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Brian Tiemann
Silicon Valley-based purveyor of a confusing mixture of Apple punditry and political bile.

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Friday, December 19, 2003
11:55 - iCoup

(top) link
This is an interesting development:



Not one that we didn't have warning of, but it's still fairly momentous. How many millions of AOL users are there again?

It's a no-brainer for AOL, though. They could have partnered with one of the other myriad music stores that have popped up since Apple's did, but... why?

The thunderous response to iTunes helped push four other music services to market, with several more planned. But their initial success has been much more muted.

The first to take on Apple was BuyMusic.com in July. It expected 1 million daily song downloads. "We're not achieving that at all," says BuyMusic CEO Scott Blum. "I've spoken with my competitors, and we're nowhere near (Apple's) numbers."

Maybe you shouldn't have smashed that guitar, huh? You might need it for the subway tunnel.

And now AOL-- a huge chunk of the online market, by any estimation-- is going to start contributing to iTunes' market share, immediately after Apple announced its 25 millionth download.

I'd say that's a pretty unequivocal success.

I also like the simplicity of the technological adjustment necessary for opening iTunes up to AOL. All they have to do, it seems, is accept AOL user IDs as well as Apple IDs for signing in to the store. And all AOL users have that already. Apple barely has to make any tweaks to the software or the store, assuming the pricing is all the same for AOL users. (How much of a cut does AOL get out of this deal?)

My Christmas present to a friend of mine was to revolutionize his music-listening experience by moving him from a 20GB folder full of MP3s to iTunes, and he's still transported with joy over how much fun it all is now. I had originally planned to give him my old iPod, too-- but I'm having trouble converting it to Windows format. (Anybody with any brilliant tips, I'd love to hear them.) No matter-- it would have been gravy, as iTunes is itself that much better than what he was used to.

Was Apple just in the right place at the right time? Or was this Steve's plan all along, starting back in 2000 with the first release of iTunes, the first non-OS software Apple had released for free consumer use (aside from iMovie) in years?

Who can know but the Steve himself?


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