is leading the way withthe iTunes Music Store.”
The iTunes Music Store lets customers easily search a broad catalog of over200,000 tracks to instantly locate any song by title, artist or album. Withjust one click, they can purchase the songs they want and download them directly into their iTunes 4 music library for just 99 cents per song, without any subscription fees. Songs are downloaded in pristine digital quality and can be burned onto an unlimited number of CDs for personal use at no extra cost, played on up to three Macintosh® computers, listened to on an unlimited number of iPods, and used in other Mac® applications, includingiPhoto™, iMovie™ and iDVD™. Thousands of new songs, new albums and exclusivetracks are added to the iTunes Music Store every week. PC users will be ableto enjoy downloading songs from the iTunes Music Store when it is releasedfor the Windows platform by the end of this year.
The new super-slim iPods store up to 7,500 songs in a stunning enclosurethat is lighter and thinner than two CDs. iPod is the only portable musicplayer with Apple's patent pending Auto-Sync, an innovative feature thatautomatically downloads entire music libraries into iPod and keeps itup-to-date whenever the iPod is plugged into a Mac or Windows PC. iPodfeatures completely solid-state “no moving parts” navigation wheel andbuttons; an elegant dock with audio out for fast and easy connection to a computer or stereo; an “On-The-Go” playlist so users can build a playlist right on their iPod; and a customizable main menu so users can promote the features they use most often to their top level menu. The iPod familyincludes a 10GB model for just $459 (CDN), a 15GB model for $599 (CDN) and a high-capacity 30GB model that holds up to 7,500 songs for $749 (CDN).
- © 2003 Apple Computer, Inc. All rights reserved.Apple, the Apple logo, Mac, Mac OS, Macintosh, iTunes, iPod, iPhoto, iMovie and iDVD are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Apple. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.