Apple's iTunes store turns ten today and to celebrate, the company has gifted itself with a sleek new timeline recapping the long ride.
Users can follow the store's trajectory, from its humble beginnings in 2003 with only 200,000 99 cent songs to more recent milestones like 25 billion songs gold in 2013.
The timeline also shows the top ten selling albums and songs of the time with the requisite links to buy them. Click on 2012, for example, and Carly Rae Jepsen appears on the right, with a link to her summertime smash, "Call Me Maybe."
iTunes has had a lot of facelifts over the years, but it remains web users' one-stop shop for culture. According to a recent report by market research firm The NPD Group, Apple dominates online video sales, and claimed 66% of all TV shows sold and 65% of all movies sold last year. The company also came out ahead in the on-demand market, owning a 45% share of all online movie rentals.
Apple has leveraged the popularity of "iTunes, iOS, and the popularity of iPhone and iPad to dominate the digital sale and rental markets for movies and music," Russ Crupnick, senior vice president of industry analysis at NPD, said in a statement provided to CNET. "While worthy competitors have come along, no other retailer has so thoroughly dominated its core entertainment product categories for so long."
Not that users are complaining: An NPD poll found 77% of iTunes shoppers rated their experience as excellent or very good.
[via CNET]
